The Los Angeles Kings made a couple of additions as free agency opened yesterday, signing both Warren Foegele and Joel Edmundson. Foegele's deal is for three years and carries a $3.5 million cap hit, while Edmundson's contract is four years at $3.85 million per year.
Foegele is 28 years old, and scored 20 goals and 41 points in 82 games with the Edmonton Oilers this season. His offensive ceiling isn’t overly high, usually scoring at a pace of around 30-40 points per 82 games, but he’s effective on the forecheck, and can add some physicality as well. His deal also carries fair value - I had projected a three-year deal for Foegele would carry a $3.25 million cap hit, at HockeyComparables.com.
Edmundson is 31 years old, and is coming off a year where he had six points in 53 games, split between the Washington Capitals and Toronto Maple Leafs. Standing at 6-foot-5 and weighing 221 pounds, Edmundson won’t add any offense, but can be reliable defensively and like Foegele, he can be tough to play against. That said, his deal does come in with more term and a higher cap hit than expected: I had the longest possible contract for Edmundson projected at three years and a $2.5 million cap hit, at HockeyComparables.com.
The team also made some smaller moves, bringing back both Pheonix Copley and Trevor Lewis. While Copley missed most of the year with an injury, Lewis suited up for all 82 of the Kings’ games, registering 16 assists. With the deals coming in at under a million for a single year, both players will continue to add good depth.
The team also re-signed Tyler Madden, while adding Jack Studnicka, Glenn Gawdin, Reilly Walsh and Jeff Malott.
In regards to the Foegele and Edmundson signings though: it’s pretty clear what the team wanted to do this offseason, with all of Jeannot, Foegele and Edmundson bringing a certain style of play. However, none of the moves are really going to help the team find goals, and committing a total of $10 million to the three of them for the coming year is questionable.
With Foegele, while the price of his contract is fair, he’s not really going to be a needle-mover within the forward group. Then with Edmundson, while he does solve an issue on the bottom-pairing, and will be a better partner for either Brandt Clarke or Jordan Spence than Andreas Englund would be, it’s not a great-looking contract.
If the Kings don’t make any more external additions, it’s debatable as to whether the team has really improved. Viktor Arvidsson signed with the Oilers, and then with Carl Grundstrom being traded and Blake Lizotte not being qualified (and subsequently signing with the Pittsburgh Penguins), plus the Pierre-Luc Dubois trade, the forward group is looking much thinner.
We’ll see if the team ends up making any more moves, but if this is it for the major offseason additions, the Kings arguably haven’t made progress.
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