Kings' moves getting curiouser and curiouser

The first day of NHL free agency is a mixed bag for the Kings.

Thanks to “Alice in Wonderland” author Lewis Carroll for the inspiration for the headline to this column….

What do the L.A. Kings want to be when they grow up? And please don’t tell me the answer is “tough to play against,” which should be a given and shouldn’t have to be created or coached.

It’s tough to determine, based on the opening day of the NHL’s free agency period, just what the Kings are doing and where they’re heading. They seemed to have one foot stuck in the past and one pointed toward filling their need to become bigger, but the real question is whether they got better. The answer to that is far from clear.

The best of the moves they made on Monday figures to be signing winger Warren Foegele. Recently an effective force for the Edmonton Oilers during a playoff run that ended with a Game 7 loss to Florida in the Stanley Cup Final, he received a three-year contract with an average annual value (salary cap hit) of $3.5 million through the 2026-27 season.

Foegele has speed and decent offensive potential: he scored 20 goals and 41 points last season, and added eight points in 23 playoff games, including two goals and five points in the Final. The knock on him has long been his lack of consistency. The Kings undoubtedly hope he will use his good postseason performance as a springboard to assembling consistently solid performances in the future. He’s 28, and he’s got good size. at 6-foot-2 and 204 pounds. With the Oilers, he beat the Kings in three straight playoff matchups. Now, he joins them. This has the potential to work out well for the Kings.

But they overpaid to sign 31-year-old defenseman Joel Edmundson, giving him a four year contract with an average annual value of $3.85 million through 2027-28.

He’s another big body, at 6-foot-5 and 221 pounds, and he’s known as a good shot blocker with a long reach, but he’s probably no more than a third-pairing defenseman at this stage. Also of concern is his injury history, especially over the past few seasons. NHL injury information is closely guarded, but his injuries reportedly involved his lower back. He has never played as many as 70 games in a single regular season during a nine-season career in which he has bounced from St. Louis to Carolina, Montreal, Washington, and Toronto. He’s slow, too, and vulnerable to being beaten off the rush, and some of his reads are questionable.

The Kings are reshaping their defense to add needed muscle, having acquired Kyle Burroughs from San Jose in exchange for Carl Grundstrom last week. Burroughs was among the best of a bad bunch for the Sharks last season, but he got little time on the power play or penalty killing units and he was penalty prone. Maybe he can play a bigger role on the Kings because of their stronger defensive structure and better talent level, but he’s being asked to take a big step up.

As expected, steady defenseman Matt Roy departed via unrestricted free agency, signing a six-year, $34.5-million deal with the revamping-on-the-fly Washington Capitals. It’s likely Kings general manager Rob Blake could have gotten a useful asset for Roy at the trade deadline, but he instead let Roy leave without compensation. That’s bad management. And far from the first time Blake’s judgment has been off: For recent examples, see Petersen, Calvin, and Dubois, Pierre-Luc, and, going back a few years, the entry labeled Kovalchuk, Ilya).

The Kings have Jordan Spence and Brandt Clarke—the No. 8 draft pick in 2021—poised to step in on defense next season, and it’s time for both youngsters to play key roles. It’s also time for the young forwards they’ve nurtured to get good shots at earning roster spots. The free-agent departures of speedy winger Viktor Arvidsson (two years, $8 million with Edmonton) and energetic but small fourth-line center Blake Lizotte (two years, $3.7 million with Pittsburgh) will create openings for the Kings’ most touted prospects to grab if they can. If Blake and his development staff were wrong in their projections for these kids the Kings could have big problems.

Blake’s other significant signings on Monday were inexpensive depth moves that involved familiar players. He brought back 37-year-old forward Trevor Lewis for a year at $800,000 and also re-signed goaltender Pheonix Copley for a year, at $825,000.

Lewis has been a loyal soldier and was a fine penalty killer last season but he shouldn’t get playing time ahead of the prospects they must develop. He’s smart and could probably help as a kind of unofficial coach more than as a player. The team’s talent level should have risen by now to the point where he couldn’t crack their lineup, but it hasn’t, and so here he is again.

Copley, 32, is coming off reconstructive surgery on his ACL and it’s unclear if he will be fit to play next season. If he’s ready, it’s likely he will wear the uniform of the minor-league Ontario Reign and work alongside Erik Portillo, the Kings’ projected goalie of the future.

Speaking of goalies, another of the many netminders the Kings have gone through the past few seasons left them as a free agent on Monday: Cam Talbot, who started the opener of their first-round playoff loss to Edmonton, signed a two-year, $5-million deal with the Detroit Red Wings.

That means the goalies who started the Kings’ playoff opener the past three seasons are now gone, the first being 2022 starter Jonathan Quick (traded to Columbus), 2023 starter Joonas Korpisalo (signed with Ottawa as a free agent), and now Talbot. The Kings were lucky to have stability for such a long time with Quick, and they’re not likely to enjoy that again for a while.

Blake has said he expects the team’s goaltending tandem next season to be Darcy Kuemper, acquired when they dumped Dubois on the Washington Capitals, and David Rittich. Saving money on goalies in order to spend big on forwards (and the occasional standout defenseman) has become a trend in the NHL, though the Stanley Cup champion Panthers were an exception. Sergei Bobrovsky was the league’s second-highest paid goalie last season, at $10 million, which tied him for the 12th-highest salary overall in the league.

The Nashville Predators, under general manager Barry Trotz’s aggressive leadership, made the biggest splash on Monday. They signed Steven Stamkos, the face of the Tampa Bay Lightning through 16 seasons and two Stanley Cup championships, to a four-year, $33-million contract, taking a chance that his 40-goal performance last season means he has a lot of scoring power left at age 34. They also signed forward Jonathan Marchessault, an original Vegas Golden Knight who won the Cup with them in 2023, to a five-year, $27.5-million contract, and added mobile defenseman Brady Skjei for seven years at $49 million. Tampa Bay was a big player, too, signing dynamic forward Jake Guentzel for seven years at $63 million.

Although the top free agents are off the market, the Kings still have time to improve via the trade route this summer. The moves they made on Monday didn’t do much to close the chasm between where they are and being a Stanley Cup contender.