Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images Connor Doyle Mon, November 2, 2026 at 5:00 PM UTC · 5 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement TORRANCE, CA — Erik Gustafsson played two NHL games last season. He spent the rest of 2025-26 in Grand Rapids, where he posted 37 points in 39 AHL games for Detroit's affiliate. That ended a nine-season run as an NHL regular across eight clubs, a stretch of 226 points in 474 games without a single stop in the minors.
On paper, Gustafsson and a Los Angeles Kings team desperate for a rebound looked like a poor match, especially since he was the sole signing brought in to bolster one of the most stagnant defense corps in the league last season.
Bewildering to most, Ken Holland had already doubled down on the Kings archetype defenseman with Joel Edmundson and then padded it with Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci, all on a roster that already iced Mikey Anderson, a shutdown defenseman, and an aging stalwart in their newest captain, Drew Doughty. Brandt Clarke was the only true puck mover left from last season, a lone island in a sea of outdated archetypes after Jordan Spence's departure.
After last season's woeful results despite a caddy cornered divisional playoff gift, the Kings replaced the master and commander of their playing style and deployment with Peter Laviolette. With Gustafsson, they handed him some aging veterans, layering into the same personnel to run a new system.
Gustafsson has already quintupled his NHL games from last season. Laviolette has paired him with Clarke, and the Kings finally have a puck-moving, offensive pairing they missed for all of last season. A defenseman who spent 98 percent of last season in the AHL now plays over 20 minutes a night, at or near the top of the corps. He started the season as the seventh defenseman.
Give him his due. He is posting his highest average ice time since 2022-23, and he has seized the opportunity with aplomb. His lone goal came on the power play, a semi-breakaway born of his own skating and creativity through the breakout, something completely unimaginable for four of their defensive regulars. Beyond his lone goal thus far, he brings an element this corps simply did not have outside of Clarke.
This is not the 2018-19 Blackhawks Gustafsson who posted 60 points in 79 games, and nobody signed this version to be a top pairing defenseman, yet over his brief tenure he has become somewhat like that, someone to throw out on a powerplay unit and deploy in offensive situations.
As much as this is a hat tip to Gustafsson, it raises the obvious question: how does an AHL defenseman blitz past practically the entire Kings blue line in a month? The answer says far more about the blue line than it does about him, and about a franchise that has glossed over major holes through the Rob Blake and Holland eras, running into a wall that gets harder to climb every season .
Doughty has turned back the clock lately with multiple three-point games, passing Gustafsson in production, but a hot stretch does not change his inevitable decline, his pending next contract, or the presence of Cody Ceci, with whom the Kings have yet to win a game while dressed this season.
The pairing data makes the case on its own. Five Kings pairings have cleared 50 minutes together this season, and only one holds a positive expected goals share. You have probably already guessed it: Clarke and Gustafsson at 60.7 percent (23rd best pairing in expected goals for). Among 136 NHL pairings with 50 minutes together, Edmundson and Doughty (48.1 percent) rank 77th, Anderson and Dumoulin (44 percent) rank 99th, and Anderson and Ceci (35.3 percent) rank 125th. Every pairing outside of Clarke and Gustafsson carries more expected goals against than goals for, and Anderson's pairings with Ceci or Dumoulin sit a full goal or more underwater. It is early, but a gap between 60.7 and 35.3 percent is not noise, and no small sample caveat explains it away.
Corsi tells the same story, with shot attempts cratering the moment Gustafsson and Clarke leave the ice. The fifth and sixth defensemen are not supposed to be a team's Achilles' heel, but when the third through sixth defensemen all statistically buckle in their minutes, one has to wonder what management had in mind.
There was a time when right-shot defensemen were the most coveted commodity in this league, and the Kings still roster like that time never ended. Ceci's right shot is the strongest case for his $4.5 million, and handedness balance does matter, but it all comes down to the impact a player makes on the ice, and Ceci's impact sits 125th of 136 pairings. That outdated thinking has seemingly lived risk-free in Los Angeles until now. A $4.5 million defenseman sits in the press box while a defenseman who spent nearly all of last season in the AHL plays over him and drives more offense than as many as three of the six defensemen deployed.
It is a black eye for an organization whose gaping holes, once again, are papered over with parchment. What is happening with Gustafsson proves exactly what this roster needs: legitimate puck movers. Alexander Nikishin was the fish that fit this exact category of change, and adding a puck mover of his caliber, or anywhere close, fundamentally changes the ceiling of this wavering franchise.
If one AHL defenseman can climb to the top of this corps in a month, imagine what a true top-four puck mover would do.
For a franchise that has spent near the cap, management's capacity for change and control is dubious at best when the team rests in the cellar of the league. As much as 'the move' is as obvious as it gets, which includes a center hunt, the franchise has proven far more stubborn under Holland than expected in addressing glaring red flags.
Teams that spend to the cap are typically in their contender phase. It doesn't take a magician to prove that this is a mirage in Los Angeles.
Source: Sports
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