A Transformational Summer — The Fourth Period

Panarin is everything teams spend years trying to acquire: a true game-breaking winger who can create offense out of nothing, manipulate defenders in tight space, and dictate play with the puck on his stick. When he’s at his best, he changes the geometry of the ice as defenders collapse, lanes open, and chaos follows. Panarin can tilt a shift, he can tilt a game. But he can’t tilt an entire offensive system by himself – not in a league this fast, this structured, this unforgiving.

If anything, Kopitar’s presence used to mask some of that. He handled the heavy defensive lifting and stabilized matchups to allow offensive players to cheat a little, to take risks.

Without him, Panarin’s brilliance becomes even more central – and the need  for more support becomes even more visible.

This is where the Kings got stuck this season.

They tried to control games without consistently threatening them. They tried to balance caution with creativity – and ended up fully committing to neither. That tension showed up everywhere – in games where they out-possessed opponents but didn’t out-chance them, in third periods where they protected leads instead of extending them and in losses where the offense dried up under pressure.

With Kopitar in the lineup, that balancing act was at least manageable. He was the glue holding the identity together and without him, it becomes unsustainable.

The Kings can’t straddle two identities anymore; they must choose.

Replacing Kopitar isn’t about finding “the next Kopitar.” That player doesn’t exist. It’s about building a center group that, collectively, can handle top-line matchups, transition play at speed and give offensive support for your best winger.

That likely means multiple moves, not one.

With Panarin as the offensive focal point, the expectation changes. To evolve offensively, the Kings need faster puck movement, more direct attacks into the middle of the ice and more players willing to play at Panarin’s tempo because right now, the offense can still be contained by structure.

That has to change.

No player feels Kopitar’s departure more directly than Quinton Byfield.

For years, Byfield’s development could happen with some protection around it. That cushion is gone, Kopitar’s retirement changes the expectation, they need him to become a foundational center.

That is both an opportunity and a danger. Byfield has the size, skating, reach, and playmaking instincts to become the post-Kopitar answer, but replacing Kopitar’s minutes is not just about offense. It is about defensive reads, faceoffs, puck support below the dots, late-game responsibility, and handling matchups against top players every night. The Kings cannot simply hand him Kopitar’s job and assume maturity will take care of the rest. They have to build a plan around him: surround him with finishers, define his defensive responsibilities, and live with some mistakes without letting those mistakes define him.

There is also a Panarin layer to this. As I mentioned at the time for the trade, Byfield was the top candidate to play with Panarin, thanks to his strong north-south game that complements Panarin’s east-west style. Panarin benefits from a partner who can keep up, retrieve pucks, attack the middle, and finish quickly. The Kings want Byfield to develop his own strengths – becoming faster, more assertive, and central to the team – rather than copying Kopitar.

As critical as the center position is, the more transformational area of need is on defense.

For years, the Kings have leaned on structure, patience and defensive reliability as the backbone of their identity. That formula helped keep them competitive. It gave them a floor and allowed them to survive nights when the offense wasn’t there and drag games into the kind of low-event, margin-thin territory they were comfortable playing.

But this season exposed the limits of that identity.

The Kings were structured, but not dynamic enough; responsible, but not dangerous enough. Deep in certain areas but not balanced in the ways that matter most in the modern NHL and nowhere is that more obvious than on the blue line.

This off-season cannot be viewed only through the lens of how the Kings replace lost leadership and minutes down the middle. Those are real questions, but the bigger roster-building issue is defense. The Kings need to take a hard look at their defensive depth chart and ask whether it is built to win in today’s league – not just survive it.

The Kings have NHL defensemen, that is not the issue. The issue is whether they have enough of the right kind of defensemen. Too often this season, the blueline was functional without being forceful. It defended in layers, protected the middle and generally played within the system but it did not consistently change games. It did not produce enough offense from the backend, did not create enough second-wave pressure and did not make opponents respect the point as a legitimate scoring threat often enough.

In today’s NHL, defensemen cannot simply retrieve, reverse and survive, they must extend possessions. They must get pucks through traffic, activate into space and create pressure instead of simply keeping plays alive. For the Kings, that element was too inconsistent. When the forwards were already struggling to get inside, the lack of meaningful offense from the defense made the attack easier to contain. With only one puck-moving threat on defense in Brandt Clarke, at least one more offensive-minded defender has to be added to the mix.

Holland has deferred on his decision on who will coach next season, so it’s difficult to project if they will transition the organizational approach. Under DJ Smith, there were signs of a team trying to open up – trying to play faster, trying to generate more offense.

But the commitment never fully stuck.

Too often, under pressure, the Kings reverted to old habits: conservative play, perimeter offense, risk avoidance. That’s not going to work anymore, it doesn’t mean abandoning structure, it means evolving it.

During last off-season, Holland chose not to make any major moves, instead following his typical approach of strengthening the roster with experienced players. He brought in Corey Perry and Joel Armia to bolster the forward group, while Cody Ceci and Brian Dumoulin were added to the defense. Despite these veteran acquisitions, the Kings ended the season exactly five points shy of the Pacific Division title, mirroring their previous campaign’s results.

However, the team experienced noticeable regression in several areas – including overall standings points, goal differential, and performance on special teams. A key factor in this decline was the underperformance of the two veteran defensemen, Ceci and Dumoulin, who did not meet expectations in their first season with Los Angeles. Their struggles contributed to the team’s challenges and highlighted the need for more impactful defensive play.

The overall team regression makes this off-season not a tweak-the-edges off-season, it has to be foundational.

The Kings aren’t rebuilding. They have talent, including Panarin, Kevin Fiala and Adrian Kempe, all potential 30-goal scorers among their forwards. With Kopitar gone, the team must redefine its identity. While Panarin offers game-changing ability, one player alone can’t shape the team’s character.

That identity must be built with decisiveness and a sense of urgency. This off-season isn’t about getting back to where they were, it’s about deciding what they’re going to become.