-
Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
Los Angeles Kings goalie Cam Talbot wanted to earn his new teammates’ trust.
It was a late October game against the Arizona Coyotes. Talbot had replaced Pheonix Copley, who gave up three goals on six shots after just eight minutes in the first period. Talbot then let in a goal on the first shot that he faced.
Back in the dressing room, Talbot spoke to the team. “I told the guys that’s all that’s going to get by me. Just play our game and we’re going to have a chance to come back here,” he said.
Talbot was a man of his word, stopping all 17 shots he faced in the next 40 minutes to enable a three-goal, third-period rally in the Kings’ 5-4 victory.
“That shows the character, experience and resiliency in this group,” he said.
It also shows what competent goaltending can do for the Los Angeles Kings.
The Kings have a deep roster filled with impact veterans and dynamic younger players. Analytically, they were one of the best defensive teams in the NHL last season. They are a Stanley Cup contender out of the Western Conference — provided that trust in their goaltending is rewarded.
There’s Talbot, a 36-year-old playing for his sixth team in six seasons. They have Copley, 32, who played 37 games in a breakout season with Los Angeles. Down a level in the AHL they have 31-year-old David Rittich, a journeyman who last played for the Winnipeg Jets.
The group’s defining characteristic might be its cap number: $3.375 million combined this season. If “Goaltender” was a single player on the Kings’ roster, it would have the 11th highest cap hit on the team.
The Kings are not the first team to try and win with an outstanding group of skaters in front of spendthrift goaltending. They are, however, one of the first to attempt it after the Vegas Golden Knights provided proof of concept last season.
“And they certainly made it work,” Kings general manager Rob Blake said with a laugh, having watched the Golden Knights win the Stanley Cup using five goalies in the regular season and two during their playoff run.
“I think depth-wise, you’re starting to see a lot of teams making sure they have some kind of NHL experienced depth,” Blake said. “The workload, the travel, the injuries, the way the game is now. There are different needs for goalies. It really paid off with Vegas last year. The depth of their organization helped.”
That it did. The Knights were preparing to have Robin Lehner as their starter last season, but offseason surgery caused him to miss the entire 2022-23 campaign. Vegas ended up winning the Cup thanks to the best month of hockey in Adin Hill‘s life, after acquiring him for a fourth-round pick in August 2022.
“The Kings are trying to do the Vegas thing,” one prominent goaltending expert said. “But the thing to remember about the Vegas thing was that it wasn’t the guy who was No. 1 or 2 on the depth chart that ended up being ‘the guy.'”
Do the Kings have “the guy” in either Copley or Talbot?
ANZE KOPITAR’S NAME has been etched on the Stanley Cup twice, in 2012 and in 2014. The Kings haven’t won a playoff round since then, but have been on the cusp of Cup contention over the last few seasons.
Unfortunately, they were unceremoniously eliminated by Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers in consecutive postseasons.
“Obviously, getting bounced in the first round is not what we want, but I feel like we’re taking steps in the right direction,” Kopitar said.
Blake was hired as general manager in 2017. He had Kopitar and star defenseman Drew Doughty as his foundation. He had one of the most highly rated prospect pools in the NHL ripening on the vine. For the last few seasons, he’s added established veterans to augment that roster: Center Phillip Danault, forward Viktor Arvidsson, winger Kevin Fiala and then, last offseason, center Pierre-Luc Dubois, whose eight-year contract extension essentially makes the 25-year-old center Kopitar’s successor in the middle.
“I think we’re actually in a really good spot. The pieces are kind of falling in place,” Kopitar said. “Adding a few players this year again, I like the way our team looks. We’re all excited.”
But there’s one significant difference between Kopitar’s previous Cup-winning Kings teams and this incarnation, and that’s goaltending. Jonathan Quick won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP in 2012. He followed that in 2014 with a .946 save percentage and a 1.41 goals-against average.
Quick played his last season with the Kings in 2022-23. They traded him at the deadline, and Quick eventually earned a third Stanley Cup ring as one of the Golden Knights’ many goaltending options.
Quick was one of four goalies the Kings used last season, along with Copley; trade deadline pickup Joonas Korpisalo, who signed with the Ottawa Senators; and Cal Petersen, whom Blake signed to a three-year deal in 2021 as a potential solution in goal for the Kings — which he was not, as the Kings dumped the last two years of his contract onto the Philadelphia Flyers as part of the Ivan Provorov trade last summer.
“I think depth-wise, having three of them was important, which we found out last year,” he said. “We want guys that were capable and experienced in the NHL. It paid off last year. I thought Pheonix came in and stabilized that position.”
Copley was a revelation for the Kings. After limited stints with the St. Louis Blues and Washington Capitals, he grabbed the crease and went 24-6-3 in 37 games for Los Angeles with a .903 save percentage and a 2.64 goals-against average. But he managed only 4.7 goals saved above expected according to Money Puck, indicating that it was the team in front of him that was the key to success more than his own play.
Blake extended him in Feb. 2023, bringing Copley back as part of the team’s 2023-24 goalie mix. As the offseason started, the Kings’ attention turned to other goalie options to add to Copley — or at least ones they could afford.
