Yea Alex Iafallo played on the Kings 1st line but is Iafallo considered a full time option on the 1st line with way more talented prospects like Byfield, Turcotte, Vilardi, Kupari, Fagemo, Thomas, Anderson-Dolan, Madden and others pushing for a place in the Kings lineup over the next few seasons.
LA has so many center prospects that some of them are bound to be pushed to the wing and Iafallo only has 1 season till UFA why not get something for him now while his value is at its highest.
Alex Iafallo is an
excellent complementary player, but like a Tanner Pearson, who probably isn't going to get you 60 points but will break 50 once or twice on a better team (he was on pace for it this year). He's one of the only Kings to have
improved his production in a shit environment year-over-year-over-year in his career thus far (look at the teams he's played on, yuck). You're mistaking 'vanilla' for ineffective. He's got drive and tenacity, total puckhound, with completely underrated vision and shot to go with good wheels. He works well with Kopitar and Brown because that whole line is lunchpail like that. He can play with talent and while he's not
ideally a 1W he'd be playing middle six on any team in the league for great value. If he were to stick with the Kings, he'd be excellent in that role in the coming years. Basically, if JAD turns out to be Iafallo, we're stoked. If not, hey, we have the original!
Why though?
Carolina is retaining Nino somewhat x 2 seasons and Nino is a veteran player that is serviceable and fills more of a need in the future in a bottom 6 role.
I can’t see all those Kings prospects playing in the bottom 6, Iafallo is UFA after the season, so if Iafallo negotiates at a higher price Blake will most likely rather pay a talented ELC controlled prospect rather then pay twice the rate and term for Iafallo who’s numbers are advanced by playing on the 1st line in LA.
If Iafallo walks UFA then the Kings get nothing at all.
You're ignoring the rest of the LA's prospect pool. We have NO SHORTAGE of guys who can fill in the bottom six and LA is arguably the best team in the league at churning out 'just a guy' NHLers, look at their placement rate for late round picks, multiple 4th-7th rounders playing key roles all across the NHL. We just finished ranking 40 prospects on our forum if you want to take a look and if there's anything we have it's forward depth. What role does nino fill? We have the veterans in Kopitar, Brown, Carter. They go to the net and grind. We have younger better players on the way. Why would we commit to nino for two years? We can do better for Iafallo and our cap space.
If he walks he walks, but we get more at the deadline bar none, if we think he's going to move on. But why would he? La's got money to throw around and he's playing important big minutes with one of the best centers in the league. If he gets hurt and we get nothing so be it, but that's better than selling low on Iafallo and Cap.
And, maybe most importantly, we don't need more middling picks. We need blue chip D prospects or high picks if anything. If you want to build something around Iafallo for, say, Jake Bean, maybe we're listening.
I just wanted to hear some opinions from Kings fans about Iafallo’s game since they watch him more on a day to day basis during the season then I do.
I don’t get to watch as many west coast games living on the eastern seaboard but evaluating a player of Iafallo’s skill set of pretty standard stuff.
Im not sure if your familiar with Iafallo’s game or not but zero in on him and watch, look where most of his goals come from, look at him away from the puck.
I didn’t really see anything that stood out except for the drive in his game, Iafallo seems like a heart and soul type of player which could be valuable to a young Kings team in its own right but that also depends on what Iafallo’s agent is asking for as far as term and salary go.
Id also ask Kings fans where they’d value Iafallo as far as average annual value goes and how many years could he be resigned to.
If I were looking to resign Iafallo, I’d be comfortable at 2 maybe 3 seasons at 3.25 aav anything over that and I’d be looking to move him.
Which of course is the concern and I'm glad you admit it.
Alex Iafallo would be viewed like Alex Killorn (pre-nuclear season of course) if he were playing on the east coast instead of a western basement. His attention to detail is phenomenal. We've seen championship teams, as someone mentioned earlier, he gives me a heavy Justin Williams vibe. He can be every bit as intense.
