The Kings have fired head coach Todd McLellan, according to a team statement Friday. Assistant Jim Hiller will serve as Los Angeles’ interim head coach for the remainder of the 2023-24 season.
McLellan, 56, was in the final season of a five-year contract earning him roughly $5MM per season, according to CapFriendly. He’d signed a one-year extension prior to this season, which the Kings will still owe him.
The veteran NHL head coach oversaw the Kings’ return to relevancy after their late-2010s retool, posting a 164-130-44 record in 338 appearances and guiding them to playoff berths in back-to-back seasons for the first time since a five-year run between 2010 and 2014. A team with Stanley Cup aspirations this year has now fallen out of the divisional playoff picture, though, going 3-8-6 in their last 17 games and narrowly occupying a Wild Card spot.
Most pointed to the Kings’ lack of stable goaltending entering the season as a reason why their record might crumble. Interestingly enough, that hasn’t been the case. While he’s going through a recent rut, veteran Cam Talbot has given Los Angeles above-average play with a .911 SV% and 2.5 goals saved above expected (per MoneyPuck) in 32 appearances. Since a mid-season recall from AHL Ontario, backup David Rittich has been excellent, with a .925 SV% and a 5-1-3 record in 11 games.
They’ve also dominated possession. Their expected goals share and Corsi share at 5-on-5 play both rank third in the league, but despite that, their offense has struggled to produce with subpar shooting talent. Their 152 goals scored rank 16th in the league at the All-Star break – exactly in the middle of the pack.
That would still assign blame to a roster construction issue and not a coaching one, given the team’s systems under McLellan, have been conducive to dominating play. The team’s biggest offseason swing, a trade and subsequent eight-year, $68MM extension for Pierre-Luc Dubois, has crashed and burned. The 25-year-old has 10 goals and 20 points in 48 games, far below expectations. He’s averaging under 16 minutes per game and has a team-worst -16 rating.
Nonetheless, Los Angeles will turn to a different voice to ensure they maintain their playoff spot and don’t slide further down the Western Conference standings. Hiller has been on the Kings’ staff since the beginning of last season after being let go as an assistant by the Islanders in the 2022 offseason. Prior to a three-year tenure on Long Island, Hiller served as an assistant in Toronto from 2015 to 2019 and spent the 2014-15 season as an assistant on the Red Wings’ bench. Before ascending to the NHL coaching ranks, he spent nearly a decade as a head coach in the WHL with the Chilliwack Bruins and Tri-City Americans.
Hiller’s NHL career was short-lived, but 40 of his 63 games came wearing a Kings jersey in the 1992-93 season when the Wayne Gretzky-led team advanced to the Stanley Cup Final. Hiller was involved in a major mid-season trade with the Red Wings that year, heading to Detroit along with future Hall-of-Famer Paul Coffey in a deal for winger Jimmy Carson.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
For the 5 Kings fans out there… you agree with this? Doughty’s posting concern about bad club house vibes just confirmed what we all saw.
Bad clubhouse vibes are because they’re playing horrible of late. I guarantee the vibes were good when they were one of the top two teams in the league earlier in the year.
I’m okay with the firing. I mean, look what it did for Edmonton. You gotta do something and it’s much easier to change coaches than it is to change the roster.
But why do “you gotta do something?” Who’s to say Edmonton wouldn’t have gotten back on track with Woodcroft still there? When Woodcroft got the axe no one was saying “We hate Jay Woodcroft.” Just like I didn’t hear anyone saying “Todd McLellan is clearly the issue here.”
Although I 100% agree with you about “vibes.” Those tend to clear up very nicely when the team starts winning.
are you arguing against the oilers canning woodcroft?
the oilers weren’t even in games with woody, they are now the cup favourite by some books.
The thing is: Edmonton was vastly underperforming their metrics with Woody. They were due for a turnaround with or without him. It’s the old “How does anyone parse how much influence the coach has on team wins” conversation. It’s ripe for subjective opinions & rarely rooted in objective facts.
As a Kings fan, I completely disagree with this. The Kings were a top two team in the Pacific Division until January’s floundering. Even now, they are still 8 games over .500. The rate coaches get fired is ridiculous. He had one bad month. There was still time to rite the ship.
Midseason firings when a team is doing well overall in the standings is puzzling but certainly gives credence to clubhouse dissension. There is obviously something we don’t know about that prompted this and not just a regular midseason move/adjustment. I’m not sure we will ever really know…
You know, I’m not sure why I think you have to do something . I mean, they were absolutely dominant at the start of the season (especially on the road) but then they crashed.
As far as the Oilers, there no way to tell if they would be successful with Woodcroft still there. But you can’t argue with their results.
Good points all around.
You must be the 1 Ducks fan!
Maybe Blake is attempting to cover his behind by blaming the coach. Maybe the coach lost the “room.” Doughty’s comments seem to suggest this. But you don’t have to be a GM to realize Talbot was a big risk and to sink your chips into DuBois when you needed goalie stability, not smart. But it’s easy to criticize in hindsight.
They fired the wrong person. PLD has been brutul. Goaltending suspect.
I’m good with this, although probably not his fault in the bigger picture.
The players Blake got don’t fit the system that he is running. Never mind the PLD debacle.
