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After firing Todd McLellan at the All-Star Break, the Los Angeles Kings have been able to build back a bit of momentum.
With five games under Jim Hiller, along with newly hired assistant coach D.J. Smith, the team has managed to post a 4-1-0 record – though the first two games under Hiller came with drastically different results. The Kings saw the initial bump from the coaching change against the red-hot Edmonton Oilers, where they put together a strong outing en route to a 4-0 shutout win. However, the very next game, they fell flat with one of their worst performances of the season, losing 7-0 to the sub- .500 Buffalo Sabres.
Since then, however, the Kings have put together three very stable performances to sweep the remaining games of their Eastern Conference road trip. After coming out of New Jersey with a 2-1 win over the Devils, the Kings managed not one, but two comeback wins in the games that followed, beating the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins.
Hiller hasn’t been afraid to switch lines around in his short tenure with the team as well, and while Carl Grundstrom was injured in the loss to Buffalo and Blake Lizotte remains unavailable, the Kings were able to take advantage of a returning Viktor Arvidsson.
We saw Quinton Byfield moved down to play alongside Pierre-Luc Dubois and Alex Laferriere, while Arvidsson returned to play with Phillip Danault and Trevor Moore, and Kevin Fiala was moved up to play with Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe. However, Hiller was also shifting around lines in Pittsburgh, so we can expect when things aren’t clicking, he won’t be afraid to make a change quickly.
Fiala, Danault and Moore have all been a little cold recently, but the majority of the top-nine has been contributing over recent games, with Pierre-Luc Dubois notably providing more of an impact than he has through most of the year. With Kopitar in particular, it was also good to see him getting back on the board as of late, after managing two points in the final nine games of McLellan’s tenure.
On the other hand, Arthur Kaliyev is another storyline, and while he did get into the lineup against Pittsburgh, he only played just over six minutes. It would be great to see him getting more of an opportunity, even if it hasn’t been a great year for him to this point. With Alex Turcotte also getting into games but only playing about five minutes, it’s pretty tough to get much of a sense of what kind of impact Turcotte can provide (even if there’s not really a spot for him when Lizotte is healthy).
Regardless though, while the Kings have struggled a bit with scoring in the last couple months, the game against Boston in particular was a boost of confidence that Los Angeles is still capable of being able to go back-and-forth in a high-scoring game when they need to.
On the blue line, the notable development was that Hiller brought Brandt Clarke back into the lineup in place of Jordan Spence, following the loss to Buffalo. Suiting up for the three games since, Clarke’s already made an impact and scored the game winner against Boston for his first NHL goal.
In net, the Kings have also been benefiting from fairly steady goaltending. While the loss to the Sabres was one to forget, David Rittich put up really strong performances against Edmonton and New Jersey in particular, while Cam Talbot looked good against the Penguins. Over the last stretch of games, there’s not much to complain about goaltending-wise for Los Angeles.
So dating back to Todd McLellan’s last game behind the bench, the Kings have won five of their last six games. Five of those games have also come on the road, with a couple of them against a high quality of competition. If one is willing to write off the game in Buffalo, Los Angeles has been putting forward pretty strong performances under Hiller.
The Kings will also have a favourable schedule coming up this week, with a three-game homestand where they’ll exclusively face teams outside the current playoff picture, in the Columbus Blue Jackets, Nashville Predators, and Anaheim Ducks. It’s a great chance for the team to continue building back some of the momentum that was lost, and to start working their way back up the Western Conference standings.
So while it’s a very limited sample size of play since the coaching change, the Kings are trending in the right direction for the first time in a while.
OTHER ARTICLES FROM FEBRUARY
- Kings fire Todd McLellan, name Jim Hiller as interim head coach 
Los Angeles Kings Blogger • 
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