Man, what a strange 41 games.

Probably as strange as I can recall in my time covering the team here. The Kings have most certainly underachieved over this stretch, that much is clear. In other seasons, that would’ve put them in a very precarious position. This season, though, has been bizarre and despite so many things going wrong as the calendar flips to January, here the Kings sit, two points out of the Pacific Division lead.

The stats, numbers and storylines below do not include yesterday’s game against San Jose, they are through 41 games, reflecting more of a true halfway point of the season. Probably not a ton of surprises here. The things the Kings have been good at, they’ve been good at. The things they havent been good at, they haven’t been good at. More black and white than past seasons. A look into those areas below.

3 Up
Defensive Identity
What have the LA Kings done as well as any team in the NHL?

Keep the puck out of their net.

The Colorado Avalanche lead the NHL in goals against per game. That is unsurprising because, well, they lead the NHL in everything. In second place, though? The Los Angeles Kings. Through 41 games, the Kings allowed 2.63 goals per-game this season, the second best clip in the league. When you break it down to 5-on-5 play exclusively, the Kings are still second but are nearly level with Colorado, having allowed 63 goals compared to 61 for the Avalanche.

It’s easy to focus on the things that the Kings don’t do well. But for all of that, no matter how challenging certain stretches of the season have been, this is a team that has kept the puck out of its net at a terrific clip. The numbers are very, very close to what they produced last season over 82 games, coming in just a touch higher on both fronts this time around.

Goals Against Per/60: 5-on-5 / All Strengths
2025-26: 1.92 / 2.58
2024-25: 1.86 / 2.45

The Kings have leaned into that defensive identity, perhaps to a fault at times. If they were shipping out goals left and right, okay, but they have certainly done a good job of limiting what goes into their net. That’s a huge plus as we cross the halfway mark of the season.

The Kuemperor’s Same Groove
Per Natural Stat Trick, just six goaltenders have more than 10 goals saved above average in 5-on-5 situations. One of those six is Kings netminder Darcy Kuemper.

Per SportLOGIQ, just seven goaltenders have more than 16 goals saved above expectation in 5-on-5 situations. Kuemper is also one of the seven.

Only four goaltenders appear on both lists, meaning that for two metrics that quantify these types of things with clearly different parameters, Kuemper has come out as one of the league’s best, regardless of which approach you take.

By the conventional numbers, Kuemper ranks inside the NHL’s Top-5 among goaltenders with at least 20 appearances in both goals-against average and save percentage. Kuemper was thought of by Hockey Canada’s brass as a Top-3 Canadian goaltender, as he was selected to represent Team Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan. A top honor, for a player who was likely not even on the radar 24 months ago. Just speaks to how good Kuemper has been in the 1.5 seasons he’s been a member of the Kings.

What I think makes some of his numbers that much better is that he does play on such a strong defensive team. The goals against average and save percentage ones, if you were so inclined, you could say they’re a product of a team or a system. The saved above average numbers would tell a different story.

In using the same numbers as above, per SportLOGIQ, Kuemper has faced the 23rd most expected goals but is seventh in goals saved above expected. Means he has fewer chances to make those high-quality saves but has made them anyways. With Natural Stat Trick, he’s 25th in expected goals against and fourth in goals saved above average. It almost sounds counterintuitive, but I think that often times, the biggest “saved above” numbers come from good goals on porous defensive teams. Kuemper has them on a very solid defensive team.

That’s a ton of numbers to say that Darcy Kuemper has been really, really good.

Big Goal Joel & The Shorthanded Bandits
If you’re ever starting a band and need a name, you’re welcome.

Has there been a more positive story this season with the Kings than Joel Armia? He was an extremely under the radar signing on July 1. Obviously that’s true around the NHL, for sure, but even with the Kings, almost all of the focus went elsewhere. Bang for their buck, he has to be one of the best value contracts given out in the league this summer.

Armia leads the NHL with four shorthanded goals at the halfway mark of the season and the Kings lead the league in total with seven. If you want to know just how big of a difference Armia has made in that area, the Kings had four shorthanded goals all of last season. Armia has matched that by himself in half a season and the Kings have nearly double their total from a season ago as a team. That’s quite the impact.

It’s not as if he’s been run and gun, either. Armia leads all Kings forwards in goals against per/60 on the penalty kill this season. Among players around the NHL with at least 50 shorthanded minutes, Armia ranks 23rd of the 117 players who qualify. When you factor that in with what he’s delivered with the other way, Armia leads the league in goals for per/60 and goal share while on the ice.

