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Kings analysis: No easy answers after another inadequate season

May 2, 2026

EL SEGUNDO –– The Kings’ players uttered the words “I don’t know” more than a suspect under interrogation during their exit interviews Wednesday, and general manager Ken Holland did little to clarify where the organization stood in his address Friday.

Throughout his remarks, irreconcilability reigned.

“First off, I take it personally,” said Holland, then instantaneously pivoting away from any sort of personal accountability. “I don’t know if I got anything wrong. I look at the growth of San Jose and the growth of Anaheim. When you look at the standings in the Western Conference, other than those three teams – Colorado, Dallas and Minnesota – I think the fourth-best team had three or four points more than we did.”

Not only did that echo Toronto Maple Leafs executive Keith Pelley’s poorly received comments earlier this spring – he used Montreal and Buffalo in place of the Ducks and Sharks, who all went through traditional rebuilds – it also set up another incongruity. Holland at least twice made mention of the three Central Division heavyweights separating themselves from the rest of the West, especially the heavily diluted Pacific Division where no team would have made the playoff cutoff in not only the Central but also the entire Eastern Conference.

Yet when asked why the Kings would lower their heads and push forward after falling 15 points in the standings rather than rebuilding, Holland presented the rationale that the Kings were close to being close.

“Because we were three points out of having the fourth-best points [total] – I think it’s three, three, four or five, whatever Vegas had was the fourth best, so let’s call it six points – there were so many teams so close,” Holland said five days after Colorado swept the Kings for their fifth consecutive first-round playoff exit. “If you blow it up, it’s gonna be eight to 10 years, and you’re not coming out on the other side with any guarantees.”

It was, in fact, five points, and four playoff positions.

Holland’s boasting about that, as well as the Kings having the NHL’s ninth-best points percentage for a quarter-season chock full of home games and weak opponents, hardly seemed becoming of a contender. He affirmed that he felt they were a potential final-four qualifier before and during the season, though once his conviction only went as deep as “sure, why not?”

Former head coach Jim Hiller wore out his welcome during the campaign, which Holland described as “disappointing.” Though the Olympic break and its truncated training camp would have been a more opportune moment to instill interim coach D.J. Smith, who boosted morale and performance alike under adverse circumstances, Holland said he wasn’t remorseful for not making the switch sooner. That was even after multiple players either asked for a trade or left in free agency, with at least two of those players doing so directly because of Hiller.

Even though Holland described the Kings as “finding ways to lose” under Hiller while Smith, who was Hiller’s assistant previously, said the Hiller-led playoff debacle of last season loomed over the group this year, Holland was waiting on a magic bullet.

“I have no regrets. I felt good about Jim Hiller taking over the year after 105 points last year. At the time, the team was playing at an inconsistent level. I kept waiting for it to find its footing and it didn’t,” Holland said.

Holland continued to water down a defense corps that had been the Kings’ engine and the results were disastrous in various areas. Not only were breakouts labored and counterattacks infrequent, but production from the backend was beyond substandard. Even with the emergence of 23-year-old Brandt Clarke (eight goals, 40 points), the Kings’ 133 points from defensemen were 100 behind league-leading Colorado and their 23 goals were well under half of what NHL-pacing Columbus netted (58).

Although even casual fans concluded that the Kings were too slow, too stodgy and not skilled enough on defense, Holland said he was still investigating the matter.

“Are we too defensive-minded? I’ve got to sort that out,” queried Holland before later lamenting the team’s inadequate attack and asking, “Has that got something to do with the defense? That’s what I’ve got to sort out.”

Holland, of course, was providing cover for the man who should have been receiving most of the slings and arrows this week. Team president Luc Robitaille’s nine-year tenure has been an abject failure, falling way short of his rhetoric of perennial contention.

Yet Holland’s own contradictions continued as well.

While he said the standings tightened because “more teams are coming of age,” he omitted mention of rosters that are just aging, like his own. He had the second-oldest squad in the NHL this season with no immediate success nor strong prospects for improvement. Tellingly, Holland spoke of how the Kings won in 2012 and 2014, in a league that has changed drastically in the span of 12 to 14 years.

Holland posited that three of the five consecutive first-round playoff series the Kings lost were “up for grabs:” a reverse sweep amid a teamwide collapse last spring that came after six-game and seven-game losses to Edmonton in 2023 and 2022. There were only six players from 2023’s playoff roster on this year’s Kings, and just four from 2022.

He pointed out that only five other franchises made the playoffs in each of the past five seasons, as the Kings did, but declined to elaborate on their fortunes. Here’s a hint: None of them haven’t won a playoff series since 2014.

The Carolina Hurricanes have advanced in each postseason since 2019 and reached the conference finals three times, the same number of final-four appearances as the Dallas Stars made in the past five years following a Stanley Cup Final run in 2020. Across a seven-season streak, archrival Edmonton has taken nine series in the last four tournaments, including two dashes to the Final. Colorado’s nine-year string was headlined by a Stanley Cup in 2022. The Tampa Bay Lightning’s chain of commensurate length sent them to three Final series, two of which they won.

The most honest evaluation that Holland offered was that the Kings “squeaked into” this year’s playoffs and could not expect to return for a sixth straight year with the same performance next season.

“I can’t sit here and tell ya that we’re gonna be 29th in goals for, with the 30th-best penalty killing and the 28th-best power play, and we’re gonna be playing in the tournament,” he said.

“No chance.”

Orange County Register

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Kings analysis: No easy answers after another inadequate season

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