Erik Gustafsson has gone from almost invisible to indispensable on the Kings’ blue line, and that shift says plenty about where Los Angeles stands right now.
Last season, Gustafsson played just two NHL games. The rest of his year was spent in Grand Rapids, where he put up 37 points in 39 AHL games for Detroit’s affiliate. That snapped a nine-season run as a regular NHL defenseman across eight teams, a stretch that included 226 points in 474 games without a single trip to the minors.
So when the Kings brought him in as the only addition aimed at fixing one of the league’s least dynamic defense groups, the fit looked strange on paper. Ken Holland had already added Joel Edmundson, then layered in Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci, joining a group that already included Mikey Anderson, Drew Doughty and Brandt Clarke after Jordan Spence left. The roster looked built around old-school defensive types, with Clarke standing out as the lone real puck mover.
Now Gustafsson has already played five times as many NHL games as he did last season, and he has climbed from seventh defenseman to a regular playing more than 20 minutes a night near the top of the rotation. Jim Hiller has paired him with Clarke, giving the Kings the kind of puck-moving, offensive defense pair they lacked for much of last season.
Gustafsson has earned the minutes. He is logging his highest average ice time since 2022-23, and he has taken the chance and run with it.
His only goal so far came on the power play, a rush he created himself with skating and creativity on the breakout. That kind of play is exactly what this blue line had been missing outside of Clarke.
The NHL even highlighted one of those moments on social media, posting: “ERIK GUSTAFSSON GOES END-TO-END!!! 🤯”
This is not the version of Gustafsson who exploded for 60 points in 79 games with the Blackhawks in 2018-19, and nobody signed him to be a top-pairing anchor. But he has become something close to that in Los Angeles, at least in usage: a defenseman trusted on the power play and in offensive situations.
And that is where the bigger story starts. Gustafsson’s rise is less a surprise success than a spotlight on how thin the Kings’ blue line really is.
A player who spent 98 percent of last season in the AHL has moved past nearly everyone else on the roster in a matter of weeks. That tells you more about the group around him than it does about him.
Doughty has recently heated up, putting together multiple three-point games and moving ahead of Gustafsson in scoring. But that burst does not erase the larger picture: Doughty is still aging, a new contract is looming, and Ceci remains part of the equation even though the Kings have not won a game this season with him in the lineup.
The numbers back up the concern. Of the five Kings defense pairings that have played at least 50 minutes together, only one has a positive expected goals share.
It is Clarke and Gustafsson, at 60.7 percent, which ranks 23rd among NHL pairings with at least 50 minutes together. By comparison, Edmundson and Doughty sit at 48.1 percent, Anderson and Dumoulin at 44 percent, and Anderson and Ceci at 35.3 percent.
Every pairing besides Clarke and Gustafsson has allowed more expected goals than it has generated.
Corsi paints the same picture. Shot attempts drop sharply when Clarke and Gustafsson are off the ice, and the Kings’ issues run deeper than one hot stretch or one strong pairing. The third through sixth defensemen are all getting outplayed in their minutes, which is a serious problem for a team that was supposed to have a sturdier back end.
The Kings have also leaned on the old right-shot defenseman logic, even as the results have lagged. Ceci’s right-handed shot is the strongest argument for his $4.5 million cap hit, but handedness only matters so much when the impact is this poor.
His pairing ranks 125th out of 136 NHL pairings with at least 50 minutes together. Meanwhile, a defenseman who spent nearly all of last season in the AHL is playing above him and driving more offense than several of the regulars.
KodoHockey also noted Gustafsson’s power-play role in a post listing players who were running their team’s man advantage while rostered in under 30 percent of leagues, with Gustafsson listed at 55 percent of the Kings’ power play.
For Los Angeles, the larger takeaway is hard to ignore. Gustafsson’s emergence is a bright spot, but it is also a warning sign.
The Kings need real puck movers, and Alexander Nikishin was cited as the kind of player who would fit that need. Adding someone like that, or even close to it, would change the ceiling of this team.
Instead, the Kings are paying for a defense built around the wrong assumptions, and Gustafsson’s sudden rise has made that impossible to miss. If an AHL defenseman can jump to the top of this corps in a month, it only sharpens the question of what a true top-four puck mover could do.
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