The Kings enter this offseason with more than their share of question marks, and the foremost of those queries remains who will coach the team next year.
Will it be interim coach D.J. Smith, or will the Kings be guided by a fourth steward in the span of a little over two years?
They fired Todd McLellan on Feb. 2, 2024, and sacked his successor Jim Hiller 25 months later, less than two months before being swept by the Colorado Avalanche.
Smith, who along with a soft schedule and thin competition, gave the Kings enough of a boost to qualify for a fifth straight first-round exit from the playoffs, is one of four to eight candidates GM Ken Holland will give serious consideration for the job, Holland said. Holland also said that he will be open to coaches of varying experience levels and backgrounds, such as …
A hot, established commodity
At the top of this list is Bruce Cassidy, who coached the Vegas Golden Knights to the 2023 championship and guided them for 74 of 82 games this season before being replaced by John Tortorella.
Tortorella has Vegas one win away from its third Stanley Cup Final berth in nine years of existence ahead of Tuesday’s Game 4 against Colorado. The Golden Knights have used the flimsy pretext of still being alive in the playoffs to deny other teams –– especially division rivals like the Kings and Edmonton Oilers –– permission to speak to Cassidy about vacancies. As Holland recently alluded to in an interview with the Kings’ Zach Dooley and Jared Shafran, that recalcitrance could complicate the Kings’ timeline. Ideally, they’d like to install their new coach firmly ahead of the draft, which would fall one week after the last possible date for the conclusion of the postseason.
Edmonton has a prominent opening of its own after ousting Kris Knoblauch earlier this month. The Toronto Maple Leafs booted Craig Berube after experiencing the loss of Mitch Marner to Vegas in the offseason and then the NHL’s most precipitous drop in the standings, from 108 points to 78. Knoblauch guided Edmonton to the previous two final showdowns, losing to the Florida Panthers both times. Berube didn’t even approach the promised land in Toronto, but he reached it in 2019 with the St. Louis Blues, who lifted the Cup for the first time in franchise history.
A rising star
One name outside the NHL reverberates through seemingly every pro coaching search, and that is the University of Denver’s David Carle. At just 36 years old, his résumé could make any GM salivate. He just won his third NCAA title in five seasons after reaching his fifth Frozen Four since 2019, and he has twice led Team USA to gold at the World Junior Championships. Carle, however, has been quite content where he is despite the interest of innumerable NHL franchises and remains highly selective regarding his opportunities.
Manny Malhotra was a veteran of seven different NHL clubs, a heady player who was attentive to detail and valuable in subtle ways. He’s taken that acumen to the coaching ranks, working as an assistant for Toronto between stints with one of his former teams, the Vancouver Canucks. He was an assistant for Vancouver and later rejoined the franchise as the head coach of their top minor-league affiliate, leading the Abbotsford Canucks to their first ever Calder Cup championship in his first campaign as coach. Malhotra’s son Caleb is a top prospect in the upcoming draft, and there’s increasing momentum toward Vancouver tabbing the elder Malhotra as their head coach and the younger one as their next cornerstone at center.
Lastly, the once-ascendant Jay Woodcroft may very well be on the Kings’ radar. He is a protégé and close friend of McLellan, sharing stops with the former Kings coach in Detroit, San Jose and Edmonton. He indirectly succeeded McLellan as head coach in Edmonton and elevated the wayward Oilers, bringing them to the conference finals in Year 1 and a second-round loss in his second postseason, falling to the eventual Cup champion both times. He’s currently an assistant under Joel Quenneville, and Ducks GM Pat Verbeek said he would not impede any courtship of Woodcroft by another organization, given the narrow number of NHL head-coaching opportunities. Oh, and the GM who promoted Woodcroft in Edmonton was none other than Holland himself.
A veteran on the sidelines
It’s hard to view the Kings gig as the most prestigious available for the coveted coaches like Cassidy or as the launching pad that a sought-after first-timer like Carle would clamor for, but there are seasoned coaches looking for work just the same.
Since being dismissed by the New York Rangers in 2023 and 2025, respectively, Gerard Gallant and Peter Laviolette have not returned to the NHL coaching ranks. Gallant guided Vegas to the Stanley Cup Final in the team’s inaugural season and got the Rangers to the conference finals in his first year in Manhattan. Laviolette also took them to the conference finals, in 2024, after reaching the Stanley Cup Final with the Nashville Predators (2017), Philadelphia Flyers (2010) and Carolina Hurricanes, with whom he hoisted the Cup in 2006.
Laviolette spoke with SCNG in mid-February and said that while he didn’t anticipate anything opening up in-season –– as it turned out, the Kings, Golden Knights and New York Islanders all made coaching changes after his comments –– he would be open to evaluating opportunities as they presented themselves. Gallant coached overseas in the Kontinental Hockey League last year and his campaign ended abruptly for health reasons, though he returned to Canada with improved vigor. Another candidate could be former Ducks bench boss Bruce Boudreau, who last coached in Vancouver in the 2022-23 season and has been extremely eager to get back into coaching.