Playoff Practice! Today’s Alignment + Players Talk Special Teams, Practice Focus, Jeannot Timeline

Playoff Practice, Insiders!

Today’s the day. And an exciting one at that.

“This day is exciting every year, just to come in, you get the Stanley Cup patch on all the equipment, it just feels like new life,” forward Trevor Moore said. “It’s really exciting. Just to have the chance at some redemption, to feel good about ourselves, we get a chance to play these guys again and hopefully take it.”

The LA Kings hit the ice for their first practice of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, this afternoon at Toyota Sports Performance Center. For the fourth straight season, it’s in preparation for the Edmonton Oilers, though this season the series has shifted to Los Angeles for Game 1.

The Kings skated for around 45 minutes in the first of two practice days this weekend, in advance of Game 1 on Monday.

Here’s what we saw from the Kings during today’s practice –

Kuzmenko – Kopitar – Kempe
Foegele – Danault – Moore
Fiala – Byfield – Laferriere
Malott – Helenius – Turcotte
Lewis – Thomas

Anderson – Doughty
Gavrikov – Spence
Edmundson – Clarke
Moverare – Burroughs

Kuemper
Rittich

First time in a long time we’ve had a practice day with all of these guys on the ice. But nothing out of the ordinary there, right? I’d say that’s the lineup most of us expected heading into Game 1, considering the status of available players.

Jim Hiller said today he expects to have a full complement of players at his disposal, minus forward Tanner Jeannot, for Game 1.

Up front, forward Alex Turcotte recently made his return to the lineup from an upper-body injury. As did Quinton Byfield, who missed Game 81 with an upper-body injury of his own. Both players practiced in full and there doesn’t appear to be any lingering side effects for either player that would impact their participation in Game 1. Great news there.

On the blueline, good to see both Drew Doughty and Joel Edmundson on the ice. Both players played in Game 82 on Thursday, getting in that final tune-up game before Game 1 on Monday. I wouldn’t be surprised to see both players managed throughout the playoff run for the Kings, in terms of practice time, but as of now, shouldn’t be anything that impacts game availability.

With Doughty, that’s been the process for him now over the last two months. He’s practiced sporadically, but he has not been a regular participant. If he doesn’t practice tomorrow, there shouldn’t be concern. It’s his process to manage his body to make sure he’s ready to go each game. For Edmundson, he’s obviously missed games and practices over the last 10 days or so but returned on Thursday against Calgary. He was on the ice today and there’s nothing to suggest he will miss practices going forward. But if he does, I don’t think it’s any cause for concern.

The only player not on the ice today was Jeannot, who remains out of the lineup with a lower-body injury. Jeannot is still out week-to-week and Hiller clarified that means a week from today, at least. So don’t expect him for Games 1 and 2, but he also is not ruled out for the series, either.

As for the focus during today’s practice? Hey, don’t expect too many specifics to come from the Kings here. Tis the season of secrecy.

Hiller did share that the Kings spent more time today on certain things that are Edmonton-specific, while tomorrow should see more things that are simply tailored around their game. Beyond that, probably shouldn’t expect a ton to be shared, but there are clearly multiple points of emphasis over these days to prepare adequately for Game 1.

“We were ready to just have one good practice and one good video session day, but we were able to give the guys the full day off [yesterday], so they were able to freshen up and not hear from us,” Hiller said. “Good practice today, with a little bit of an emphasis on Edmonton. Tomorrow, we’ll go full speed with what we would do, typical practice.”

Playoffs 🔜

The @LAKings are on the ice this morning for their first practice of the postseason! pic.twitter.com/8eEWijumzX

— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) April 19, 2025

One area of focus for sure, that went beyond just an Edmonton focus was special teams.

The Kings did work on both areas of that game and it’s obviously a huge storyline heading into Game 1.

Because, when you look specifically at the 2022 and 2024 series, Edmonton dominated in that area. In 2023, the overall goals were actually very close but only because the Kings scored on their own power play. They haven’t shutdown the Oilers at all over the past three seasons, with Edmonton clicking at 45.5 percent across the three matchups.

“Special teams is obviously the big one,” Moore said, of a point of emphasis heading into this series. “I feel good, I feel like it’s fun watching our top unit on the power play, that’s really exciting. Our penalty kill, I don’t know where we are in the league, but it feels more aggressive, it feels confident and when you have Darce in net, it makes a world of difference. We feel really confident.”

