Credit: Griffin Hooper-Imagn ImagesSAN DIEGO, CA — Fool me once, fool me twice, but fool me three times? The Los Angeles Kings Duos series has been building toward this. Part I found the crease in qualified good standing. Part II found the wing as the organization's strongest positional hand. Part III arrives at the position this series has been orbiting since the opening installment, the one that every honest analyst of this team eventually has to sit down with and account for. The defense.
As the league has rapidly changed towards mobility and getting the puck up the ice, spending more time in the offensive zone, the Kings still stand in the mire. They have changed the jockey in the offseason that commands the pace and direction of their blueline, certainly, but not the horses that carry the weight. Without seeing this played out as a disclaimer, it is within good reason to speculate on a vastly similar personnel structure to last season’s dismay.
In respect to the series direction, this is focused on duos. Brandt Clarke and Drew Doughty are the Kings' top two defensemen and that sentence carries more weight than it might appear on the surface, and not entirely for good reasons.
Start with Clarke, because the honest accounting of this duo begins with one of the more encouraging individual stories on the roster. He is 23 years old, locked up for five more seasons at $7.4 million per year, and coming off a season in which he posted 40 points while accounting for 64.2% of the blue line's primary assists at even strength, 18 of the team's 28. In a season where this defensive corps functionally offered nothing offensively, Clarke's 18 primary helpers ranked 8th in the league among defensemen with 1,000 or more even-strength minutes. His GF% of 60.19% ranked 11th among the same group. He is not just the best defenseman on this roster, but rather he is on the rise to become one of the better offensive defensemen in the Western Conference, stylistically modeled after Erik Karlsson in a defensive group that has never particularly valued that style until now.
Doughty is the other half of this duo, and the conversation about him requires the same honesty brought to Artemi Panarin in Part II. This is clear cut future Hall of Famer. A two-time Stanley Cup champion and Norris Trophy winner who spent the better part of a decade as one of the top two or three defensemen in the league. The resume is not in question, but what is in question is whether he remains a legitimate top-pair defenseman in 2026-27, and the evidence suggests, softly but clearly, that the answer is no.
He is falling into the category of the second pair. His point-per-game since 2023-24 is a headscratcher on the surface. After a 50 point season in which he tallied 15 goals, the player dissipated production wise. The next season he only suited up for 30 games, tallying six less points than the most recent season in which he played 42 more games. A lot of that production dip was because he was removed from the first unit of the powerplay last season, a signal from management that carries more meaning than it would have three years ago. He is soon to be 37 and his speed has taken a recognizable hit. Ken Holland has been non-committal about an extension beyond this season, a departure from the organizational loyalty that extended Doughty's previous contract. The Doughty era is not over, but its final chapter is being written. Clarke's rise is coinciding with Doughty's graceful decline is, structurally, the most functional aspect of this defensive situation.
As a duo, the logic holds in isolation. Clarke's offensive brilliance and elite vision cover for the broader group's offensive limitations even if it is a single player with that capacity on the backend. Doughty's positioning, experience, and competitive edge in key moments offer qualities that youth cannot yet replicate. The duo aspect therein is defensible.
The problem is that nothing beneath them is.
See, this is where the honest accounting of this blue line becomes uncomfortable. Vladislav Gavrikov and Jordan Spence combined for 16 primary assists in 24-25, providing a formidable second pair when deployed correctly. Both are gone. The replacements arrived in the form of Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci, and neither has come close to matching what was lost. Jacob Moverare departed the picture as a filler to the norm, someone who could defend if not risking up ice play due to sub average mobility, a common theme on this blueline. The second and third pairs on this blue line are not just a concern. They are an active liability, particularly in a season where the defensive structure that historically sheltered everyone is potentially being dismantled under Peter Laviolette.
That last point cannot be understated. The Kings' blue line has been manageable because the system in front of the netminders has been one of the most defensively structured in the league. Laviolette's history suggests something different. An up-tempo system that asks defensemen to be offensively engaged up ice exposes exactly what this group struggles with most: puck handling in open ice, skating in transition, and the ability to recover when caught out of position. What worked in a tight defensive shell may fracture quickly under looser structural demands.
To think that the major upgrade to the blueline is to be carried but the growth of one defenseman and a new up-tempo direction that will activate five defensive defenseman is increasingly concerning when looking at the landscape of the moves or rather lack of, in the offseason. The ‘big’ splash for the Kings was essentially a swap of Moverare for Erik Gustafsson in the offseason.
Now Gustafsson is an excellent depth piece, a player who nearly averages 40 points over the course of his career, but has never played a full season in the NHL and wull turn 35 in March. As a whole, the Kings got older on the blueline and got a depth replacement if injury occurs, or if Dumoulin and Ceci struggle through critical stretches of the season.
That is the underlying fragility of this duo. Clarke has that elite potential. Doughty is finished as a true top-pair option but is still functional and still the second-best offensive contributor on this blue line by some distance. But the defensive duo cannot be evaluated in isolation on a blue line this thin beneath it. A systemic shift under a new coach may expose structural weaknesses that the previous regime spent years engineering around.
Take it as you will, but the defense is not where this series finds its most troubling entry. The Kings are going through a warm handshake as a former 1A transitions to the next, and that is a major win for the front office, while both players can play at a high level. Clarke and Doughty hold the duo together. Everything behind them asks you to trust that the new architecture holds.
The architecture, as it is right now, given the limits of the personnel, do not merit that trust.
