Angeles Analysis – Finally

Perhaps the real winner yesterday was all of us, who no longer have to sit through another seven-game preseason.

Next season, the NHL will expand its schedule to 84 regular-season games and the preseason schedule will be reduced to no more than four games per team. While there are benefits to the extended preseason, they mostly come down to roster battles, bubble players and giving prospects an opportunity to play up in competition. As far as the NHL squad goes, it’s just felt entirely too long.

Anze Kopitar, who won’t be here next season for the shortened schedule, said that everyone is just excited to get going. It’s felt for a week now like it’s time to go. And now it finally is.

The Kings couldn’t come out of the gates with a sterner test. Colorado at home and Vegas on the road, back-to-back nights to start the season. If you were to poll the experts, those are two of a small handful of teams you might find chosen in Stanley Cup predictions. No surprises to be found with those teams, as Phillip Danault put it, with the Kings understanding the task ahead, or perhaps the opportunity ahead. If you look at the week as a whole, it’s the Kings and Avalanche on Tuesday. Kings versus Golden Knights on Wednesday. Kings against the Jets on Saturday. That’s the team that led the Western Conference in goals scored, the team that finished second in points and the team that won the Presidents Trophy. Good test out of the gate.

Games 1 and 2 don’t make a regular season, certainly, whether they are wins or losses. The 2022-23 and 2023-24 Kings dropped their two opening games and were naturally playoff teams. The Oilers started last season 0-3. The 2018-19 Kings had points in their first two games, preceding one of the worst seasons in franchise history. However. For a Kings group eager to change the narrative from what was to what’s ahead, consider this the first opportunity to do so.

From the 2025 Trade Deadline on, the Kings were the best team in the entire NHL by just about every metric. First in wins, points, regulation wins, goals scored and goal differential. That’s not the first thing that comes to mind, though, when people talk about the Kings. Hasn’t really come up much at all, has it? It’s the collapses in Games 3 and 4 of the postseason. It’s coaching decisions. It’s offseason acquisitions. All of which have been the takeaways from what was probably the best team that Kings have had since 2014.

That’s why it’s good to get on the ice. Tuesday’s game won’t define the season to come but it is the first chance to start talking about something else. Because, while last year’s postseason still happened, once the puck drops Tuesday night, it doesn’t much matter anymore. Whatever happened in that series is last year’s business. Players signed over the summer are now just Kings players. Four-year contracts really aren’t all that important because it’s only Year 1 that plays out on the ice and Year 1 that impacts who the Kings are as a team this season. Players who need to take a step forward will have the opportunity to do so, just as players who begin the season with legitimate question marks to answer have the opportunity to do the same. Players who excelled last season will have the chance to do it again. Players who had down years get a fresh slate.

As you look at this Kings roster, just about every player falls into one bucket or another. I’d argue that there’s only one player on the Kings who doesn’t and that’s Mikey Anderson. At this point, we’ve seen Mikey Anderson do the same exact thing for four straight seasons and there just aren’t many questions left to be answered. That’s not to say that Anderson is the best player on the Kings but I think I’d say he’s the most consistent. He has the smallest range of outcomes for his 2025-26 season. Beyond that, everyone has an open book to write their 2025-26 story. There’s excitement there. Unknowns too. And that’s kind of the beauty of it, isn’t it?

Whatever you feel about the Kings, this week is the first time when you’ll be proven right or wrong. Not in a definitive way, but there’s finally something to analyze, something to assess. Assumptions and predictions are easy to talk about in September but this week, we’ve got the first proof of concept. There have been so many different narratives and talking points during training camp and on Tuesday, we’ll see how they play out on the ice for the first time. I think there are far more of those storylines with this club that are positive than negative. Certainly in terms of upside. I, for one, am really looking forward to seeing how those things play out when the games actually matter.

Three games ahead this week! Home Opener on Tuesday followed by games in Colorado and Winnipeg to round out Week 1 of the regular season.