Kings place Viktor Arvidsson on LTIR + Additional Roster Transactions

A series of roster moves this morning for the LA Kings.

The LA Kings have recalled forward Alex Turcotte and defenseman Brandt Clarke from the AHL’s Ontario Reign, with forwards Arthur Kaliyev and Alex Laferriere heading back to the Reign. Additionally, the Kings have placed forward Viktor Arvidsson on long-term injured reserve (LTIR).

Instant Reaction
There’s a couple of layers to the transactions here.

The biggest news is that Arvidsson has been placed on LTIR, which opens up the roster from a flexibility standpoint. Naturally, we’d rather have Viktor Arvidsson in the lineup. He’s a dynamic creator who is a driving force on his line and on the power play, one of the most gifted and impactful offensive players in the organization. The Kings will miss him while he recovers from a lower-body injury that will have him sidelined, at least through November 4, which would be the team’s eleventh game of the season.

What this transaction does is free up cap space.

The Kings played a skater short last night against Colorado, with 11 forwards and six defensemen, with cap space an issue regarding the recalling of an extra skater.

The LTIR situation will allow the Kings to, ultimately, carry a 23-player roster if they should choose to. The roster moves today are not necessarily important, beyond the Arvidsson transaction, because of the newly freed up cap space will allow the Kings to recall multiple players should they so choose. The two players sent down today – Kaliyev and Laferriere – can be expected to be recalled in advance of Saturday’s game against Carolina. Kaliyev will come back up to serve the final game of his suspension, while Laferriere should be expected to be in the lineup against the Hurricanes, off the back of an impressive debut last night. Todd McLellan made a point last night to note that he’d be pushing to keep Laferriere around with the NHL club. No guarantees, but all signs would point in that direction.

“Arvy’s not going to be back for a little while, so I’ll break that news to you……I’m going to be pounding on somebody’s desk tomorrow to say I really liked the way Laf has played, I don’t think he should be going [to the AHL] and we’ll figure out a way to keep him, if the cap situation everything else works. He’s earned the right to play again in my opinion.”

For at least the next nine games, the Kings should have the possibility to play with 12 forwards and six defensemen on a given night, with players of their choosing. While Turcotte and Clarke, who were recalled today, could remain with the big club past today, there’s also the possibility that defenseman Jordan Spence could work his way back to the NHL roster. Both McLellan and Rob Blake indicated that Spence was set to make the NHL roster, before a suspension and an injury altered the plans.

“It’s hard to project and say that you’re only going back for two games, so basically we say that we’re going to run our roster, we’re going to go with 12 and seven, and he would have been in that seven,” Blake said of his conversation with Spence. “Unfortunately with the suspension, we had to bring [a forward] in and with waivers, [Spence] did not have to go on waivers to go down for a couple of games, get through that suspension if we’re healthy, we’ll go back to our original plan.”

Now, the Kings are not healthy, but can get to a version of that original plan soon enough. That original plan publicly included Spence. He’s earned his place with the NHL club, which Blake has made clear. Things can always change, or go in a different direction than what has been publicly discussed, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see Spence in Saturday’s lineup.

Blake’s quote above came from our interview on All The Kings Men, which dropped this morning. A good interview with a look into the process involving Spence, as well as several other items surrounding the roster early in the season. Big thank you to Blakey for his time and his willingness to give us a bit of an inside look into a few areas.

The Kings are not practicing today and will return to practice tomorrow at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center, with a game not scheduled until Saturday against Carolina. Lots of time between now and then, with an Ontario Reign home game on Friday in the middle. We’ll see how the roster shakes out here over the next couple of days, but I’ll leave you with the most popular line I’ll use here early in the season.

The roster today is the roster today. We’ll see what the roster tomorrow looks like tomorrow.