Articles in Los Angeles Kings

NEW YORK (April 11, 2023) – The National Hockey League (NHL) and National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) today announced the Arizona Coyotes and Los Angeles Kings will face off in the first-ever NHL games in the Southern Hemisphere, as Melbourne, Australia will play host to the 2023 NHL Global Series™ – Melbourne. The preseason games between the Coyotes and Kings will be played on Saturday, Sept. 23 and Sunday, Sept. 24 at Rod Laver Arena. This historic announcement advances the NHL’s commitment to grow the game globally, while furthering the League’s international strategy.

NEW YORK (March 26, 2023) – Los Angeles Kings forward Blake Lizotte has been suspended for one game, without pay, for cross-checking Winnipeg Jets defenseman Josh Morrissey during NHL Game No. 1154 in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 25, the National Hockey League’s Department of Player Safety announced today.

The incident occurred at 14:10 of the second period. Lizotte was assessed a match penalty.

Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and, based on his average annual salary, Lizotte will forfeit $9,054.05. The money goes to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

Watch the cross-check below.

from Jim Alexander of the LA Daily News,

Has the greater NHL community been overlooking the Kings?

Maybe. Maybe not. But we can say this with certainty: A team that is historically poor in day games was more than good enough Saturday afternoon in beating Winnipeg, 4-1. One game by itself doesn’t say much, but maybe it’s a sign something special is happening here, something lots of people are missing.

The Kings tied a franchise record for consecutive games with points, 11. They’ve done that four times in the franchise’s 56-year history, and the last time was early in the 2013-14 season, en route to a second Stanley Cup in four years. It is a feat, though Coach Todd McLellan and defenseman Drew Doughty both shrugged it off.

What does matter to them? In the most recent 10 games of that streak they’ve given up less than two goals per game, 1.9 to be precise, and gave up more than two only once.

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A nice tribute.

from Helene Elliott of the LA Tmes,

Every now and then, goaltender Jonathan Quick would flash his glove or kick out his leg or repel an intruding opponent from his crease with a feisty shove and it would feel like the Kings’ best years all over again.

Yet those moments had become all too rare the last few seasons for Quick, who was the most valuable player in the Kings’ surprise 2012 Stanley Cup playoff run and was up to the challenge of working even harder to help them win a second championship over a grueling 26 postseason games in 2014.

No athlete has defeated time and the indignities the passing years bring — the slower reflexes and longer recovery periods, the eager, young challengers who had your poster on their bedroom wall or grew up watching videos of your technique.

Even Quick, a Connecticut native who ranks among the best American goalies to wear the mask and pads of the profession, couldn’t make time stand still. Nor could he even pause it, so he could be part of the Kings’ next championship run.

In this, the final season of his 10-year, $58-million contract, it became painful to watch him as he became slower, almost immeasurably but enough to become vulnerable. Quick, 37, couldn’t intimidate shooters anymore, couldn’t make the big saves when the Kings most needed them.

He was the franchise leader among goalies in games (743), wins (370) and shutouts (57), but he couldn’t lift the Kings back to the level he and they had once enjoyed. A man of few words and little regard for anything but winning, he must have hated that.

There’s little room for sentiment in business or hockey, but there was a breathtaking finality to the news that the Kings were trading Quick, along with a conditional first-round draft pick in 2023 and a third-round pick in 2024, to the Columbus Blue Jackets for goaltender Joonas Korpisalo and defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov.

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Boys will be boys.

from Zach Dooley of LA Kings Insider,

“I’m super excited, obviously this is the place I want to be. I think we’re in year four now in total here, I’ve loved all my time here and it’s starting to feel like home. I’m happy to stay here, be our own group of guys and keep moving the needle forward.”

Mikey Anderson with nothing but love coming out of his eight-year contract extension, announced earlier today by the Kings. Anderson is currently playing on a team-friendly, one-year contract he signed back in September, which felt like an absolute steal for the organization when it happened.

It also felt like there was certainly more to come, with a player who said clearly at the time that he wanted to commit his long-term future to the Kings, an organization that happily played him well over 20 minutes per night, signifying his importance to the franchise in the long run. Today’s announcement is the culmination of that importance, with Anderson now tied to the LA Kings for longer than any other employee, in any capacity.

“I was trying to get through the year, trying to build the resume a little bit more, I had only played about a year and a half if you take the COVID years, it wasn’t necessarily the full year,” he said today of the short-term extension he signed in September. “We couldn’t find something that worked out great, so from my standpoint, I was just trying to take one more year and play. As a group, we’ve had a good start to the year and individually it helped pay off. We were able to find something that worked now.”

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