Shifting the focus here to the defenseman and kicking things off with Joel Edmundson. Edmundson completed his second season with the organization and filled a very similar role to what he did last year. He was a regular partner for Brandt Clarke and his game emphasizes the things he does well, with an attempt to minimize the things he doesn’t. Beginning the blueliners with Edmundson’s 2025-26 campaign.
Joel Edmundson
LAK Statline – 82 games played, 2 goals, 21 assists, +14 rating, 25 penalty minutes
LAK Playoff Statline – 4 games played, 1 goal, 0 assists, -3 rating, 0 penalty minutes
NHL Possession Metrics (Relative To Kings) – CF% – 50.8% (-2.2%), SCF% – 49.4% (-4.4%), HDCF% – 50.1% (-4.5%)
Trending Up – I’ll start with another comparison here, similar to what we saw with Darcy Kuemper’s season review. because Edmundson played hurt for multiple months of the season. Up until his injury on January 24 in St. Louis, Edmundson was on the ice for 1.69 goals against, per/60, in 5-on-5 situations. That was the fifth-best clip in the entire NHL among defensemen with at least 500 minutes played. While he was healthy, Edmundson’s performance was exactly what you’d want from him. The puck did not go into his net when he was on the ice and he was a serviceable compliment to Brandt Clarke, a pairing that has remained constant over the last two seasons. It was the most consistent and effective pairing on the team this season and that went double for when Edmundson was operating closer to 100 percent.
Here is a reason why I appreciate what Edmundson brings – he knows who he is as a player and he consistently plays to it. Among Kings defenseman, Edmundson carried the puck out of the defensive zone fewer than any other blueliner on the team, however, he did so at a more efficient rate than any other blueliner on the team. He knows who he is as a player and rarely took unnecessary risks. On the 2024-25 Kings team, those things all stood out more, because the Kings had a better collection of puck movers to bring the other elements of the game. On this season’s team, the Kings had a dearth of puck movers, which hurt the team as a whole. With a different makeup around him, Edmundson can be an effective player who sticks to what he does well.
While Edmundson is not an offensive defenseman, he did set career highs in assists (21) and points (23) this season. It was the first time in his NHL career he’s exceeded 20 points and he added a goal in Game 4 of the playoffs, the only goal scored by a Kings defenseman in the series versus Colorado. Playing with Brandt Clarke, Edmundson was afforded more offensive-zone starts than he’s had before in his career and did see an uptick in his production as a result. At 0.76 assists per/60 in 5-on-5 situations, Edmundson ranked in the top-third of the league. Did his part in that area, certainly.
Trending Down – The comparison above is there because when Edmundson was playing below 100 percent, he was much less effective. By his own admission after the season, he probably should have sat out a few games to properly heal but he chose to play through the injury to try and help the team. Commendable, however, his goals against per/60 rose by nearly a full goal following his injury. His 2.92 expected goals against, per/60, was the highest number on the team in that span, a number which was inflated by the highest on-ice number of high-danger chances against among Kings defensemen. It was clear that Edmundson wasn’t playing at full strength there and it showed in the on-ice results.
I’ve said that this will be a common theme and it extends here with Edmundson. Edmundson was on the ice for 36 power-play goals against this season. Only eight defensemen around the NHL were on the ice for more, with Edmundson’s total the second-highest on the Kings overall. Now, such is life to some extent when you are used heavily on the penalty kill, but even when you move things to a per/60 basis, among defensemen with at least 100 shorthanded minutes this past season, Edmundson ranked eighth-worst in goals against this season. There are a number of areas in which the penalty kill came up short this season and as the team’s most-used player in those situations, Edmundson has his piece of the pie here as well.
Lastly, I’ll present a counter-point to a couple of the sections above and that is that, while Edmundson did increase his own offensive production and he didn’t take a ton of risks, he was also a part of the lowest-scoring group of blueliners in the NHL and a part of the reason why the Kings struggled to move the puck from their backend as a unit. At the end of the day, the Kings had far too many of the same type of defenseman and as a whole, that unit did not deliver what was needed. Edmundson was already here and was effective on the 2024-25 team. However, after the Kings doubled down last summer, it created a group that was so slanted in one direction that the Kings took a pretty sizable step back.
2026-27 Status – Edmundson is now two seasons into the four-year contract he signed with the Kings on July 1, 2024. Largely, he has been the player the Kings hoped he would be. He’s a defensive-first defenseman who has complemented Brandt Clarke, as the latter has developed, and he hasn’t played outside of what he does. His play dipped a bit last season after his injury but all in all, he has been fairly steady. The Kings need to re-shape their defensemen this summer, though, which means that changes could come. Whether that impacts Edmundson or not remains to be seen, so we’ll see how things shake out over the coming weeks.