This is a last ditch effort to turn the season around and had to be done. Blake will be next if things don’t end well this year.
Agreed. Instead of firing the Coach, how about calling up the Bruins and see what the asking price is for Swayman or Ullmark? If not with the Bruins, how about inquiring on Saros?
I’m not naive enough to think this hasn’t already been done, but give McClellan a chance to at least finish the season. As I mentioned earlier, there’s got to be something else that prompted this.
Blake should be next
Easier to fire the coach… maybe the team got too comfortable believed their own hype, but yeah a band aid approach for goalie not the long term answer.
They could have Cal Peterson back.
Weird that this team with subpar goaltending has underachieved. Must be bad coaching.
Also…love the “we expected to contend and we have HIGHER standards so here’s this nobody” move.
Find a goalie.
This team is too good to play so bad the past month! Todd lost the room and they weren’t going to fire PLD! Now, If they miss the playoffs, Blake is next!
I’d have to agree that Blake is definitely in the hot seat here. I’d say if they don’t make it past the first round he’s gone. He’s made some good moves but has also done some not so great ones too.
I would agree on PLD and Blake. He was a peculiar signing from the get go. I think Blake was so desperate for another goal scorer that he resorted to him, but there were other better options in my opinion.
Trade* not signing
This move is Rob Blake’s excuse for his poor management and team transactions.
“He’s our coach…for the moment…”
-Signed,
Every NHL GM
Blake’s performance has garnered inconsistent results… Gary was a good acquisition, DuBois not so much particulary when there was a goalie needed and he preferred to sink his chips into Dubois.
Gary?
Maybe Hiller will fix the offense. I never understood the benching of Kaliyev and then keeping him off the power play when he did play. I also don’t get how their leading goal scorer isn’t on the PP1…I’m no expert by any stretch, but those two things have puzzled me, especially when their offense has been struggling so badly.
Kaliyev seems pretty lost when you watch him play. Loads of potential but just a wrong fit. It’s certainly possible that a change of coach scheme could boost him, but jury is still out on that.
Kings have had a history of trying to turn players into what they aren’t. Duchesne, Ponikarovsky, Penner, Kovalchuk, PLD!
This either ends up like 2006 (Dave Taylor gets fired after firing Andy Murray) or 2012.
Hopefully after this idiotic decision they continue to fail and fail hard.
why?
Kings should have seen the Dubois debacle coming. Guy has been a whiny pain in the *** his whole career. No excuse for such a mistake – poor planning.
Fire the genius who made the Dubois trade. I said it at the time but I’d rather have Vilardi alone compared to Dubois, everything else was just gravy for Winnipeg.
Vilardi’s ceiling is 50 points. PLD’s is 60-70. Vilardi gets hurt all the time (he’s hurt right now). PLD has no injury history
Unless lack of effort considered an injury!
On January 9, 2022, Marc Bergevin was hired as a senior advisor to the general manager for the Los Angeles Kings.
On June 27, 2023, Pierre-Luc Dubois signed an eight-year, $68 million contract for the Los Angeles Kings.
They changed the broadcast team, that led to the PLDs acquisition.
It had to be done, Todd needed to go. I thought it was interesting that Craig Berube was doing commentary on TNT intermission report for the Preds/Kings game. Maybe Blake was watching, LOL.
Blake should be next, IMO.
Why did Todd need to go? He had one bad month
He lost the room. It happens to the best of them. I also think the Kings goaltending has hidden a lot of problems with Todd’s system. And let’s be real, bounced twice by Edmonton in the first round and now this? He had to go.
Fair enough take. By all accounts it seemed like things were turning around at the start of the season, but perhaps the combination of what you mentioned led the Kings brass to be more proactive in addressing it now before it continued to snowball.
Scenario — The Kings make the playoffs and get bounced in the first round, resulting in the dismissal of Rob Blake. His replacement? Marc Bergevin. Then, get ready for Habs’ Debacle, Part Deux, the left coast version.
It seemed like the Kings weren’t going to bring Todd back, so ejecting him now isn’t the end of the world for either entity. He’s a good coach, and why teams decide to bin good coaches is typically shrouded in mystery, I don’t understand anyone saying he “needed to go.” Not every team is Edmonton and miraculously goes on a world-beating tear just because the old coach is gone.
Even the great Darryl Sutter got canned! They should bring him back, it worked before!
YES! I loved Sutter!!
Todd’s out, and it was the right move.
Everyone stomping on PLD when he’s only 40 games into an 8-year deal is a bit laughable. What if he lit it up in year one, and then sucked for the next 7? T-Mac NEVER gave him any wingers that meshed with him, and also wouldn’t bump Kopi down to 3C after his slumping was obvious.
I know PLD can give more, and am hoping for such. I feel it’s too early to call him a bust. If he puts up sub-20 goals NEXT season, then yeah, it was a bad deal. But let the dude play it out and maybe not have to center between 4th line caliber wings night in-out.
Also, maybe Hiller can find a way to get Kaliyev reignited… I’m not big on Kaliyev, but he IS a weapon we can utilize more effectively if he gets the right looks.
#GoKings.
This doesn’t suprise me in the least. Long overdue.
I guess this means that they won’t be obtaining a new goalie?