The NHL trade deadline has come and gone.
The Vegas Golden Knights, Edmonton Oilers, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets, Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars each made at least one significant addition, with most acquiring multiple players.
The Kings did not make a single swap.
“You look and you listen,” Kings general manager Rob Blake said. “We were never planning on taking away from the team, ever, that was never the situation.”
Blake had said as far back as Oct. 10, and as recently as last month, that the Kings were very likely to stay with the same group across the course of the season. That was in no small part due to their flooded gas tank of a salary-cap situation. They were active in paring down their organizational depth and taking on salary in an effort to add Pierre-Luc Dubois and retain Vladislav Gavrikov, two players who have performed inconsistently this season.
Overall solid fortune with injuries dissipated of late, giving way to the absences of scoring forward Adrian Kempe, sparkplug winger Viktor Arvidsson, top-pairing defenseman Mikey Anderson and fourth-line banger Carl Grundstrom. It meant on one hand that the Kings had to simplify their game (they’ve gone 3-1-1 sans Kempe) and also that some trade chatter could start given that they were short on bodies but potentially longer on cap relief.
“Injuries came into play the last couple weeks, but the timing of them, it’s going to be nice to get a couple of guys back here within a week and then the other two shortly after that,” said Blake, who anticipated Kempe and Anderson to return imminently, with Arvidsson targeting a return near March 16 and Grundstrom to follow “a couple weeks” later.
There were competing reports from Boston Hockey Now’s Jimmy Murphy and the Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli that indicated that the Kings were not or were the team to which Boston Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark was destined until he invoked his no-trade clause.
Blake made no mention of…
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