For Kings fans, there are likely no words that will make the sting of the past week go away anytime soon. It can be a frustration that comes from many different angles, often with a plethora of layers added in. There’s no right time to turn the page following the end of a team’s regular season either. If they win the Stanley Cup, let the parties flow all summer. Yet, the other 31 teams have to pick up the pieces and move forward with plans for next year — often before the fanbase is ready.
With that in mind we begin today with an apology to all the Kings fans who are still in disbelief LA was eliminated by Edmonton in the first round. It’s a bummer and you have every right to be angry, confused, and full of questions. We have many weeks ahead to try and help dissect it all for you. And we appreciate that many of you have strong opinions as to what should happen next. We have several opinions too, some of which will be shared on a future Kings Of The Podcast episode, where there is proper time for a full discussion, along with more context and reasoning to be laid out.
For now, we simply bring a little information, along with some brief tidbits.
Hiller and Blake to Return
From everything we’ve been able to gather over the past 24 hours, it appears Blake and Hiller will remain in place for the 2025-26 season. While nothing is official — and it seems the entire organization is taking the weekend to decompress a bit after what just happened — these are the indications we’ve been getting through multiple sources.
Did the coach make questionable decisions in the playoffs? Absolutely. And those are things that will need to be answered for and discussed moving forward. However, as emotions settle, the flip side of the coin seems to also be visible. Hiller guided the team to 105 points during the regular season. It’s more than Todd McLellan did, or any other Kings coach in decades. That’s apparently hard to dismiss over what happened in a few playoff games, even if postseason performance carries more weight.
There are almost surely other factors; what they are, we’ll attempt to uncover in the days and weeks ahead. Yes, the power play — a primarily reason for their loss to the Oilers last season — was remarkedly better this time around.
While the notes highlighted in the above tweet are true, there remains plenty more to discuss at a later date. Regarding the failed challenge in Game 3, as horrific as it might look in hindsight, that’s likely not enough to get a coach fired. For a slight comparable, take the case of Jim Montgomery. He is universally considered one of the NHL’s better bench bosses, and major gaffes in Boston were not enough to initially get him dismissed nor to diminish his reputation. Another case in point would be Peter DeBoer. Why does a guy like that get repeated chances? The answer is partially that good coaches can be hard to find at the top level. And if one guides you to 105 points, there should at least be reasonable consideration to the fact that much of what he did was positive.
Additional Context
One thing we’d hope Hiller would not repeat in the future is playing his veterans so many minutes. That game plan didn’t appear to work well, and we’ll assume it’s something he’s going to review at length over the summer. Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty are future Hall of Fame players. Their numbers will be in the rafters of Crypto.com Arena at some point. They also should not be leading the team in minutes played. Those days are in the rear-view mirror. The long talked about transition to the next generation is here and should be now.
That being said, there is still a lot of inexperience on this team. LA entered the playoffs with more than a handful of players who lacked postseason action.
For every hardened veteran there was somebody who came with question marks.
Andrei Kuzmenko had never played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Neither had Brandt Clarke, Alex Turcotte, Sammy Helenius, Jeff Malott, or Jacob Moverare.
Alex Laferriere had five games of playoff experience. Jordan Spence had eight.
That’s not why they lost. Not at all. Yet, it’s an important factor when looking back at the reasons behind Blake adding guys like Warren Foegele and Joel Edmundson last summer. Experience matters.
And the other key piece acquired at that time was Tanner Jeannot. It had even been said that one of the main reasons they traded for the 27-year-old forward was for Game 83. Unfortunately, he wasn’t available to play vs. Edmonton. That alone will be one of the many (many!) ‘what ifs’ that could be debated over the off-season.
Brief Look Ahead
We would expect the Kings to explore adding a few more experienced players to their lineup this summer — not to take minutes away from young players, but rather to surround them with additional support.
There needs to be a greater emphasis on letting those young players shine. They’ve proven (albeit in smaller sample sizes) that they’re up for the challenge. Yes, Quinton Byfield made a costly mistake late in a game. That doesn’t take away from the growth he’s shown this season. He’s blossomed into a well-earned larger role on the team.
Although Clarke had an up and down regular season according to some, he’s better today than he was 12 months ago because of the experience gained. Byfield has taken noticeable steps each of the past three seasons. We expect Clarke to show similar — if not greater — levels of improvement next season.
There’s also the salary cap.
Roster Changes
The Kings will have roster openings this summer and money to spend.
For starters, Trevor Lewis is likely retiring, and David Rittich is not expected back.
We’re still of the belief that Vladislav Gavrikov will sign a contract extension (details forecasted here).
Jeannot will be an unrestricted free agent, as will Kuzmenko.
Erik Portillo is assumed to be taking over as the No. 2 goalie. His Reign teammate Andre Lee is also expected to join him in the NHL.
Laferriere will need a new contract, he’s a restricted free agent on July 1.
When all of the above transactions are completed, the Kings should have nearly $15M more to spend (due to a combination of the salary cap increasing, retention money coming off the books, etc. — again, we did a deeper dive on the numbers here).
Hopefully, they can add a player with that elusive intangible; that grit or it factor. They need at least one Matt Greene, Mike Richards, or Jarret Stoll type guy. We wrote about it several years ago, and then it was paused during the rebuild. The time is now.
Even so, the Kings won’t just be ‘running it back’ next season. They’ll be adding to a group that finished as one of the best in the league over the final few months of the season… and produced 105 points… and earned valuable playoff experience for some of their young core.
If they learn from their mistakes of the 2025 playoffs, and add some more grit, the future looks a lot brighter than it did each of the last three summers.
As we often say, more to come.
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