The Kings put a merciful end to the Jim Hiller era, relieving the 30th coach in franchise history of his duties on Sunday morning after losing five of their past six games and falling out of playoff position.
D.J. Smith was named the interim replacement for the rest of the season in the first coaching change by general manager Ken Holland, who kept Hiller behind the bench when he took over the front office last May. Player development coach Matt Greene is joining Smith’s staff as an assistant.
“I want to thank Jim Hiller for his dedication, professionalism, and the commitment he showed to our players and our team every day: He is a respected coach and person, and we appreciate the work he’s done behind our bench,” Holland said in a release. “At this point in the season, we believe a change in leadership is necessary to give our group the best opportunity to reach its potential and compete at the level we expect. These decisions are never made lightly, but our responsibility is to position this team for success now and moving forward.”
Earlier this season, they had been linked to former Dallas Stars bench boss Peter DeBoer but dismissed any speculation of a coaching change. Just a few weeks later, they are looking for steward No. 31, which will be their fifth coach in nine seasons under Kings team president Luc Robitaille and two different general managers.
Hiller coached the Kings for one full campaign and parts of two others after he replaced Todd McLellan in February 2024. McLellan guided the group through 338 games, more than Hiller, Willie Desjardins and John Stevens coached combined for the Kings.
The Kings threw themselves behind Hiller at multiple turns despite the presence of red flags and availability of emergency exits. First, they promoted him to interim coach instead of Marco Sturm or Trent Yawney, both of whom had higher level head-coaching experience than Hiller. Yawney rejoined McLellan in Detroit, where the duo has resuscitated the Red Wings. Sturm was hired by the Boston Bruins, who have bounced back brilliantly from a disappointing year under his predecessor Joe Sacco.
Then, despite a pathetic showing in the playoffs against the Edmonton Oilers that saw them snuffed out in five games, the Kings removed the interim tag from Hiller with a three-year contract.
Ostensibly, he rewarded their confidence, producing a franchise-record number of home wins and a 105-point campaign that equaled the highest total in team lore (albeit only the sixth highest in the NHL last season alone).
But then the playoffs commenced, wherein Hiller committed coaching malpractice.
Though he not-so-subtly scapegoated players, Quinton Byfield the foremost among them, Hiller’s own foolhardy challenge was the initial turning point toward a collapse that saw the Kings convert a 2-0 series lead into a 4-2 series loss.
The Kings’ painfully defensive posture against a tenacious Edmonton team – they’re quite familiar as the Oilers have knocked them out of four straight first rounds – was sugarcoated in absolution for Hiller, presented unconvincingly as “human nature.”
The Kings could have explored a coaching market that saw Joel Quenneville come to Anaheim and Mike Sullivan go to New York – they have half a dozen Stanley Cups between them – while reputed coaches like DeBoer, Peter Laviolette and Gerard Gallant remained unemployed.
Not only did Hiller give them cause to make a change, but general manager Rob Blake opted not to return to the club, accepting responsibility for the fact that during his tenure the Kings never won a playoff series. Even before Ken Holland was formally introduced as Blake’s successor, Robitaille said he expected the next general manager to retain Hiller as head coach, which Holland did.
The offseason saw the Kings improve depth – Joel Armia and Corey Perry have been valuable peripheral contributors while Anton Forsberg has proven a more capable backup goalie than David Rittich – but weaken their core.
Vladislav Gavrikov, who was voted the team’s best defenseman last year but deemphasized in the playoffs, went from a slam-dunk re-signing to an unexpected departure, as Matt Roy was a year earlier. They rank Nos. 1 and 2 in the NHL in five-on-five defensive contribution this season.
Furthermore, Hiller’s sudden and unexplained distrust of Jordan Spence manifested in the front office over the summer. Spence played 150 regular-season games with excellent two-way metrics as a third pairing defenseman, despite playing with partners with significant limitations. Yet he was scratched for one game and played less than three minutes in another last postseason, seeing his role become marginal at best.
Informed that he would be demoted to a depth role, Spence asked for a trade and was dealt to the Ottawa Senators for two mid-round draft picks.
Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci were signed from a thin free-agent crop after an aborted attempt to acquire Calgary’s Rasmus Andersson, who declined to sign an extension with the Kings.
The result was the Kings have one of the slowest and least skilled defense corps in the NHL, diluting what had been the core strength of their roster in recent years and the fulcrum of their check-for-chances system.
Though their point total placed them in the thick of a tepid Pacific Division, the Kings had fewer regulation wins than only five of the NHL’s 32 teams. While Hiller joined the Kings as an assistant in charge of the power play, he and man-advantage specialist Newell Brown had a team that was at or near the botton in power-play conversion rate and among the lowest scoring teams in the league this season.
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