Continuing on through the forwards here with a look at Phillip Danault’s 2024-25 season. Danault is the first center evaluated so far in this series and he’s coming off an interesting season, which seemed to crescendo as the year went along, ending with a strong performance in the postseason. More on one of the team’s alternate captains below.
Phillip Danault
LAK Statline – 80 games played, 8 goals, 35 assists, +20 rating, 26 penalty minutes
LAK Playoff Statline – 6 games played, 2 goals, 6 assists, +2 rating, 0 penalty minutes
NHL Possession Metrics (Relative To Kings) – CF% – 56.4% (+4.5%), SCF% – 56.5% (+4.1%), HDCF% – 56.8% (+1.9%)
It certainly took some time for Danault to find his true calling on this season’s Kings team and the production early in the season wasn’t where it’s been but once he found his linemates and their role within the team’s lineup, he delivered the same caliber of play he’s been known for throughout his career. Danault ended on a high note with a strong playoff performance, capping off his fourth season with the organization.
Trending Up – It starts where it ended for Danault and that was with the postseason. Off of my own personal evaluation, I thought Danault was perhaps the team’s strongest performer in the playoffs. At worst, he was firmly a top-three player for the Kings in the series against Edmonton. He was extremely productive, as he collected eight points from six games played. His six 5-on-5 points were the most on the Kings roster and he did so when his most common opponents were Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Danault was a positive against both, leading 2-1 in terms of on-ice goals for/against versus both McDavid and Draisaitl. Danault was tasked with the challenge of being a matchup center and not only was he strong defensively, but he produced at over a point-per-game clip while doing so. Maybe his best hockey as a member of the organization and he deserved a better ending.
Danault’s eight goals this season drew a lot of attention and that is understandable, because a player making $5.5 million should be expected to produce more than that. What did not draw enough attention, though, is that Danault led the Kings this season in assists at 5-on-5 by a comfortable margin. His 28 total assists were four more than his nearest teammate, while his 21 primary assists led his team by six, with the latter a personal career high. Around the NHL, Danault actually ranked tied for sixth in the league in primary assists at 5-on-5. For reference, the players above him were Pastrnak, Crosby, MacKinnon, Kucherov and McDavid. Pretty good company to keep. I didn’t realize how highly he ranked until sitting down to do this article. Danault deserves some credit for a very underrated season from a production standpoint.
On January 29, Danault was slotted in on a line with Trevor Moore and Warren Foegele. That line played 33 games together between that point and the end of the season. Of those 33 games, they finished negative as a line in just three games in that span. In total, that line was on the ice for 22 goals for, compared to eight against, while logging the most difficult matchup on most nights. Danault has always shown an ability to be a matchup center and he’s received Selke votes in three of his four seasons with the Kings as a result. In those 33 games, Danault collected 17 points at 5-on-5, tied for second on the Kings. Finding that right mix elevated Danault’s game to the player we’ve seen for most of his time with the Kings.
Trending Down – For the positives on the assist front, eight goals is still eight goals, no matter how you shake it. Danault’s individual chance creation numbers from 2023-24 to 2024-25 were very similar. A little up or down in one category or another but it was split, meaning it wasn’t down across the board, it was up in some areas, down in others. So, it wasn’t a drop off in chances. Two areas the numbers can point to. First, he missed the net at a much higher rate than seasons past. Of Danault’s 5-on-5 shot attempts in 2024-25, Danault hit the net on 52.1 percent of them after averaging a number over 60 percent over his first three seasons with the Kings. A big part of that were shots that got blocked. In 2024-25, 23.7 percent of Danault’s shot attempts were blocked, which is up from 17.5 percent over his first three seasons in Los Angeles. His shooting percentage of 6.5 percent was by far his lowest as a King. I think Danault’s 27 goals in 2021-22 will always be an outlier. But his eight goals also need to be an outlier in the other direction.
Personally, I thought Danault wasn’t quite at his best early in the season and that it took him a lot longer than usual to begin to impose his game. Once he got there, he got there, but it didn’t feel like we saw the best of Danault until his endgame line came together. The numbers say that that it was substantially less drastic than it felt and that the underlying metrics were actually pretty solid early in the season. I’m sticking with it, though, because numbers don’t always tell the story and I thought a big reason for the team’s up and down form was a lack of consistency from the top three lines in the first half of the season. A lot of that inconsistency was from Danault’s line and as the center and leader, some of that falls on him. Once Danault and Kevin Fiala were placed on separate lines, both players – and the team as a whole – began to thrive.
2025-26 Status – Danault is under contract for two more seasons with a salary-cap hit of $5,500,000. It’s actually kind of hard to believe that Danault has been here for four seasons already, off of a six-year contract signed back in the summer of 2021. Danault has met expectations over his first four seasons but he’s also got one of the team’s larger salary-cap hits and has limited no-trade protection over the next two seasons. If the Kings needed to move out any salary to improve the roster, Danault is a player who could be in conversations, if the business side of roster management comes into play. I wouldn’t see him as a player anyone is eager to move on from, especially when you look at how impactful he was in the playoffs, but if the Kings do wind up needing cap space, it’s one option at that point. Assuming Danault is here, I think his role as a middle-six center is pretty clear.
