How LA Kings key second line is complete with healthy Viktor Arvidsson

Last updated Dec 1, 2022 Edit Source

• News post

• Eric Stephens

Sometimes players can’t remember the moment they felt the kind of connection with a teammate that would fuel a lasting partnership.

• Viktor Arvidsson
• Trevor Moore
• Phillip Danault
• Drew Doughty

# Viktor Arvidsson

I think me and Trevor had four points each the first time we played together. It just clicked right away.

We’re competitive. All three of us. We want to get better every day. That’s a huge part. Even in practice, we try to make plays and make each other better.

Yeah, I pushed hard. I was back in Sweden for about two months, working with a guy there. It was all going good. I came to L.A. like three weeks out (from) camp. I didn’t think I was going to be ready that early. We pushed it and see how it felt. It got better and better. Felt more comfortable. It was good.

Obviously, Phil goes to the net a lot. Puts his stick down and is strong. A strong centerman that wins a lot of battles. Trevor’s quick and can beat his defender one-on-one. I think we complement each other really well. Just the dynamic. It’s working really good. But we talk about it, too. We talk about where we are on the ice and try to find each other.

# Todd McLellan

I think you have a real good team when everybody has a little bit of the team’s conscience in them. You can’t just rely on one or two guys. That line has an identity. It has a conscience. It plays a certain way. There’s other lines that don’t play similarly to them but they have their own conscience. They do their own thing. And if everybody takes a little piece of that main one and you own it, I think you have a chance to be a real good team.

It took Phil and the coaches a time to maybe appreciate each other. So that took a little while. And then once he settled in, everything went good there. Arvy, we had a pretty good idea. It wasn’t tough. Mooresy was the individual that didn’t have a home. We were responsible for that. We moved him all over the place. He was playing left, right, center up and down the lineup. And the common theme was when Mooresy found a home, they created an identity and they’ve played towards it ever since. For as much as we’ve tinkered and moved players around, the constant is that line.

It’s obviously yes. But I don’t know how you predict that. We didn’t predict that in Mooresy that, that would happen. We were actually looking at it a different way where he could move around and be the catalyst on any line. But he’s found a home and he’s comfortable in that position and we count on him. Maybe all of that has helped him. We predicted the other way. He proved to us it worked this way. That’s sometimes how it goes.

[Viktor Arvidsson]’s’ drive and compete level is at the top. He wants to win. He’s emotional. And he completes that line a lot of times. There’s no such thing as a perfect player or a perfect line but he does a lot of things well for that group. I would imagine if you asked him, he’d say he’d like to finish a little bit more. I think he’s got one even-strength goal in the (22) games. But you miss a full summer of training and a full training camp and you try and play catch-up, sometimes your timing’s off or whatever it might be. It’s not through lack of effort or lack of opportunity chances. It’s there. He does a real good job of completing that line.

Hopefully it doesn’t but it might. And that happens to every real good line. But right now, we like what it’s doing.

# Drew Doughty

They definitely can have shifts that they are in their zone. It brings the team up. Gives us momentum. They definitely have a few of those shifts it seems like every single night. That’s what you want out of one of your top lines. They just need to keep doing it because they’re a big, big, big part to our team.