Kings remain undecided on coaching search, GM says

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Kings have not made a decision on whether Jim Hiller will be their coach next season, general manager Rob Blake said Monday.

Blake said the organization will meet with Hiller, who was hired on an interim basis after Todd McLellan was fired on Feb. 2, over the next “couple weeks.”

The Kings (44-27-11) went 21-12-1 under Hiller and finished third in the Pacific Division but lost in five games to the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference First Round.

“I’ll take you back to [when McLellan was fired], the mandate with Jimmy when he took over was to get us in the playoffs,” Blake said. “There was going to be some change, but it wasn’t dramatic or drastic enough. There’s some things he wants to implement in this team.”

Blake said he would consider having Los Angeles move away from the 1-3-1 alignment implemented by McLellan, which Hiller continued to use after taking over.

“Gave up the third-least amount of goals against, so that pattern is good, don’t want to deviate too far from that,” Blake said. “On the offensive side, we’ve gotten better but we’re still league average.”

Blake will return as general manager for the 2024-25 season, the last year of a three-year contract extension he signed in May 2022.

The Kings have reached the Stanley Cup Playoffs in four of Blake’s seven seasons as general manager but have not won a series. They have been eliminated by the Oilers in the first round of the playoffs three straight years.

“The season as a whole, we still believe this group had made progress in a lot of different areas,” Blake said. “We have to find a way to get that to translate in the playoffs.”

Blake ruled out buying out the contract of forward Pierre-Luc Dubois, who completed the first year of an eight-year, $68 million contract ($8.5 million average annual value) he signed with the Kings after being acquired in a trade with the Winnipeg Jets on June 27.

Dubois, who had 40 points (16 goals, 24 assists) in 82 games and one goal in the five-game loss to the Oilers, has a full no-trade clause that goes into effect July 1.

The Kings would have been able to buy out Dubois for one-third of his remaining contract value before his 26th birthday on June 24.

“We need to make him better,” Blake said. “He’s had a consistent performance over his career so far and deviated from this year. So, it’s up to us as a staff, coaches and management, to help him become more productive to us.”