LAK AT 48: A BIG HILL(ER) TO CLIMB

LOS ANGELES, CA — The last column I wrote about the Los Angeles Kings season was titled “When is a 100-point team not a 100-point team?” There were varying opinions on whether the club that started off so strongly could find its way back to playing the winning brand of hockey that had some (including myself) declaring the team had taken the next step to legitimate Stanley Cup contention. But in the weeks leading up to the All-Star break, the agonizing streak of losses continued.

The balanced scoring, solid defensive play and steady goaltending that was the signature of the team’s play in the first six weeks of the NHL regular-season had vanished into thin air. Even with a win against the Nashville Predators in the Kings’ final game into the break wasn’t enough to convince General Manager Rob Blake, the only person whose opinion really matters, not to make the change that less than three weeks prior was not an option.

Last Friday morning I received a text from an NHL player: “Who is Jim Hiller?” And at that point, I knew that it was the end of the road for Coach Todd McLellan in Los Angeles.

McLellan’s four and a half season run as the bench boss saw a return to the playoffs but no post season success, extending the franchise’s winless streak in the playoffs to ten years. There was progression from the early days of McLellan’s installation, the strides made during his tenure were numerous and earned him the one-year contract extension over the summer. But no contract term (or cost) can save a coach whose team registers 14 losses in their last 17 games, that record wouldn’t save Scotty Bowman. So, despite the progression from the early non-competitive days of his reign and emergence of players like Adrian Kempe, Quinton Byfield, Trevor Moore and Mikey Anderson, Blake had to take the drastic and risky step of turfing Todd.

As for the timing of the move, the likelihood of the trigger being pulled during the Kings bye week increased exponentially with each poor performance. The back-to-back home losses to San Jose (in a shootout) and Buffalo (blowing a 3-1 first period lead against a lesser team on the back end of a back-to-back) was the turning point.

“We came home, Nashville, San Jose, I believe, didn’t like the direction it was going,” Blake said. “Back on the road into Colorado and obviously St. Louis and finished with Nashville. Nashville, we got the win, but we did not play well.”

In its present state, the team was never getting the win in the Rockies and a clear indication of how far south things had turned is when you look back, the change was made with McLellan’s team earning three points out of four on the road.

A few thoughts on the now-departed coach:

McLellan is a very good coach – 598 NHL wins dispels any other takes. He’s yet to achieve the ultimate goal of the Stanley Cup and with his future as an NHL coach uncertain, he may never attain it. But winning the Stanley Cup isn’t the lone determining factor in assessing the quality of coaching talent. Twenty-six of the current 32 NHL coaches haven’t won a Cup including three coaches who have more wins than McLellan (Lindy Ruff, Paul Maurice and Jacques Martin), so to assess McLellan’s time here solely on his inability to win it all is off base.

The Kings are in a far better place than they were when McLellan landed in Los Angeles almost five years ago. Some have forgotten the woeful days when Willie Desjardins was behind the bench. There were nights when the opposition would take a 2-0 lead five minutes into the game and you knew it was over. The organization had bottomed out from the championship seasons and with the impact of the COVID days making his job more difficult to execute, McLellan took the team from a last place finish in his first season to a 99-point playoff qualifier two seasons later. Did he achieve what Blake thought he could? No. Did every player love to play for him? No coach is THAT good at relationship building. The lack of playoff success the last two seasons and not getting results in the last two months shouldn’t negate his entire body of work.

Both Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar thanked McLellan for his efforts to bring the team back to respectability if not serious championship contention.

“All of us felt that responsibility for (Todd’s firing). You never want to see someone you’ve worked with for so long and someone who brought us from the bottom to the point where we are now (lose their job). You feel bad for Todd but at the same time you have to move on, but we can’t thank him enough,” Doughty said.

“It’s always a hard day for everybody and it would be the hardest for Todd. For sure, it wasn’t entirely his fault and I’m sure it was a hard day for Rob, making that decision. But it’s a hard day (for the players) too, to see somebody go who has done so much for the organization and turn it around,” Kopitar related.

As for my relationship with him, I’m grateful for Todd’s willingness to build a relationship that benefited not only both parties but also the Kings fan base as well. The level of transparency we had with him was far greater when compared to Darryl Sutter – some fans might “who cares, Darryl won” – that point is inarguable, but you’ve learned far more about your team since McLellan was here than the Cup days. It’s not that the Darryl Days were adversarial but there was a clear lack of respect for the media which led to far more mystery, far more unanswered questions, you never really knew why, you just knew “Fly at 11”. The higher level of respect afforded the media by this coach led to more substantive conversations about how and why things were happening. Was there total clarity and transparency during Toddfather Time? That’s a silly question to ask about coaches of professional sports teams.

