The Los Angeles Kings have depleted their once-great prospect pool a lot over the last three years.
Be it not developing players or trading them away, the Kings' pool is not the envy of the league as it once was.
Despite that, THN's Tony Ferrari is still fairly high on their prospects.
Ferrari's most recent prospect pool overview highlighted the Kings and some of their top prospects.
As expected, Quinton Byfield and Brandt Clarke headlined for LA.
Byfield, coming off his breakout,.55 point season and signing his new contract, looks like a potential cornerstone piece.
While Clarke's consistent production, which has bordered on historic in both the OHL and AHL over the last two seasons, is a good sign for the young defensemen.
Clarke feels like the true prospect among the two. With almost 200 NHL games under his belt, Byfield has probably graduated beyond prospect.
Clarke has not. Clarke's still yet to establish himself in the NHL but should have that chance this season.
There's work to be done, he'll never be an amazing skater and will have his quirks, but if he keeps producing as he has, who cares.
Samuel Helenius and Francesco Pinelli were two interesting names Ferrari brought up.
Helenius is easy to dream on as a future 4C, penalty killer but has a lot of work today before he's up to NHL pace.
Pinelli has some high-end vision and puck skills but still needs to get used to pro pace, something Ferrari and Pinelli himself has touched on.
Pinelli also is still working on playing more between the hashmarks and not playing so much on the perimeter.
Koehn Ziemmer also got a shout-out, although it's less positive than some others are on Ziemmer.
Question marks about his skating are very fair, but I'd argue there's more scoring upside than just a depth/bottom-six player if Ziemmer improves his skating.
There two positive sections about defensemen Jakub Dvorak and Kirill Kirsanov too.
Ferrari appears higher on Dvorak's mobility than some which is a big positive for LA if he's right.
Kirsanov is such a hard player to judge in the KHL, but he seems to be developing well over their per Ferrari.
He was also high on LA's 2024 class, particularly Liam Greentree. Saying he could have been in top-10 conversations had his skating been better.
You can say similar things about a lot of players, but getting a player with potential top-10 skill at 26 is a big plus.
The Kings reloaded their prospect pool a bit this summer and it's a nice reminder they still have some good pieces in the cupboard.