Down to 29 (sort of)

The Kings made their four roster cuts yesterday, essentially taking them down to 29 NHL-caliber players. The maximum number of healthy players the Kings can carry at the start of the season is 23, although Terry Murray said the other day that he wasn’t sure whether the Kings would carry 22 or 23 at the start. So let’s presume it’s 23 spots for 28 players (with Matt Greene starting the season on injured reserve).

Ryan Smyth, Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Scott Parse, Jarret Stoll, Justin Williams, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Michal Handzus, Wayne Simmonds, Brad Richardson, Kevin Westgarth, Drew Doughty, Willie Mitchell, Jack Johnson, Rob Scuderi, Davis Drewiske, Peter Harrold and Jonathan Quick are presumed to be assured of roster spots.

That leaves five open spots for Either Jonathan Bernier or Erik Ersberg will make it. That’s four open spots. Either Thomas Hickey or Jake Muzzin will make it. That leaves a maximum of three open spots for Kyle Clifford, Rich Clune, Trevor Lewis, Andrei Loktionov, Brayden Schenn and John Zeiler.

At forward, it’s hard to say how this will go. Unless Parse is injured at the start of the season, Richardson and Westgarth are two-thirds of the fourth line. It’s highly unlikely that the Kings would keep Clifford (or any rookie) as a spare forward, because that’s counter-productive. Lewis, Loktionov and Schenn are competing for the fourth-line center spot, but Lewis could still make the team as a spare forward even if he gets beat out by one of the two rookies. It will be very interesting to see how this all shakes out.