EP Rinkside 2021-22 Prospect Pool Rankings: No. 1-ranked Los Angeles Kings

The Los Angeles Kings boast the NHL's top prospect pool for the second straight season. It's a testament to the organization's focused rebuild and the way their scouts masterfully handled the bounty of futures that lined their war chest in the past few drafts.

Quinton Byfield leads the way as the league's top prospect, and in Brandt Clarke they boast the sport's seventh-best defensive prospect. Behind them is a legion of blue-chip prospects, nearly every one of them with credible, albeit less ambitious NHL aspirations all their own.

To place the strength of their system in the appropriate context, consider this. The Kings' surplus prospects, the players who didn't factor into the team's ranking or Future Value score by virtue of not cracking the top-15, would make for a better system than the 31st-ranked New York Islanders.

The priorities of this organization are shifting, though, and the hope is that they might leverage some of these promising prospects to better ends in the coming years than they've enjoyed in the last three seasons. They've sowed the seeds, and now they want to reap the bounty of their harvest.

Let's look at the players who are going to lead the charge.