As the 2026 NHL Trade Deadline concluded, the Los Angeles Kings proved themselves to be neither true buyers nor sellers, bringing in two experienced forwards while simultaneously shipping out two others.
After starting their deadline transactions by sending Warren Foegele to the Ottawa Senators for draft picks, they continued making moves by trading Corey Perry to the Tampa Bay Lightning for another pick, this time a 2028 second-rounder. Later in the day, they signed forward Mathieu Joseph and traded a conditional third-round pick to the Toronto Maple Leafs for center Scott Laughton just before the deadline passed. Both of those moves reunited the players with Kings interim head coach D.J. Smith, who coached Laughton at the junior level and Joseph with the Senators.
“He’s a really good third line center, can also play third line left wing,” Kings general manager Ken Holland said. “He kills penalties, he’s greasy, he’s gritty.”
The moves highlight the balance that general manager Ken Holland is trying to strike between pushing for the playoffs while only a few points out, but simultaneously not throwing away assets for what would likely be a very difficult playoff run from a low seed.
“Coming into the deadline, what did I want to do? I wanted to try to get another pick or two for our scouts,” Holland said. “We got to continue to draft, try to get some young players in the organization. At the same time, with the win last night, I think we’re, what, three points back, four points back? We lose every tie breaker. So we need to continue to push.”
Holland’s boldest move in his time in Los Angeles came a month ago, when he traded for forward Artemi Panarin. Since then, however, the team has lost Kevin Fiala for the rest of the season, Andrei Kuzmenko for an extended period of time, and Joel Armia and Quinton Byfield to shorter-term injuries.
“I think if Fiala was healthy and Armia was healthy and Byfield was healthy, we’d be looking at our team different,” Holland said. “That’s why I did the [Panarin] deal before the deadline. We don’t have lots of key pieces. I don’t have to tell you what Armia can do, and I don’t have to tell you what Byfield can do, and what Fiala can do, or has done. So we’re trying to put the best team that we can on the ice on an every night basis.”
The contradiction of these two quotes highlights the difficulty that sometimes arises in professional sports — the desire of the players and coaches to win every game possible, and the tough choices that executives have to make that might not always lead to those results in the immediate future.
“Regardless of what happened, my job is to go in, provide structure, energy, and try and win every game possible,” Smith said shortly after the deadline. “Kenny’s done this for a long time, makes the decisions as to which way we’re going, which players are going to be here, and then my job is to coach them. So it’s good that it’s over and there’s no stress on anyone’s mind, but our goal is just to win the next game.”
Holland, meanwhile, experienced the other side of that balance, wanting to do right by his current players but also needing to set up the team to be in the best position possible in the coming seasons. Having been the architect of so many dominant winning teams during his executive career, he’s not used to being in that position.
“No player wants to sell. So these are the decisions that I have to make,” he said. “You know, was I going to trade some players away? I know what I’ve done in the past, when … you’re in buyer mode, then I would go to the captain and say, you know, ‘From your perspective, what do you think we need?’ Certainly where we are in the standings, I had to make some philosophical decisions that [Kings captain Anze Kopitar] couldn’t make.”