The NHL trade deadline has come and gone.
The Vegas Golden Knights, Edmonton Oilers, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets, Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars each made at least one significant addition, with most acquiring multiple players.
The Kings did not make a single swap.
“You look and you listen,” Kings general manager Rob Blake said. “We were never planning on taking away from the team, ever, that was never the situation.”
Blake had said as far back as Oct. 10, and as recently as last month, that the Kings were very likely to stay with the same group across the course of the season. That was in no small part due to their flooded gas tank of a salary-cap situation. They were active in paring down their organizational depth and taking on salary in an effort to add Pierre-Luc Dubois and retain Vladislav Gavrikov, two players who have performed inconsistently this season.
Overall solid fortune with injuries dissipated of late, giving way to the absences of scoring forward Adrian Kempe, sparkplug winger Viktor Arvidsson, top-pairing defenseman Mikey Anderson and fourth-line banger Carl Grundstrom. It meant that the Kings had to simplify their game (they’ve gone 3-1-1 sans Kempe) but also that some trade chatter could start given that they were short on bodies but potentially longer on cap relief.
“Injuries came into play the last couple weeks, but the timing of them, it’s going to be nice to get a couple of guys back here within a week and then the other two shortly after that,” said Blake, who anticipated Kempe and Anderson to return imminently, with Arvidsson targeting a return near March 16 and Grundstrom to follow “a couple weeks” later.
There were conflicting reports from Boston Hockey Now’s Jimmy Murphy and the Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli that indicated that the Kings were not or were the team to which Boston Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark was destined until he invoked his no-trade clause.
Blake made no mention of a potential deal for Ullmark or any other player, including former King Tyler Toffoli, who joined his junior teammate Sean Monahan among Winnipeg’s acquisitions.
Edmonton made three depth additions in former Ducks Adam Henrique and Sam Carrick as well as one-time King Troy Stecher. Colorado enriched its group with gifted forward Casey Mittelstadt and, at the cost of a first-round pick, defenseman Sean Walker, whom the Kings jettisoned in a salary dump this past summer. Dallas picked up rugged defenseman Chris Tanev and called up top prospect Logan Stankoven. Vancouver had been busy well before the deadline, snagging Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov.
Vegas was by far the biggest player at the high-stakes table, adding forward Tomas Hertl, defenseman Noah Hanifin and winger Anthony Mantha. Hanifin was the highest-value defenseman on the market and Hertl ended up being arguably the most coveted forward after Jake Guentzel fetched an underwhelming return from Carolina.
“I don’t know if there’s a difference, East or West or whatever,” Blake said of the readily apparent “arms race” in the West.
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Blake said that there had been no further in-season discussions with Arvidsson or the Kings’ even more prominent pending unrestricted free agent, defenseman Matt Roy, whom he called “a big part of our team.”
While the Kings were certainly circulating in rumors all over the Web in recent days, at the deadline itself, they stuck to the script that they had recited over and over this season, that they were going into battle with their existing group.
“We’ve said that all along. I think I met (with reporters) here a month ago, I’ve been meeting you guys a lot lately,” Blake said. “But it is, that’s the team, and, yeah.”