Core veterans keep rebuilding Kings in playoff hunt

There were not many expectations for the Los Angeles Kings at the start of the 2021-22 season. They made the playoffs just twice in the past seven years, had not won a playoff series since their 2014 Stanley Cup win, and had the fourth-worst points percentage over the past three seasons, ahead of only Detroit, Ottawa, and Buffalo. Not exactly the company you want to be keeping in the NHL these days.

Despite that lack of recent success and sudden fall from their brief run at the top of the NHL nearly a decade ago, there has still been a lot of reason for optimism with this team thanks to what has been regarded as one of the league’s best prospect pools and farm systems led by Quinton Byfield, Alex Turcotte, and Arthur Kaliyev. But entering play on Monday the Kings actually find themselves in a playoff position in the Western Conference nearing the halfway point of the season and are right in the thick of the playoff race.

It is not the young prospects and next wave of talent that has kept them in it, either. It is the remaining veteran core players (and a couple of new additions) that are making this season interesting.

The Kings are in a strange spot here because even though they are what you might consider a “rebuilding” team, they are not exactly a young team. Their average has them right in the middle of the pack across the league, while only one of their top-10 scorers is under the age of 25 (the 20-year-old Kaliyev, who is 10th on the team in scoring).

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Leading the way, again, is franchise icon Anze Kopitar. He has been one of the league’s great two-way players for more than a decade now and was the centerpiece of those two Stanley Cup winning teams in 2012 and 2014. Even now at age 34 he is showing he can still be the best player on the ice, scoring at a top-line rate and driving possession the way he always has throughout his career. While his offense has taken a step back,…