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Typically, an injection of a player as skilled as Ilya Kovalchuk makes all four lines better because each line - in a sense - gets a promotion. This is only sorta true with the LA Kings’ situation because up until the Kovalchuk signing, they had been running Alex Iafallo on the top line’s left wing spot with
fairly poor results.
With Kovalchuk taking his spot, it’s expected that Iafallo gets bumped to the third line playing to the left of Adrian Kempe, who himself is going into only his second full NHL season.
If Gabe Vilardi makes the team out of training camp, many suspect he’ll slot in at that right wing spot on Kempe’s line
While
I believe in Vilardi, I do think having a third line where Kempe is the senior-most representative of NHL experience is really problematic.
Quickly:
Vilardi: Rookie (no NHL experience)
Iafallo: Second year (75 games played)
Kempe: Third year (106 games played)
Keeping this line together would depend a lot on how John Stevens used them, because they certainly wouldn’t be a “checking” line or a traditional scoring line. A deep stat look shows Kempe was underwater last year in CF% but a +15 (second best on the team last year) in goals-for differential. Iafallo is harder to pin down because of how much time he spent playing with Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown last season.
This gave him better deep numbers, but that translated to very little offensive production.
As a rookie, Vilardi is obviously a statistical wild card at the NHL level.
While I do think Kempe has the potential to be a good two-way center - and has shown some defensive ability - it’s hard not to view this line as a weak spot in the Kings’ lineup. Iafallo is not a defensive forward and I can’t imagine him putting up offense with Kempe if he couldn’t really do it with Kopitar.
Other options?
Then again, with Vilardi up, where else would the Kings go with their third line? Does it really make sense to pull Kyle Clifford up to the left wing spot and bump Iafallo to the fourth line? Not really.
It might be equally weird to see Trevor Lewis stay on the third line while Vilardi gets started on the fourth.
The only other alternative I can envision would be to keep Lewis and Kempe on the third and move Vilardi over to that left wing spot. Personally, I think that would be a far better and less defensively risky third line.
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
This is where I wish the Kings had made another signing and brought in someone who could take Iafallo’s spot. Someone like Michael Grabner or Patrick Maroon would have been much better fits on the third line and would have helped Kempe’s (and Vilardi’s) development.
Even someone like Brad Boyes who is - for the record - still a free agent, would be a much more comfortable fit on the Kings’ third line and would make them less vulnerable from teams that like to play matchups.
Alas, I’m not holding my breath for LA to make another signing.
If Vilardi plays, Kings fans will have to take the good with the bad. They’ll have a defensively vulnerable third line with high offensive upside.
Tony Horton says it best: I hate it, but I love it.
Los Angeles Kings Blogger • 
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