LOS ANGELES, CA — For two decades, the Los Angeles Kings have had the luxury franchises spend years chasing: a true number one centerman in Anze Kopitar. Alongside Jonathan Quick and Drew Doughty, the Kings formed Hockey's Holy Trinity—three franchise-level pillars down the middle, on the back end, and in net. In their primes, all three ranked among the very best at their respective positions. That spine was the foundation of two Stanley Cups in three years, before the Mike Richards and Slava Voynov situations derailed the Lombardi administration.
Quick is now a backup in New York, and while Doughty still has some runway left, Kopitar is nearing the end of his career. He has already announced his retirement at the end of this season. The clock is no longer ticking—it has run out. The Kings' succession plan for one of the most critical roster positions is unraveling; much like the latter stages of the Lombardi era, the franchise has begun to fray at the seams.
The organization attempted to chart that future at the draft table. After a stinging fall from second overall in 2019 to fifth to draft Alex Turcotte, the Kings moved up in 2020 to grab Quinton Byfield at second overall. Those two picks were meant to anchor the franchise's next era down the middle, and their development has come to define the direction the Kings now appear to be heading.
Over the course of the Rob Blake era, the Kings cycled through a long list of centers—drafted, traded, waived, or moved on from, until the pipeline effectively narrowed to Byfield and Turcotte, with due respect to Samuel Helenius, who survived the purge. That list of departed centers includes Gabriel Vilardi (drafted at center), Rasmus Kupari, Jared Anderson-Dolan, and Akil Thomas. After years of investing premium draft capital at the position, the Kings are left with two internal options who have underwhelmed enough to raise legitimate questions about whether the franchise is drifting into the NHL's uncomfortable middle class.
Byfield was drafted to succeed Kopitar, a future Hall of Famer, and while those were always massive skates to fill, there was reason to believe Byfield's size, skill, and natural tools gave him legitimate 1C upside. Turcotte, meanwhile, faced an injury-littered development curve and repeated blockages on the NHL roster, leaving the realistic hope that he could at least lock down a dependable 3C role. Both players have fallen short of the expectations attached to their draft positions. At the time, the Kings clearly envisioned replacing their top-six center depth—once a strength with Kopitar and Jeff Carter—entirely from within.
Managing those expectations has required constant recalibration. Byfield flashed highlight ability during the 2024–25 season and was productive in 2023–24 while playing on the wing next to Kopitar and Adrian Kempe, yet he is now on pace to miss the career-high point total he set last season. Turcotte, elevated following the departure of Phillip Danault from the lineup picture (a player acquired in 2021–22 to stabilize the middle while Byfield developed), has been effective defensively due to sheer tenacity and his speed. Even so, Turcotte has not maximized his offensive opportunity, despite the contrast in Danault's own nonexistent scoring output.
What the Kings have, then, is a struggling Byfield who increasingly profiles as a mid-to-low ceiling 2C, and an evolving shutdown 3C in Turcotte who does not produce at a league-average rate for players in that role. It is a symbolic outcome for two players who now represent a team scoring at its worst rate in more than a decade, despite remaining elite defensively at even strength.
Compounding the problem is the environment those centers are being asked to produce in. The Kings remain built around elite-level checking, layered defensive structure, and rigid systematic play, a model that depends on volume and territory to compensate for limited offensive creativity. That margin has eroded, reflected in results that include one of the league's lowest totals of regulation wins. Paired with a season defined by one-goal margins, the Kings have consistently struggled to separate from opponents offensively.
The significant drop-off in puck-moving ability on the blue line, paired with an offense driven more by forecheck pressure than dynamic creation, has narrowed scoring lanes even further. In that context, centers are asked to defend first, extend shifts, and manufacture offense through attrition, an approach that demands elite talent to overcome, not develop within.
That said, I am not entirely sold on the idea that Byfield is a bust. Development curves are rarely linear, and recent history offers reminders of how context can alter perception. Sam Reinhart, once viewed as a stalled top pick in Buffalo, did not become a 90-point player until his environment changed in Florida. Before that, he was essentially a 50–60 point forward. The lesson is not that Byfield will follow the same path, but that stagnation does not always equal finality. Turcotte, on the other hand, is closer to the "frustrating outcome" end of the spectrum. It's certainly not a complete Thomas Hickey scenario, but undeniably disappointing given his draft pedigree and where his game has settled within the Kings' system.
The broader question, then, is whether the succession plan has failed. As things stand, it has. The Kings' leading center goalscorer is a 38-year-old tethered to their best winger, supported by a 2C/3C combination that is not producing to its intended level. Add in a fourth-line center playing minimal minutes, and the result is a roster construction puzzle with little margin for error. That is a dangerous place for a franchise that has already waived or traded away a staggering number of former prospects.
There is now an emerging view that the solution could come from within, with Alex Laferriere often cited as a potential answer. Laferriere deserves credit; he has been one of the rare bright spots to emerge from a prospect pipeline littered with organizational casualties. But the idea that he could simply just transition to center underscores the larger issue. It suggests a franchise drifting toward desperation rather than executing a coherent plan.
That transition would not be easy. Laferriere is a legitimate NHL player—a middle-six forward, a high-volume shooter unafraid of the hard areas of the ice. What he is not is a 1C or 2C solution. While it seems welcoming given the possibility of having a right-handed centerman in a lefty-heavy middle lineup, asking a player still carving out his NHL identity to solve a foundational roster problem speaks volumes.
With respect to both Byfield and Turcotte, they remain NHL-caliber centers. They are simply not the centers the Kings envisioned when they were drafted. There is still runway for both, and some players do take longer to reach their ceiling. But this is also an organization starved of postseason success, despite a Lombardi era that ended with exceptional seasons from Kopitar (Selke) and Doughty (Norris) in 2016, dispatched by the Sharks in five games.
That, outside the exceptional 2017-18 season (92 points) from Kopitar, ended the notion of the Kings having cornerstone positional players—became situated as players holding down roles until the next phase started turnover. Neither Byfield nor Turcotte currently projects as an actual cornerstone piece, with Byfield emerging as the more glaring disappointment given his extraordinary natural gifts.
Given these issues, the organization still continues to operate under a mantra that frames itself as a contender. That posture hasn't been remotely convincing, even with the four postseason failures ruled out for argument's sake. Under the current structure, the Kings appear destined to scrape into playoff contention at best, as illustrated by their recent collapse against the Tampa Bay Lightning—a game they led late in the third period. Historically, the Kings closed those games. Realistically, this version of the team looks more like a stepping stone, fuel to get to the second round for a more complete opponent.
This is no longer just a 2C issue following Danault's departure from the lineup hierarchy—it is a looming 1C and 2C problem as Kopitar's career winds down. Solving that will require genuine creativity from Ken Holland and, perhaps more importantly, a willingness from the organization to confront its doubling down on glaring programmatic mistakes.
Complicating matters is the financial reality that arrives alongside Kopitar's departure. His salary coming off the books, paired with a rising league cap, will give the Kings the appearance of flexibility this offseason. But a surplus of cap space doesn't guarantee a solution to their center problem, and history suggests that this organization is more comfortable spending to stabilize than to fundamentally reshape. In a market flush with short-term fixes and aging stopgaps, the danger is not inactivity—it is mistaking financial relief for a solution.
The succession plan has already failed. What comes next will determine whether the Kings finally confront that reality or simply repackage it under a new cap structure. With Kopitar gone, this is no longer a problem that can be deferred or disguised by incremental moves. It demands clarity, restraint, and a willingness to admit that the middle ground has become the most dangerous place to be—and that continuing to live there risks making a middling team even harder to escape.