“We obviously had limitations after some of the moves in the summer,” Blake said. “We knew we’d be tight cap-wise for any real prominent moves. When we did the Dubois deal, that tightened it up even more.”
Dubois was acquired and extended before the start of free agency. On July 1, the Kings inked Talbot to a one-year deal. Blake said the ability to structure that deal with performance bonus money — Talbot makes $1 million if he plays 10 games — enabled them to fit him under the cap.
“The mixture of familiarity, the cap situation and just the experience of Cam himself kind of fit that role when we went to free agency,” Blake said.
Talbot said the Kings’ proximity to a championship was one enticement to sign. Another was a reunion with coach Todd McLellan.
“I played for him for four years in Edmonton, I have some of my best seasons under him,” Talbot said. “I know what I’m going to get from him and he knows what he’s going to get from me.”
But the chance to play was also paramount for Talbot. The idea he would be “competing for starts” with Copley, instead of warming the bench behind an established starter.
“A lot of the other jobs out there this summer were strictly backup roles,” he said. “I’m a competitive guy and I’m not ready to give up that part yet.”
It’s not the first time Talbot has had to share the crease and compete for starts. He did so in Minnesota with Marc-Andre Fleury. But when Fleury was given a contract extension, Talbot was reportedly unhappy with the implications for him. So the Wild shipped him to Ottawa for goalie Filip Gustavsson, in what now is considered a lopsided deal with Minnesota.
Talbot then shared the crease with Anton Forsberg with the Senators, going 17-14-2 in 36 games with an .898 save percentage. He’s used to this setup.
“At this point in my career I don’t think I can play 73 games anymore. I don’t think anyone can,” he said. “We’re all competitive beasts. We all want to be the guy that takes the net every single night. But it’s been proven that the 1-A, 1-B setup is beneficial come playoff time.”
Although playoff time is months away. And a lot can happen before playoff time.
“There’s a deadline deal to be made there,” one NHL goaltending expert said of Los Angeles. “The team in front of them was defensively as good any in the league last year. Their environment makes it easier to step into that team.”
THE FORMULA FOR the Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup win was a simple one: Hope for competent goaltending in back of a formidable team. Vegas led the playoffs with a goals-for percentage of 66.7% at 5-on-5. Hill was better than competent, leading the playoffs with a .932 save percentage and pitching two shutouts.
The Kings were the second best team last season in expected goals against at 5-on-5 (2.38). They were seventh in limiting high-danger shot attempts. Korpisalo saw his save percentage jump after being acquired by the Kings at the deadline, finding their structure to be more beneficial than what was happening in Columbus.
“With Todd’s system, we’re not a real ‘chance-y’ team. So a goalie can have success in Todd’s system,” Blake said.
Both McLellan and Blake said there’s room for improvement defensively, especially at the net front for the Kings. But they’ve played well defensively based on the underlying numbers. The goaltenders have yet to hold up their end of the bargain this season.
According to ESPN Stats & Info, the Kings rank fourth in shots allowed per game, at 27.6. However, they are 26th in goals allowed per game (3.50) and have the league’s third-lowest team save percentage at .873, which is better than only the Oilers (.867) and Hurricanes (.850). According to Stathletes, the Kings are 31st out of 32 teams in goals saved above expected at minus-6.42, ahead of only the Hurricanes (minus-8.09), who have gotten unusually mediocre goaltending early on.
If Talbot and Copley aren’t the solution, it’ll be Bill Ranford’s job to help find one.
Ranford played 15 years in the NHL with five teams before retiring in 2000. He served as the Kings’ goaltending coach for 17 years.
Ranford told the Kings early last season that it would be his last as a day-to-day goalie coach. From that moment, Blake knew there would be a transformation for his team. The trend in the NHL has been to create goaltending departments inside of hockey operations. In conversations with Ranford about his future, Blake asked if he could direct the Kings’ goaltending department.
Ranford was named the Kings’ Director of Goaltending. Mike Buckley, who was with the Pittsburgh Penguins organization from 2013-21, was moved in as the team’s goaltending coach.
“Where we are at our stage and trying to win now in the playoffs and get some momentum going, we felt that experience in that position with new goalies coming in would be important,” Blake said. “So Buckley fit that.”
Part of Ranford’s duties will be to lead the team’s goalie scouting. Beyond this season, that means focusing on finding younger goalies that the Kings can seek to acquire through the draft or free agency.
“We don’t have a real long-term solution. The trade for Erik Portillo last year got us a goalie in that kind of age range,” Blake said. Portillo, a 23-year-old who played at the University of Michigan, was acquired from the Buffalo Sabres and is currently playing in the AHL.
But there are also short-term options that the Kings could explore if the current goaltending collective doesn’t click.
Blake wouldn’t rule out another deadline deal for the Kings to bolster their goaltending. “We need stable goaltending for us to be competitive. So we’re gonna let this play out and see how things go,” he said.
They could go back to the drawing board. Then again, as the Golden Knights showed last season, a good month of goaltending behind an outstanding team means they could go all the way.