When a prolific player is rumored to be available, it’s only natural to wonder if there’s a fit with the local team. Earlier today, Elliotte Friedman reported that the New York Rangers are considering a roster shake-up, and winger Chris Kreider was among the names mentioned.
For the Los Angeles Kings, a scorer like Kreider is a need, but when you consider his salary, handedness (Kreider shoots left) and the likely acquisition cost in terms of assets, LA is removed from the list of serious suitors.
First, the most obvious roadblock is salary. Kreider’s AAV for this season and the next two is $6.5 million. Putting future seasons aside, the Kings lack the short-term cap space to fit the winger in. With Drew Doughty on long-term injured reserve, the Kings currently have roughly $9 million in cap space. They will need every penny of that when Doughty eventually returns. Vegas-like cap gymnastics are not an option for LA, as Doughty is due back in a month or so. That means the Kings would have to send significant salary back to the New York Rangers to make any deal for Kreider feasible. In those situations, highly valued future assets like draft picks and young players would also need to be included.
Even if the Kings were hypothetically willing to include Jordan Spence and a high draft choice, finding players that the Rangers would take to make the money work is a challenge. Darcy Kuemper and his hefty contract would not appeal to New York. Vladislav Gavrikov might, but he’s a pending UFA, and the Kings desperately need him in the short-term. Would Trevor Moore be enticing? If so, the Kings would still likely have to add.
The most interesting name is Kevin Fiala, who is under contract for four more years after this one at $7.875 million per season. The highly skilled winger has had a turbulent tenure in Los Angeles, finding himself in both the penthouse and doghouse at different points. He has also never found a long-term fit in the Kings lineup, regularly bouncing around all four forward lines in the last three seasons.
It’s not a crazy assumption that the Rangers would be interested in the polarizing winger, but would a Fiala-Kreider swap make the Kings a better team? Fiala is the younger, more dynamic offensive player, but Kreider is no slouch himself, scoring 52 goals three seasons ago. Kreider also feels like more of a “Kings-type player”, willingly crashing the net and sticking to a straight-line approach to offense in general. At the end of the day, losing a player like Fiala would likely do more harm than good for a team that struggles to create offense, even if he is currently struggling. Fiala’s ceiling is higher than Kreider’s, who at age 33, has likely already experienced the best season of his NHL career in 2021-22. The 28-year-old Fiala should have another level to his game.
The Kings' ideal situation would be to add a scorer without removing another one from the lineup. In this current build, LA simply cannot make significant improvements to the team via big-money external acquisitions. For the time being, any and all meaningful progress will have to come internally.