It’s not only time for the Kings to begin their 2026-27 season, but we’re also now less than three days away from the Ontario Reign kicking off their AHL campaign.
The 2025-26 prospect tracker season ends where junior hockey does: the Memorial Cup. It’s been a full year of tracking Kings prospects across the CHL, NCAA, and European leagues, and now, we close the book on two of the most interesting stories we followed.
LA Kings prospect Jared Woolley is one game away from his second consecutive Memorial Cup championship, as he and the Kitchener Rangers skated to a perfect 3-0 record in the round-robin section of the 2026 tournament, earning a bye directly to the final game.
People love a good mid-round draft pick that pans out, and in the NHL you used to see those fairly often, but that’s obviously partially luck. If the Red Wings thought Nicklas Lidstrom was going to become a top-five defenseman in history, they wouldn’t have waited until the 53rd pick to take him.
If there was a standout play from this season’s World Junior Championships from an LA Kings perspective, it came in the semifinals, in a matchup between Canada and Czechia.
Three LA Kings prospects exited the 2026 World Junior Championships with hardware, as the tournament came to an end yesterday evening in Minnesota. Kings forward prospect Vojtech Cihar was the only participant in the gold-medal game, as he helped lead Czechia to the final match with a standout performance over the course of the tournament.
While Vojtech Cihar won’t go home with a gold medal at the 2026 World Junior Championship, as Czechia lost 4-2 to Sweden in the gold medal game, but he will come home with one notable accolade, as he was named the most valuable player in the tournament.
The Los Angeles Kings have announced that they’ve signed winger Vojtech Cihar to a three-year, entry-level contract with a cap hit of $975,000. At this point in time, the only confirmed details about Cihar’s contract are the term and the cap hit, as the Kings did not mention if the deal comes with any performance bonuses.