The LA Kings are North of the border in Quebec City to close out their pre-season schedule with a pair of neutral-site games, after which they’ll remain on the road for an additional two weeks to open the 2024-25 season away from Los Angeles. Three weeks on the road for any NHL team is a bit of an anomaly and it has Joel Edmundson a little nervous.
Edmundson and his wife, Ebony, who is originally from Scotland, are expecting their first child in a couple of weeks. The soon-to-be dad knows that he’ll need to be home for the birth, which means he may have to abandon the Kings’ east coast road trip to do it.
The Edmundsons settled into a Hermosa Beach home about a month before the Kings opened training camp and have spent all their free time since readying the nursery for the arrival of their newest addition. Although they’re new to the neighborhood, the local delivery drivers are surely now quite familiar with their residence, thanks, in part, to the plethora of Amazon orders that were necessary to complete the jungle-themed nursery. The Brandon, Manitoba native has been busy putting up wallpaper to compliment the palm trees, monkeys, giraffes and elephants that will welcome Baby Edmundson, whose gender will remain a surprise until he or she is born.
“No, I don’t,” asserts Edmundson on whether he has a gender preference. “We’re pretty easy-going. In a perfect world it would be an older brother and maybe two girls. I definitely want a girl, or maybe two boys and a girl. I would like one and one, that’d be cool.”
The 31-year-old defenseman signed with the Kings as an unrestricted free agent on July 1st after having played last season for the Washington Capitals and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Prior to that, he spent three years with the Montreal Canadiens after his first four seasons with the St. Louis Blues. He was drafted by the Blues in the second round, 46th overall, in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft and won a Stanley Cup with St. Louis in 2019.
Coming to Los Angeles was an easy decision for Edmundson.
“They made it very clear that I was the guy that they wanted, and it feels good to be wanted,” explains Edmundson, who will likely be paired with a younger defense partner this season. “I reached out to several guys that have played here in the past and/or are currently on the team and everyone raved about it. So it was kind of a no-brainer for me.”
The hockey scene in Montreal and Toronto, compared to LA, couldn’t be more polar opposite.
“I was only in Toronto for a short period, but I was also in Montreal, too, so same thing there, high-pressure,” adds Edmundson. “They ask a lot of you, but that’s like anywhere. You have to rise to that occasion, right? The media is probably easier down here and you don’t hear stuff on TV everyday, but at the end of the day, you’re playing hockey and you still have to perform every night. So you just try to block that out when you’re up there and you don’t find it too bad.”