NHL Network’s latest winger rankings left out one of the Los Angeles Kings’ most reliable weapons, and that omission is hard to explain.
As the network rolls out its position-by-position lists ahead of the 2026-27 season, the Kings had just one player appear on the newly released top 20 wingers ranking: Artemi Panarin, who came in at No. 12 after another productive season. But the bigger talking point for Los Angeles wasn’t who made the cut. It was who didn’t.
Adrian Kempe was nowhere to be found.
That’s a tough sell based on what Kempe has done over the last two seasons. He’s one of only a single-digit number of forwards in the NHL to post 35 goals, 70 points and five game-winning goals in each of the last two consecutive seasons. For the Kings, he’s been the most dependable scorer in the lineup, while also bringing steady two-way value and production on the power play.
He was especially clutch in the regular season just finished, finishing with eight game-winning goals, which placed him in the NHL’s top 10.
Panarin landing at No. 12 isn’t really the issue from a Kings standpoint. The real problem is that NHL Network apparently saw enough wingers to fill the next eight spots and still didn’t include Kempe among them. Based on his recent production, that’s a hard argument to defend.
A couple of the names that did get in only sharpen the case. Detroit’s Lucas Raymond, who checked in at No. 20, has scored fewer goals and fewer game-winning goals than Kempe over the last two seasons, and he has more total points in only one of those two years. Anaheim’s Cutter Gauthier also made the list after a breakout 40-goal season, but he still finished with fewer total points than Kempe and hasn’t put together the same kind of multi-year consistency.
Kempe doesn’t need to be ranked ahead of Panarin to deserve recognition. But after back-to-back 35-goal, 70-point seasons and years of being the Kings’ most reliable finisher, leaving him off the top 20 altogether looks like a miss.