Joel Armia finding his place on the Kings

LOS ANGELES — When Joel Armia wakes up on a late fall morning in Los Angeles, he experiences some things he’s not necessarily used to experiencing this time of year. Things like sunlight, and a temperature above 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

After spending the first several seasons of his NHL career in the cold-weather cities of Buffalo, Winnipeg and Montreal, Armia joined the Los Angeles Kings on a two-year deal in the 2025 offseason. He wanted a change of scenery, a switch to something completely different from what he’d known for a decade. So far, the move to a drastically different climate has paid off.

“At least for me, it makes a huge difference, like, mentally,” he said. “And [my] body feels good too. It’s good. Really good.”

Perhaps that sun and warmth is giving him the energy he needs to fit into the Kings so well this season. Playing on a range of lines with tons of different linemates, Armia has quickly established himself as the team’s main Swiss Army Knife — the guy who can be plugged pretty much anywhere into the lineup and succeed.

“Everybody here is a great player,” he said. “So I’m happy to play with anyone.”

The Kings already had a handful of those types of players, such as Trevor Moore and Alex Laferriere, but Armia’s play in practically every facet of the game has given the coaching staff no choice but to pay special attention to him.

“On the wings in particular, [Moore and Laferriere] have been that player. Looks like Army’s kind of sliding into that type of role now too, where he’s left wing, right wing,” head coach Jim Hiller said. “Takes some faceoffs, penalty kill, five-on-five, power play. So he’s kind of been all over the map, but in our evaluations postgame, he just continues to do the right thing.”

Constantly adjusting to a role while simultaneously getting used to a new team would be a challenge for a lot of players. For Armia, that issue never arose.

“I really haven’t had a period of that kind of feeling that I [was on] a new team,” he said. “From day one, I felt like I’ve been here for a couple of years already. So it’s been awesome.”

Nowhere has Armia’s impact been felt more than on the penalty kill. Playing on the Kings’ top shorthanded unit, he has turned the group into a threat — to kill penalties, yes, but also to score while down a man. The Kings’ five shorthanded goals this season are tied for the NHL lead, and Armia himself has three of them, giving him sole possession of the top spot in that category.

A more advanced look at the stats demonstrates Armia’s impact even further. Maybe nothing explains his penalty-killing impact better than his Fenwick rating, which calculates the percentage of unblocked shots taken by each team, expressed as a percentage. Armia’s Fenwick on the penalty kill is 35.7%, meaning that the Kings take that percentage of all unblocked shots when Armia is on the ice in man-down situations. This is an absurdly high rate — for context, Armia’s previous career high was 21.9%. As a team, the Kings’ shorthanded Fenwick improves by more than 22 percentage points when Armia is on the ice.

“I mean, I enjoy it,” Armia said of killing penalties. “It’s a big part of the game, I feel like, and every time you get a chance to go on ice and help your team, whatever the penalty is — or whatever it is — you don’t want to take anything for granted.

“It feels good, obviously, not to let the other team’s best players score or have success or momentum. So that’s kind of the reward you get out of it.”

For Armia individually, however, the reward might look a little different, simply as a byproduct of the work he’s put in. So quickly into his time in Los Angeles, he’s earned serious consideration from the coaching staff for more playing time.

“We’ve had some other players that have been here and have done a good job for us,” Hiller said after the Kings’ Nov. 21 overtime loss to the Boston Bruins, in which Armia scored shorthanded for the second straight game. “So I’m loyal to those guys, but he’s slowly scratching and clawing and he’s gonna take somebody’s job. That’s just the way it goes. In the end, you have to perform, and he’s performing, and so he’s gonna have to play more.”

The Kings currently sit in third place in a very tightly contested Pacific Division, but players throughout the roster are maintaining the belief that they can separate themselves with puck luck. A few more swings in their direction, and the game results will go their way more frequently.

“For a long time, we’ve played really well,” Armia said. “There’s been nights then where we haven’t gotten those bounces, but I feel like it’s just a matter of time when we really take off here.”

At this point, Armia turned back to his locker at Toyota Sports Performance Center and literally knocked on wood.

“But the level where we play normally, it’s good enough to win games and not let the other team score much. So I feel like once we get a couple of bounces, start really clicking here, it’s gonna be very dangerous.”

Armia sees that expectation the same way he sees so many parts of his career and his life: as another opportunity for him to embrace.

“Whoever I play with, whatever ice time I get, whatever it is,” he said. “I’ll do every job I’m told to with some pride.”