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Todd McLellan took the Kings back to the playoffs in 2022 and did it again the following year, but both seasons ended in first-round losses to the Edmonton Oilers. Hiller, who replaced McLellan first on an interim basis midway through the 2023-24 season, has two series losses of his own to the Oilers.<\/p>\n
There is reasonable assessment, and also emotional blame-tossing, that goes with any playoff defeat. Most of it gets aimed at the head coach, which is basically part of the job description. Hiller took heavy criticism for some decisions he made after the Kings\u2019 blown 2-0 series lead this past spring.<\/p>\n
But beating the Oilers in a seven-game series is hard to do, and few have done it recently. Which is why McLellan understands what Hiller faces now in trying to take the Kings farther than he did.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s doable,\u201d McLellan told The Athletic<\/em> on Wednesday, a day before his Detroit Red Wings played the Kings. \u201cFlorida\u2019s proven that. But they\u2019re incredible players. They are. And sometimes breaks go your way. Sometimes it\u2019s calls. Sometimes it\u2019s injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n As he continued to reminisce, McLellan thought back to the first Kings team he took to the postseason: the 2021-22 group that overachieved and fought through numerous injuries to push Edmonton to seven games. How they shouldn\u2019t have ended a three-year postseason absence then and \u201cmaybe skipped a step.\u201d It might have been the high point of his five seasons in Los Angeles, as a fortified 2023 playoff team let a 3-0 lead in Game 4 \u2014 and a chance to take a 3-1 series lead over the Oilers \u2014 get away for good.<\/p>\n Ahead of his first return to L.A. since being fired by the Kings in February 2024, McLellan was back at the practice facility when he used to run workouts, game plan against opponents and try to get the most out of his players. This time, the 58-year-old coach will be on the visiting bench.<\/p>\n Hired by Detroit general manager Steve Yzerman last December, McLellan is doing what he typically does: win. He went 26-18-4 for the remainder of 2024-25 and has the Red Wings off to a 7-3-0 start in a season with a simple goal \u2014 ending the franchise\u2019s nine-year playoff drought. Winning when he makes it there is another story, but he knows how to get a team into the dance.<\/p>\n While he was without a job, McLellan kept tabs on the league and was eager to return to a bench. But that\u2019s changed now that he\u2019s again got a whistle, and the Kings are very much in his rear-view mirror.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re all in a situation where we\u2019ve got so much work to do with our own team,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know who it was, maybe Jacques Lemaire, said it\u2019s hard enough to coach one team and follow one team and figure out your own team. That you shouldn\u2019t be worrying about what the other team is doing. I have enough issues with our team and how we\u2019re playing and what we need to do.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t tell you what\u2019s good, bad or indifferent here. I know they have an outstanding group of players and a good coaching staff, so I\u2019m sure they\u2019ll put it all together when it counts.\u201d<\/p>\n Hitting old stomping grounds isn\u2019t anything new for McLellan, and coming back to Los Angeles only brought warm feelings, especially running into security personnel or trainers he worked with. Even media members he dealt with more regularly.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily the location, the rink or anything like that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the people.\u201d<\/p>\n And that includes Rob Blake, the now-former Kings general manager who fired him after a terrible January 2024 threatened to throw the spiraling Kings out of playoff position following a 20-7-4 start. McLellan hoped to see Blake later Wednesday. He said he\u2019s maintained relationships with his former boss and Hiller, his successor, who joined the staff as an assistant in 2022.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been around long enough to know there\u2019s little use in holding ill will.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s how fast the game can turn on you,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a ton of confidence. We\u2019d won 10 road games in a row early in the year. We set team and league records, and boom, all of a sudden it goes south on you. We couldn\u2019t get it back on the rails quick enough. Management thought they needed to make a change and that\u2019s what happens.<\/p>\n \u201cI know the players \u2014 the texts and calls that I got after that \u2014 I know Blakey and the management team, nobody feels good about any of that. You never want it to happen. I haven\u2019t lost any friendships over what happened. I understand how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n In a 338-game run with the Kings, McLellan went 164-130-44 for a .550 points percentage, with his first two seasons coming in a franchise rebuild. He\u2019s coached his teams to a .582 points percentage across 18 seasons behind an NHL bench. He didn\u2019t taste playoff success with L.A. and Hiller now has that joyless baton to win a race against unemployment. But it doesn\u2019t mean there weren\u2019t good times.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think about the end,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cI think about the journey. When I walked in and I\u2019m looking around the building and seeing the people being on the ice again, I reflect back on the journey with that family at that time. I wouldn\u2019t trade it for anything. It was an unreal experience for me as a coach to get to know the players, to be part of this community. We loved living here. It was an outstanding place for my wife and I and when my family was around, it was incredible.<\/p>\n \u201cZero regrets and hey, I chose to be in the coaching world. And really, how does it end? You either retire or you get fired. Or they don\u2019t sign you again, but it\u2019s the same thing. There\u2019s only two ways that you end your stay in any place. I wasn\u2019t ready to be done, so I\u2019m working again. I\u2019ll keep doing that until I think I can\u2019t be a factor anymore.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n EL SEGUNDO, Calif. \u2013 If anyone understands the challenge Jim Hiller faces in bringing the Los Angeles Kings to playoff success \u2014 and the pressure that accompanies that \u2014 it is the coach who previously sat in his seat. Todd McLellan took the Kings back to the playoffs in 2022 and did it again the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/In-Todd-McLellans-first-game-back-in-Los-Angeles-its.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8109,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8107\/revisions\/8109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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