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The brutal injuries Kings’ Quinton Byfield played through down the stretch
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- The brutal injuries Kings’ Quinton Byfield played through down the stretch
The brutal injuries Kings' Quinton Byfield played through down the stretch appeared first on ClutchPoints . Add ClutchPoints as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
The Los Angeles Kings are the first team in the Western Conference to be knocked out of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs after a four-game sweep at the hands of the President's Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche .
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The team struggled mightily to score goals in the series, and forward Quinton Byfield was no exception. After playing some of his best hockey down the stretch, he managed just two assists in four games — and the injuries he was dealing with definitely help to explain why .
"I tore my right oblique, in my abdomen and then after that kind of healed, in a month's time, I did the same thing on the other side," he admitted at LA's exit interviews, per team reporter Zach Dooley. "For like the last two months, it was one oblique and then the other. It was a battle."
Byfield tore his oblique shortly after the Olympic break, but played through the injury and ended up missing just one game. He then suffered the same ailment on the other side, but didn't miss any more time in either the regular season or playoffs.
He told reporters that things as simple as a sneeze were extremely painful, which makes his play at the end even more commendable. Although he didn't manage to score a goal against Colorado, Byfield was still one of the team's better players in the series — and arguably their best down the stretch.
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He was especially potent in the final weeks of the 2025-26 regular season. The second overall pick in the 2020 NHL Draft scored 13 goals and 19 points over 24 contests after the Olympics, adding a plus-four rating while averaging over 20 minutes of ice time. He was also excellent in the faceoff dot during that span.
The good news is that the 23-year-old won't need surgery this offseason; he'll take a couple of weeks of the summer to rest and recover before beginning his training.
That precedes a critical 2026-27 campaign for Byfield, as he figures to assume an even bigger role and center the Kings' top line with Anze Kopitar set to retire .
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