In anticipation of NHL teams needing to provide ‘opening night rosters’ to the NHL office on Monday afternoon, Mayor’s Manor has confirmed the LA Kings have made their final decisions regarding the 26 players they currently have in training camp.
The two key pieces of news here center on forward Sammy Fagemo headed to waivers later this morning (for the purpose of assigning him to AHL Ontario) and what will happen on defense. Caleb Jones will stay up with the club. While this may not have been the original plan over the summer, it was necessitated (or perhaps spurred on) by the recent injury to Drew Doughty.
With a long road trip ahead of them and the absence of LA’s best blueliner, management wants to open the season with a full squad of eight defensemen to provide coach Jim Hiller as many options as possible.
As noted previously, although Jones is a left shot, he has played both sides at the NHL level in recent years. Standing 6-foot-1, the 27-year-old rearguard has largely been in the NHL for six years now, including suiting up for 25 games with the Avalanche last season.
Fagemo was originally selected by Los Angeles in the second round of the 2019 NHL Draft. Despite scoring 43 goals in 50 AHL games last season, he once again finds himself squeezed out of a roster spot at the NHL level. He’s played a handful of games for the Kings each of the past three seasons, yet hasn’t found his niche in those limited appearances. Last year, he faced a similar situation coming out of training camp and was claimed by the Nashville Predators, only to eventually end up on waivers again and was reclaimed by Los Angeles.
In addition to placing Fagemo on waivers, the Kings will also place goaltender Pheonix Copley and forward Jack Studnicka on waivers (again, with the intention of then assigning them to AHL Ontario).
It should be noted that even with these decisions in place, the Kings will still most likely be making a few other temporary roster moves just to get camp compliant for tomorrow. Then, everything will settle into place before opening night on Wednesday.
When all is said and done before Thursday, the LA Kings roster should look like:
Laferriere – Kopitar – Kempe
Jeannot – Danault – Moore
Fiala – Byfield – Foegele
Lee – Turcotte – Lewis
Thomas
Anderson – Spence
Gavrikov – Burroughs
Edmundson – Clarke
Englund – Jones
Rittich
Kuemper
There will just be some cap gymnastics to get there over the next 72 hours. For example, forward Andre Lee (who does not require waivers) will need to temporarily be loaned to Ontario.
We provided more detail on how this will all work in the article below.
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