There was a vote of confidence. Until there wasn’t.
The Kings sacked Todd McLellan on Friday after 4½ seasons coaching the club, and just two weeks after General Manager Rob Blake said he was “not at all” considering a change behind the bench.
After a promising beginning to the season, which included an NHL-record 11-0 start on the road, the Kings endured an eight-game losing streak, the impetus for a recent stretch of losing 14 of their last 17 games.
In a statement, the team said it promoted assistant Jim Hiller to interim head coach, and that Hiller, 54, would finish the rest of this season. It was a campaign that had gone from overflowing with offense to circling the drain during an alarmingly rapid descent that saw McClellan’s club win the fewest games of any team over a monthlong span, even as the Chicago Blackhawks’ January provided a Hindenburg disaster to counterbalance the Kings’ Titanic.
“We want to thank Todd for his hard work and dedication to the organization,” Blake said in the statement. “He has done a tremendous job in moving us forward and making a positive impact on our group and in our community”
“This was not an easy decision, but we felt the change was necessary at this time. Jim is a well-respected member of our staff who is familiar with our players. We are confident in his ability to lead our team effectively during this pivotal time.”
Hiller, a second-year assistant with the Kings who counted running the power play among his duties, has no prior head coaching experience at the professional level, neither in the NHL nor the minor pro ranks. He had last been a head coach in the Western Hockey League, a junior league where he won Coach of the Year honors in 2012, before beginning his career as an NHL assistant in 2014.
Hiller has had stints with three other franchises before joining the Kings last season, when he turned around a historically hapless power play, only to be eliminated by a historically efficient one, that of the Edmonton Oilers.
Of course, 2012 and 2014 were also significant years for the Kings, when they won the franchise’s only two Stanley Cups under the watch of executive Dean Lombardi and bench boss Darryl Sutter. Two seasons after Blake took over for Lombardi, who was dismissed alongside Sutter in 2017, he tabbed the 56-year-old McLellan as the man to transform the ashes and remaining embers of the golden era into a Phoenix.
McLellan, who has a career mark of 598-412-134 with his 598 regular-season wins ranking 23rd in NHL history, was 169-138-44 with the Kings. He had seemed relieved that the team went into the All-Star break with a 4-2 victory over Nashville on Wednesday.
“We still have a long way to go get our game back, but to go into the break feeling a little bit good about ourselves is a real good thing,” he said after the game.
In his first year leading them, an end-of-season win streak was dashed at seven games only by the league-wide pandemic pause. Year 2, another COVID-truncated campaign, served mostly to finish chopping up the remnants of the Cup-winning rosters, paring the group down to Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick.
In 2021-22, McLellan’s highest finish in the Jack Adams voting for the NHL’s best coach, Doughty was injured for much of the season, a rarity for the durable defenseman. Quick had an unexpected resurgence, reclaiming his net, while Kopitar remained as steady as ever, leading the team in scoring.
The Kings made the playoffs despite doubts outside the organization, a mountain of injuries, a torrent of call-ups and improvisation more fit for a jazz trio than an NHL coaching staff. The low-flying but shrewd offseason that gave them Phil Danault, Viktor Arvidsson (who missed the playoffs with a back injury) and Alex Edler elevated expectations and motivated harder swings from a theretofore conservative management group.
McLellan’s group was deeper, more tenacious and vastly improved on the power play last season, armed with a resurgent Gabe Vilardi, a healthy Doughty, a recovered Arvidsson and significant additions made via trade over the summer (their points-per-game leader Kevin Fiala) and at the trade deadline (big blue-liner Vladislav Gavrikov and rental goalie Joonas Korpisalo, who not only supplanted Quick but unceremoniously excommunicated him from the organization).
The result, however, was a second consecutive ousting by the Oilers, a team McLellan had guided in his prior stop. His time in Edmonton came between stints with the Kings and San Jose Sharks, who were reverse-swept by the Kings in 2014 after holding a 3-0 lead in the first round under McLellan. McLellan had previously won the Stanley Cup in 2008 with Detroit as an assistant. His salary with the Kings was among the highest per-annum compensation in NHL history.
Before the season, however, a one-year extension was whispered softly into McLellan’s ear, with the team making zero announcement and the news only emerging months later out of Toronto, rather than Los Angeles. McLellan, Blake, Hiller and defense-focused assistant Trent Yawney were on synchronized timelines that would see their existing contracts expire after next season. The front office also got bolder, making a dizzying series of moves to retain Gavrikov and acquire center Pierre-Luc Dubois and sign him to a lucrative eight-year contract.
Gavrikov has not been at the same level since sustaining a knee injury in mid-December. Dubois has reified fans’ worst fears as a $68 million albatross, his 10 goals and 10 assists in 47 games giving him the appearance of being an exorbitantly priced square peg that hasn’t fit into any of several round holes in the Kings’ lineup.
Those timelines did not spell out rousing support from ownership for McLellan or Blake. Principal owner Phillip Anschutz has been typically mum about the comings and goings of the team, publicly, but missing the playoffs and battering his bottom line could prompt further action.
Even with the Kings clinging tightly to a wild-card spot, they opted not to pursue a veteran coach, despite 2019 Stanley Cup winner Craig Berube and McLellan protege Jay Woodcroft, who coached Edmonton last season, among those available. That tempered decision might have sent a message to Blake that if things don’t turn around, a new GM could be naming a new head coach next season.
The Kings don’t play again until Feb. 10 against Edmonton ahead of a five-game Eastern road trip.