When it comes to a coach’s approach to media, some get it, McLellan always has even going back to his San Jose and Edmonton days. He saw the value of building the bridge, making it strong and I want to acknowledge it has enhanced my standing on the media landscape. As for his future, I think there’s a chance we’ve seen the last of him as an NHL head coach. The past weeks have weighed on him, I was on the road trip for the difficult overtime losses in Florida and saw that he was as frustrated as his team in their attempt to extract themselves from their tailspin.

At 56 years old, he’s coached 1.144 NHL games (top 25 all time) and likely set financially (those big AEG cheques will keep rolling in for another year) McLellan could walk away from the game. Even if the fortunes had been better in Los Angeles, he wasn’t going to be a coach for life and if I had to guess how much further he would have run as the head man, it would have been before Pierre-Luc Dubois’ contract ends.

As for his successor, who knows if Jim Hiller can get this team back on track given how far they’ve veered off the track. He’s a novice NHL head coach but does have bench boss experience in the BCHL and WHL and with no staff changes other than the addition of another head coach who was terminated this season and has a history with Hiller, D.J. Smith, he has the advantage of staff continuity.

In-season coaching changes are a dice roll, there’s no time to make substantive changes with limited practice time, the results Edmonton is enjoying with the installation of Kris Knobloch is the case study for the move – a new face changed the mindset of the team with a greater dedication to the defensive side of the puck (yes, they do backcheck these days in Northern Alberta). Full credit goes to Knobloch for getting the results, some of them historic but he’s had the benefit of a fully healthy Connor McDavid and Mattias Ekholm (an undersold part of the Oilers early season woes) and Stuart Skinner deciding to make saves.

But it’s far more likely that the results will be what you’ve seen with other teams like Minnesota, Ottawa and St. Louis – a small bump, a quick run but no real change in their status. If you go back further to the teams that appointed new head coaches at season start – Anaheim, Calgary, Columbus, Nashville, Calgary, Washington, and the New York Rangers – it shows that a head coaching change isn’t a direct line to better play.

Like the aforementioned coaches, it will really help Hiller if he gets a save from his goalies with the game on the line, his bottom-six start finding the back of the net and if his third highest paid player returns from the break with a much higher level of engagement. With 34 games remaining, you’ll likely to see the same approach and structure but Hiller biggest accomplishment may be to restore confidence to this struggling team. During a 10-game segment of this losing stretch, Los Angeles incurred six one-goal losses to which Blake admits significantly impacted the psyche of the team.

“Very much,” Blake said. “(Losing) confidence, if I could describe it, I wish I could. But it’s the same players we had here 24 games in, when we were doing things really well, playing hard. A word that has been used lately is ‘disconnect,’ like our team has played disconnected. I don’t think the last little while here we were going with the same type of connection we had early in the season.”

During Thursday’s introductory meeting as head coach, Hiller concurred with his new boss about how he can be a change agent in the short term.

“The most important thing for me after being around the team, which played very well for the first 24 games in the season, is just getting our frame of mind back where it needs to be,” Hiller said. “So that's my priority. That's 95% of my priority... getting that back where it needs to be because if we can help those guys get back there. We’ll have time to implement some other types of changes that eventually you guys will say – maybe they're doing something different.”

Doughty affirmed that the team’s psyche has taken a big hit over the past six weeks.

“I think we need to get back to believing how good of a team we can be when we’re doing the right things,” he said. “We’re really a close group off the ice... if we start believing in each other like we did at the start of the season, I think a lot of things will change and we’ll go back to playing the way we were at the beginning (of the season).”

In the final 34 regular-season games, the larger hill to climb for the Los Angeles Kings is the mental approach to their 60-minute effort. Despite all the losses they are starting the stretch run on Saturday still in a playoff spot. They don’t have to climb over teams, they don’t need help, they need to start playing winning hockey. It would be great to make a statement on Saturday against Edmonton but given the way both teams are trending, it’s a big ask for a team playing that poorly coming off a bye week. Moreover, like the Rangers and Avalanche games, the Oilers game isn’t a must-win but what follows is.

The Kings season may boil down to the slate of games starting with Tuesday’s road game against the Buffalo Sabres. Over the space of seven games, Los Angeles will only be a clear-cut underdog in Boston on February 17. The balance of the games (New Jersey, Pittsburgh on the road, Columbus, Nashville and Anaheim at home) are winnable games but the majority of the last 17 games were winnable, too.

Jim Hiller’s ability to coach his team to victories during this stretch will go a long way in determining the fate of the season and likely, much more.