There’s obviously two talking points here.

On the power play, the Kings have struggled all season long……but then came the trade deadline. Until that point, the Kings ranked 29th in the NHL at 15.0 percent. Since? They’re tied for 13th at 23.9 percent. Now that’s not world-beating. That’s not lighting the league on fire. But going from just above the basement to slightly ahead of league average is a massive uptick and the Kings have seen

“Power play, we’ve talked about it a lot, but since we got Kuzy, got him down there making some plays on the goal line, I think our power play has been pretty effective,” Hiller said. “I think they feel good going into it. I think the power play guys, they were out there this morning, they scored some goals that I haven’t seen in a long time. They’re feeling good, so we’ve got to make sure we maintain that throughout the series, despite how the ups and downs go.”

Part of the improvement at the very end of the season came with a personnel change, as the Kings have opted for a five-forward approach, which continued into practice today. It’s not a conventional approach, but the Kings have shown all season they’re willing to be non-conventional in a lot of ways. It’s a tiny sample size, but the Kings have scored seven power-play goals in the four games they ran with five forwards.

As Hiller said, it just looks and feels different.

It does put a lot more of the puck on Andrei Kuzmenko’s stick, as a down-low playmaker, but it really puts a lot of the onus on Adrian Kempe, who becomes the last man back in a shorthanded break scenario. It also puts the puck on his stick a lot more than it does when he’s in a one-timer role, on the right side of the alignment. Kempe is up for the task, having shown he can take shifts on defense during games even at 5-on-5. He is trusted in that situation and has handled the task well thus far.

“He’s such a good skaters back there, he moves well up at the top and he’s super confident up there,” forward Quinton Byfield said of Kempe. “He can walk the line and the be a threat as well with his shot. That kind of pulls the PK’ers into shot lanes and opens up passing lanes, so he’s really good there.”

Edmonton is a solid PK team, ranking exactly league average at 78.2 percent, 16th in the NHL. But the Kings showed two years ago they can hang on that part of the game. Last season they did not. But if they can carry over some of that end-of-season momentum into Game 1, if gives them a chance to score.

The other side of the coin, naturally, is a penalty kill that has been excellent for the bulk of the season. But I probably said the same thing last year. The Kings finished the 2023-24 season with the NHL’s second-ranked penalty kill but in the postseason, Edmonton scored nine power-play goals in five games. Each team scored 12 goals 5-on-5 in the series, but it was a dominant Oilers power play that swing the balance clearly in their direction over the course of the series.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter what the Kings do. When you have McDavid and Draisaitl, plus Evan Bouchard’s shot and Zach Hyman’s netfront presence, it can be overwhelming. The Kings won’t shutout the Oilers on the power play, but they’ve still got to find a way to improve upon the previous three seasons. That’s the challenge facing this team, because even a perfectly crafted strategy can’t account for elite-level talent.

Both Moore and forward Phillip Danault pointed to the way that goaltender Darcy Kuemper has fit in, plus the improvements the Kings have made in a number of different areas, as being reasons to inspire confidence. And the Kings should feel confident. While last season’s number was better, this season’s kill has been more effective, driven by an aggressive approach and a group of 10 regular penalty killers who could all stake their claim as the team’s top guys in those situations

“We feel good about our PK,” Danault said. “We know they have a massive power play, but I don’t think we should change the way we’re doing it, we’ve been killing our way all year and we don’t want to adapt to them, but obviously, you make adjustments throughout the series. Darce is a big part of it too.”

For Kuemper’s part, he was quick to throw the praise back to the players in front of him.

He feels that the structure of the way the Kings kill penalties helps him and while everyone has spoken about the confidence he instills in them, for Kuemper, is a job made easier by that group.

“I think just the way we kill, it makes my reads easier,” Kuemper said. “We really mark our guys and then it’s easy to know who’s got who and read off that. I think the killers in front of me have been doing such a good job that it makes my job easier in 5-on-4 situations.”

Hard to sit here and say it’s not the biggest storyline in this series, right? If the Kings can keep the bulk of the game 5-on-5, they give themselves a good chance. If they can hang in on special teams, similar to 2023, they give themselves a good chance as well. What they can’t do is spot their opponent a 2-0 lead in each game, which is what happened in 2024.

The focus is there and the Kings are flying as highly as they have all season, between the two units, heading into Game 1. On Saturday afternoon, with Game 1 still over 48 hours away, that’s about all they can do.