Not sure the chances of the Oilers letting Bjugstad go are very high. Would love to have him if he tests though.

All in all I like it though. I’m hoping Kupari and Kaliyev can both get looks in the top 9 this season.

Oilers have no space to sign Bjugstad unless they jettison someone like Yamamoto (which they might be happy to do, who knows). They have a huge cap crunch and Bouchard needs a LARGE raise. There's the chance that Bjugstad takes a discount to stay with a really good team like Edmonton though.

We'll see what happens. Blake literally can't be done making moves. We'll see who it ends up being. Arvidsson? Iafallo? Durzi? Lizotte? Roy? Who knows. I know who I'd trade in that group, but I got no say in it haha.

Blake has already said that they plan to develop Byfield as a center. Regardless of what Hoven says, I don't think he plays a single game at LW next season.

If any winger is going to get traded it's Arvidsson. They have more depth at RW with Kaliyev and Vilardi both looking for top nine roles. If Byfield moves back to center and after they trade Iafallo, the Kings are short a top 9 LW.

Iafallo-Kopitar-Kempe
Moore-Danault-Kaliyev
Fiala-Byfield-Vilardi

There's your top 9.

Kupari and Lizotte are fighting for the 4C spot. Kupari is going to have the edge since his contract will be less expensive and he's younger with a higher ceiling. Grundstrom and JAD are fighting over 4LD. Same argument for JAD over Grundstrom since he'll make less money. 4RW likely goes to ****emo, unless he beats out Kaliyev in training camp (unlikely).

Defense is a bit more complicated because it depends on what the Kings decide to do at 3LD. There's not a lot of money available. Bjornfot is now waiver eligible, so they might want to give him the job out of camp. He and Roy looked really good together back during Toby's rookie season. He only had a setback when paired with Durzi (just like everyone else when paired with Durzi). I suspect we'll see Bjornfot-Roy and Gavrikov-Spence/Clarke. If the Kings acquire a guy like Mikkola, then Bjornfot will be the #7.

I don't think Korpisalo is coming back.

To start, the whole idea of my post was to try to think from a different perspective. I tend to agree with most of what you wrote, but there's no fun in just re-hashing the same stuff over and over again.



I 100% believe the long-term plan is to still develop Byfield as a center, but I think there's merit to continuing (or at least starting) Byfield on the left. That line was definitively the best line the Kings had post trade deadline. Playing him with 1st line minutes against top-line opponents even for a bit longer could be very beneficial to his long-term development. And there's never anything bad with being on a same line as the guy the team eventually wants you to replace.



Agree with Kupari over Lizotte, regardless of how the rest of the roster turns out. Grundstrom and JAD is a coin flip to me. I went with Grundstrom because he's a more physical player, a quality the Kings have lacked.



Putting the Mayor aside, cuz I agree he's more of a blow-hard who just happens to have Kings connections, even Zach Dooley and Jesse Cohen are on record (their latest ATKM podcast) saying it's almost certain Gavrikov starts with Roy again. I trust them. So I wanted to look at possibilities of keeping a shut-down type partner with Spence or Clarke. I'm fine with Bjornfot getting that spot and swapping against teams like New Jersey that aren't known for gooning it up. But against a team like Vegas, when the players are bigger and stronger trying to get to the front of the net, I think Mikkola could be a good add for PK/netfront presence on the third pair.



Meh. Any 2mil goaltender then. In my space, I even have enough cap to offer 2.8mil-ish.

Arvidsson and Durzi probably are the two for sure, if they dump anyone that is. I love Arvy, but team control matters when facing a cap crunch, and I don’t like keeping him to lose him for nothing if it means trading Iafallo.

I only think we see Gavrikov-Roy if the Kings acquire another defensive LHD. If our options for the 3rd pair are Durzi, Spence, Clarke, and Bjornfot, that's a recipe for disaster defensively. While I expect good things out of Bjornfot in the long term, he's not ready to cover the defensive mistakes of Spence and Clarke, just like he wasn't ready to do so for Durzi in 2021-22. I'm not saying Mikkola is a bad choice, but he needs to choose to sign here, and there's going to be a bunch of other teams competing for his services that probably have more available cap space to spend on him.