Kings Kaliyev a More Complete and Mature Player This Season

Last updated Jan 16, 2023 Edit Source

• News post

• Austin Stanovich

Even amongst the Los Angeles King’s deep prospect pool, 2019 second-round pick Arthur Kaliyev stands out as a prominent figure in the team’s future.

• Arthur Kaliyev
• Blake Lizotte

• Todd McLellan

# Todd McLellan

I would say that Arthur worked on his defense. I’ll tell you a story about Arthur. The first time he was called up was against Anaheim, he scored a goal, we lost what 4-1 or something? He’s the only guy who scored a goal, I think he kicked it in or went in off his ass or something like that, but it wasn’t a pretty goal. And we’re all excited because that’s what Arthur was going to do. And then you go watch and he had one d-zone shift where we took a marker and just followed him on the whiteboard. We had the whole zone almost painted, he was everywhere, needless to say, I think we were scored on. So, Arthur wanted to be good, he needed to learn a lot of things defensively, he still is but he’s improved.

He’s very capable of playing there (in the top six). Sometimes it works better with other guys in given moments but I think Arthur is way further along in assuming that top role. When we made the change and flipped Kempe into that position, we were down 2-0 to (Boston) with 10 minutes left, didn’t have a lot on goal and were shut out the night before, so we were trying to shuffle things around. Instantly they scored, got a couple goals and it was instantly rejuvenated so we stick with it for a little while, but Arty is very capable of playing there. He wasn’t just given the top six role; he earned it by doing some of the things we asked him to and he was rewarded for a good period of time. And he made good on his end of the bargain, it’s just that it wasn’t clicking offensively and we made that change.

# Blake Lizotte

[Arthur Kaliyev] made a huge difference from this year to last year. He is way stronger on the puck and better in his own end. I think he’s committed to playing (defense) a little more than he was his first year. And that’s just a sign of maturity.

# Arthur Kaliyev

You’ve just got to be more responsible, playing more (defense), not just trying to go out there and be all offense like it was in juniors. Yeah, just way more responsibility, you play against the best players in the world so you always have to be responsible and that’s the one thing I had to work on to transition from junior to the NHL.

You just have to be always ready to play against top guys. You have to be ready to go out there at any time. I think I did pretty good, we just didn’t bury, didn’t get the wins. We didn’t bury enough pucks, I thought we had our chances, didn’t give up much. We just didn’t finish much.