The Kings appeared poised to take down longtime nemesis Edmonton, but some key miscues sealed the Oilers’ series win and left Coach Jim Hiller and GM Rob Blake on the hot seat.
Kings head coach Jim Hiller, shown looking on from the bench during a game against the Pittsburgh Penguins earlier this season at Crypto.com Arena, led the team to a solid season and a 2-0 series lead against Edmonton, but everything fell apart from there in a 4-2 series loss.
It’s not often that a campaign in which a team tied single-season franchise records for wins and points while setting a new mark for victories on home ice ends up with both the coach and the general manager on the hot seat, but such is the plight of the Kings. They’ve made beating the Edmonton Oilers in the first round of the playoffs seem like a fool’s errand,. Getting out of the first round in general appears even more Sisyphean since they haven’t done so in 11 years., might be in danger of not having his tenure extended. He’s been at the helm for eight of those 11 seasons, with four different coaches under him, perpetually stuck in neutral with a series of penny thrifty moves overshadowed by repeated pound foolishness.Just a week before the Kings were eliminated from the playoffs, everything was looking rosy for Hiller, who had been an assistant for a season and a half before he Their abrupt turnaround after the March 7 trade deadline this season positioned them as one of the hottest and highest-scoring teams in the NHL down the stretch,They even smelled blood in the water when their mortal enemies from Edmonton, the Oilers, were banged up and knocked around in the final month of the regular season.But then a series of self-induced calamities struck, beginning behind the bench. “I think we lost this series because we couldn’t close the games out,” said Adrian Kempe, whose 10-point rampage wasn’t enough to keep the Kings afloat as they lost four straight games to Edmonton. “Game 4 was maybe our best game of the series overall,” he said. “Game 3 as well, I think after two periods we were really solid. It sucks when you play that well over five out of six games and you come out like this.” Game 3 brought “the challenge,” a decision that was roasted in real time everywhere from the national television broadcast to social media. Hiller, who had an extended look at an Edmonton equalizer during an official review and a timeout still proceeded with an ill-advised challenge that left the Kings shorthanded. They gave up a go-ahead goal while missing a man,. Their defensive posture was akin to a football team playing a deep zone for the entire fourth quarter, all but formally inviting the Oilers to send the game to overtime. There, the Kings were unable to kick back into gear, partially because of the jarring shift from a passive third period to the intensity of playoff overtime, but also because Hiller and right-hand man D.J. Smith had been leaning on their top players, running up their minutes and wearing down their legs in the process. Even as Hiller was ridiculed on the national telecast once again and then asked a very obvious question about better protecting leads late in games – they had retroceded three in four games to that pointafter a 1-0 loss at home put the Kings on the brink of elimination , Hiller engaged in mental gymnastics that emphasized leads earned over leads blown and suggested vaguely at times that the Kings were on the verge of something. As Game 5 proved, what they were on the cusp of was a meltdown. Their listlessness was obvious while the Oilers ran through them like a train tunnel for 60 minutes. Darcy Kuemper’s Herculean effort in net gave the Kings the illusion of a chance, After Game 6 saw them chase the match for more than 40 minutes and fall short once again in a do-or-die scenario, Hiller said he thought his team “played pretty good defense” in the series. That was a curious assessment for a group that made Kuemper face 93 shots in Games 4 and 5 . Kuemper’s goals-against average was just above 2.00 during the year, but the Kings ceded an NHL-worst 4.50 goals per game in the playoffs with him playing every second, apart from empty-net situations. Even in that run-and-gun environment, Hiller and Smith continued to deploy a group of defensemen who consistently generated nothing offensively, as they ran a way-less-than-100% Drew Doughty into the ground, vastly overplayed an ineffective Joel Edmundson and also shortened their forward group to three lines at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, Edmonton found a role for everyone on a roster that is often critiqued as being top-heavy, with Leon Draisaitl snapping his 19-game playoff scoring streak in the clinching game while supporting cast members shined, like No. 2 goalie Calvin Pickard and even beleaguered defenseman Darnell Nurse. Draisaitl and Connor McDavid combined for a modest three points in Games 5 and 6, with two of those coming as assists on an empty-net goal, after chasing a four-points-per-game combined pace across most of the four series against the Kings since 2022. Not only did Hiller over-use his core skaters – when asked if he regretted that, he simply said “no” – he neglected to freely utilize Brandt Clarke and Jordan Spence on the back end. Spence sat for one game and played 2:55 in another as part of very limited duty, while Clarke was also used in a sparing and highly situational fashion. They each scored a goal in Game 6, with Clarke’s being his second of the series to lead all Kings blue-liners and tie for third in the NHL playoffs among defensemen despite playing just 12:47 a night. In the end, Hiller, who had seemed perched comfortably through 84⅔ games, might fall from grace thanks to his ignominious trifecta of poor deployment, weak tactics and foolish decision-making. Blake seemed to be recovering from his own unholy trinity – each time he made a “missing piece” type move, he sabotaged the organization with the likes ofheadlined a group of modestly-priced acquisitions that paid significant dividends, but prior egregious asset mismanagement and a sorely lacking bottom line could see Blake relegated back to the rafters where the No. 4 hangs from his playing days. Music teacher who lost home, beloved Steinway in Eaton fire gets grand piano from Harvey Mudd CollegePolice disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLAMan will stand trial for pedestrian deaths of 4 Pepperdine students on PCHGabriel Fernandez, 8, was tortured to death. His mother didn’t like her life sentence. This is what a judge had to say. Gabriel Fernandez, 8, was tortured to death. His mother didn’t like her life sentence. This is what a judge had to say.
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