Holland disappointed by Kings’ season, but focused on retooling

In his opening remarks at Friday’s end-of-season media availability, Los Angeles Kings general manager Ken Holland made clear his disappointment with the team’s regression and playoff result.

“As I sit here today, I’m not happy,” he said. “I know [team president] Luc Robitaille is not happy. Our players aren’t happy. It was a disappointing season. It was a disappointing season for our fans. Under .500 at home, 29th in the league in goals scored, squeaked into the playoffs, got swept out by a Presidents’-Trophy-winning [Colorado Avalanche] team. So I’m not happy.”

Holland went on to cite further reasons for his disappointment, including bad special teams. But later in the session, he returned to a narrative that has pervaded the Kings all season.

“I think there’s only six teams in the league that have made the playoffs five years in a row,” he said. (This is true, and the Kings are one of them.) “It’s hard to make the playoffs. The team’s gotten into the playoffs … and now you gotta find a way to get over the hurdle. So I think you gotta keep at it.”

Holland noted the slim margins in the Pacific Division this season as justification for his argument. While the Avalanche, Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild dominated the Western Conference out of the Central Division, the Kings finished just five points back of first place in the Pacific.

Holland, who has nearly 30 years of experience as a general manager with the Detroit Red Wings, Edmonton Oilers and Kings, isn’t interested in blowing up the current roster for a rebuild. He cited an example from his time in Detroit in 2016, the one time in his career he has been involved in a complete teardown. The Red Wings have not made the playoffs since then.

“We had made the playoffs 25 years in a row, and then there was this push for rebuild, rebuild, rebuild, rebuild,” he said. “And I said at that press conference, when you head into rebuild modes, it’s eight to 10 years till you come out on the other side, with no guarantees. I would say to you, we have lots of good players. I gotta build a better team.”

Holland’s first order of business this offseason is to hire a permanent head coach after firing Jim Hiller on March 1 and making D.J. Smith the interim head coach. He said that he aims to interview five to eight candidates with a range of head coaching experience levels, and that Smith will be one of those candidates.

The Kings produced a better record with Smith in charge than Hiller, but Holland was defiant at the idea that he could have produced a better season result had he dismissed Hiller sooner.

“I don’t really regret any decisions I’ve ever made as a manager,” he said. “I’ve got more information today than I had a year ago on some things. But there’ll be information I got today that I didn’t have at the time. So you take the information at the time, at the moment, and then you make your decisions, and then you don’t look back. At the end of the day, I don’t think any manager in this league’s ever been batting 100% on decisions … you’re going to make some decisions that don’t work, but certainly I have no regrets. Felt good about Jim Hiller taking over the year after 105 points last year … but the team was playing at an inconsistent level, and kept waiting for it to kind of find its footing, and it didn’t.”

It’s clear that Holland will be focused on retooling the Kings rather than overhauling them, a task made tougher by Anze Kopitar’s retirement and a free agent class viewed around the NHL as relatively weak. He’ll have to lean on current Kings players and improvements on the margins.

“I think there’s lots of pieces here, and I speak to, again, there’s three teams over this year that were — from a points standpoint — way ahead of the other 13 [in the Western Conference],” he said. “We gotta continue to push and grind to make our team better, to make our team a little bit deeper, and to keep at it.”

Other Notes

• Holland stated that he expects Quinton Byfield to serve as the team’s number-one center and the center on the top power-play unit next season.

• The Kings will pick 17th overall at this year’s draft and hold two second-round picks as well. Holland said that he expects to use all of those picks and wouldn’t trade them unless he was blown away by an offer.