On the eve of the 2022-23 season, Kings leadership expecting progress from increased expectations

“Progress. Continued progress.”

That was Rob Blake’s generalized answer to what he would see as growth from last season to this season.

Throughout last season, Blake maintained that word, progress. It was never, publicly at least, about setting a bar or a line for what the team needed to achieve, there wasn’t a mandate as to what progress was, but rather just a focus on the word. Progress.

Progress last season put the Kings into the postseason and now the group is hungry for more. With a couple of new faces and others expected to give more, Blake stressed the importance of maintaining the level from last season, while progressing beyond it here in 2022-23.

“We’ve made a big step getting back in the playoffs and now you’ve got to hold that level and keep getting in,” he added. “I think the roster starts to take a little more shape, you add a few pieces through free agency, give the young guys a couple more years to get up and running at the NHL level and now you put the emphasis on them producing and helping us.”

One of the questions posed a few times in various settings pertained to whether it was harder to go from a non-playoff team to a playoff team, or from a playoff team to a true contender.

Todd McLellan said at the beginning of training camp that the easy part is over, going from where the Kings were at the start of the rebuild to breaking into the playoff picture. Blake tended to agree. Last season, the outside world – not that the Kings pay much attention to that – didn’t have the Kings pegged as a team with expectations. With a playoff appearance under their belts, and the bar being raised, Blake knows his group isn’t sneaking up on anyone this season.

“I would say it’s tougher going from once you become a playoff team to be able to become a real contender,” he said. “Now you’re dealing with really, really good teams once you get in. We made a step last year, but now we have to make sure we have the ability to move past that and keep that going. I think Todd used the phrase ‘we’re not sneaking up on anybody’. Not anymore. I think our coaching staff will have our players prepared for that.”

In terms of that preparation, that message seems to be making its way to the team as well.

Starting at the top, with captain Anze Kopitar, he understands that the Kings won’t be a surprise to anyone this season. While making the playoffs was a great accomplishment, something that Kopitar recognized, it’s also not what the Kings are here to do. They’re here for more, something the captain stressed today.

“Last year was a big step for this team and for some individuals and the team in general, but now we have to upgrade it again,” Kopitar said. “Yeah, it was great to make the playoffs of course but making the playoffs is not the goal here. It’s doing some damage in the playoffs, but in order to do that, it’s getting there first and then roll from there.”

That’s a big picture vision, and it’s certainly where the Kings believe they can be six months from now.

It’s also not reasonable to expect the Kings to be the perfect version of themselves on night one. McLellan sees the Kings as a work in progress at this stage of the game, a team that will continue to improve each day on the road to hopefully becoming that team that should be competing for a playoff spot, and hopefully more.

“You’re never the finished product on day one,” McLellan said. “I think I’ve mentioned to a few guys that day one is often too high or too low and day two is really where you start to see what the team is made of. We’re at day one, we’re going to make it important because it obviously is. We’d like to see our identity come out, we’d like to see our structure come out, we’d like to see individuals find their game within our game. There are areas that we’ve concentrated a little bit more on through training camp and we should see improvements in those areas, but it will take some time.”

Kopitar believes he’s seen improvements from day one of training camp through where the team is at today.

Now that the regular season is about to get underway, he and many of the other veterans in camp, Kopitar is someone who is truly looking forward to getting into the action of opening night. Drew Doughty has expressed the same thoughts. For those who have been through it, they’re excited for the lights to shine brightly at Crypto.com Arena tomorrow, with Opening Night.

“There are a bunch of guys in here that have gone through a bunch of camps, so I think everybody’s looking to a day like today, where we’re working towards tomorrow,” he said. “We are in a good spot and we’re in good spirits for the start of the season.”

The club starting the season will be the closest one yet to Blake’s overall vision of what he wants the Kings to look like.

Entering the regular season coming off of an exhibition slate that saw the team finish 3-3-1, the Kings – on paper at least – are the best team the Kings have entered a season with. The Kevin Fiala acquisition filled an obvious void in terms of a top line, scoring forward, while internal growth is expected to help fill other roles as well throughout the lineup. In a perfect world, that internal growth will not only fill roles, but help to push others for their spots as well, which would give the Kings both depth and internal competition.

At least to start the season, we’ll see what Blake’s vision of theKings looks like with some of those pieces in place.

“It’s getting there,” he said. “I think there are less and less concerns throughout the lineup. I think there still are at different times and that there will be as the season goes on, but I do think we have players that can fill certain roles. We do have some depth in the right positions if needed, that was a major factor last year that I’m not sure we had set and understood well enough with major injuries Some of these guys were able to step in and play those minutes.”

At the end of it all, it comes back to the first story written during training camp. The notion of expectations.

Todd McLellan made clear that the team wouldn’t be worrying about what those outside of the Kings room are saying or setting. It’s about internal expectations and Blake shared today that those have been both established and clearly defined heading into the season.

“Expectations, there’s a lot that goes with it and I think we have to define within our interior walls what we expect out of this group,” Blake said. “Building and getting better, every time we’re on the ice, we have to get better. We’ve got to get our special teams better, a lot of areas of our game need to increase from a year ago to keep that level. Those are the expectations and we’ve talked to the players and it’s from within. We’ve defined that on a personal level and on a team level, there are expectations that we want these guys to meet.”

*The Kings are scheduled to hold a 10:30 AM morning skate tomorrow at Toyota Sports Performance Center before it’s off to Crypto.com Arena for Opening Night. A reminder that tomorrow’s game starts at 7:00 PM, not 7:30 PM, and that heavy traffic is expected with the Dodgers playing at home at 6:37 PM. A pre-game fan fest begins for the Kings at 4:30 PM.