All of that from a player who the Kings were able to sign for a modest AAV of $2,500,000 for this and next season. Armia is on pace for a career-best 18 goals and on a team that has struggled for offense, he’s buried a few important ones and ranks tied for fourth in total goals this season. Good stuff for Armia.

While he is currently day-to-day with an upper-body injury, Armia was selected to represent Team Finland at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, just another honor for the player he’s been this season.

3 Down
Wins
Pretty simple here.

The Kings did sit in a playoff spot through 41 games and there is something to be said for that. However, among playoff teams through 41 games, only the Vegas Golden Knights have fewer victories.

If you look at the schedule, no team has played more close games than the Kings. Within that, though, no team has lost more one-goal games than the Kings. The Kings have five one-goal losses in regulation and nine losses in either overtime or the shootout. Only Vegas has more than the Kings in overtime/shootout losses and total one-goal losses.

The Kings are four games above .500 as we hit the 41-game mark. While they remain competitive in the Pacific Division, the Kings were on pace for only 90 points, which is not a playoff pace in most seasons. Thus far, competing in the weakest division in the NHL, the Kings are in a perfectly fine spot. But with so many teams, the Kings included, operating below pace, they’ll likely need to improve upon their totals in just about every area in order to qualify for the postseason when all is said and done.

I think what’s really been disappointing is the opportunity that was there for the Kings, considering the early-season struggles for Vegas and Edmonton. If the Kings could’ve played up to par early, they’d have been in a very strong position to perhaps win the Pacific. That they are so close to that spot now, considering how things have gone, really goes to show where they could be if they took care of business earlier.

Since the NHL’s holiday break, they’ve certainly owned where they’re at and the team is starting to play better. However, playing better and winning games are different things. Lots of room to improve come the second half.

Scoring Slumps
There are a lot of different ways to communicate that the Kings haven’t scored enough goals this season. The easy way to put it is that the Kings ranked 30th in the NHL in total goals scored and 28th in goals scored per-game at the halfway mark.

I thought about it from another direction though and it really drove the point home of why things haven’t gone according to plan. The Kings don’t have superstar players. Their top offensive threats – Adrian Kempe and Kevin Fiala – are relatively consistent and don’t factor in here. Neither do Alex Laferriere or Joel Armia, who have each scored consistently enough through 41 games.

However, looking at the rest of the Kings forwards, there are a combined 12 streaks of 10+ games without a goal.

Kopitar – 12, 10
Byfield – 17
Foegele – 12
Moore – 16
Kuzmenko – 11
Turcotte – 13, 22
Perry – 21
Danault – 30
Malott – 13
Helenius – 12

That’s staggering. 10 different forwards have gone at least 10 games without scoring a goal, including two stretches of 10+ for two different players. All four centers, including Phillip Danault, had at least one stretch of 10+ games, including Danault going 0-for-30 in his time with the Kings.

The story that tells is that if you want to point to Player A or Player B not producing enough, you’d have missed the problem. The Kings can’t rely on Player A and Player B alone. Need the collective. Over the last few games, Byfield, Foegele, Kuzmenko, Perry, Turcotte, Malott and Helenius have all scored. So that’s good. But in order to really get things going in the right direction, the list can’t look anything like this over the second half of the season.

Power Play Struggles
When you don’t score enough goals, the first place to look is the power play.

This section is certainly not about the five games coming out of the NHL’s holiday break, when the Kings scored five power-play goals, ranking fourth in the NHL at 35.7 percent. However, for the season as a whole at the halfway mark, that hasn’t made much of a dent, as the Kings still rank 27th at 16.3 percent.

The Kings began the season with five forwards on the top unit and persisted with that look for longer than they should have, considering the production. I understood it at first, coming off the success they found late last season, but they took longer than they should have to make changes. They worked through several different iterations of PP1 and PP2 with different personnel, different strategies, but no changes seemed to make a positive impact. Actually seemed to get worse the more things changed.

They’ve taken a less conventional approach as of late, splitting up Kempe and Fiala onto different units. The division of resources has led to the most productive stretch of the season thus far. That’s been great. Five games, though, isn’t enough to swing the Kings out of the trending down section. 20 games of continued success probably does it in the three-quarters article. But for now, in evaluating what we have seen as a whole, the Kings have been one of the NHL’s worst teams on the power play this season.

So that’s 41 games. For an additional half-season recap, embedded below is a conversation with John Kelly and Jim Fox, talking about the first half season as a whole.

As you probably saw earlier today, the Kings made a pair of roster moves involving forward Cole Guttman, who was recalled from the AHL, while forward Trevor Moore was placed on injured reserve. Will have more on that in tomorrow’s game preview in Winnipeg.