Ken Holland failed – now he has to fix it

“I don’t want to screw it up, because they had a good year, this is a good team, they had 105 points.”

That was one of the lines from Ken Holland‘s introductory press conference as the LA Kings General Manager last May. Holland would go on to add, “This is a good hockey team….that was one of the teams that I thought they could go to the final four and beyond, and they didn’t……we want to win the Stanley Cup.”

It was at that time that we realized Holland had no idea what he was looking at.

The Kings were not a contender. They’d been a really good regular-season team for a few years by that point. But it had been proven time and time and time and time again, they were nowhere near the level of a team needed to compete in the playoffs. Let alone compete for a Stanley Cup. Yet the incoming GM thought there was enough here to push for a Conference Final appearance?

Holland wanted to add to the LA Kings roster. Help turn them into a contender. Well, he sure added. He somehow managed to pull off subtraction by addition. Holland made an already questionable defense group significantly worse.

I’m willing to cut him some slack on the exit of Vladislav Gavrikov; it seemed his mind was already set on the Big Apple.

Perhaps the damage that then head coach Jim Hiller had already done to young defenseman Jordan Spence would have been too much to overcome, but Holland could have, at a minimum, assured him an everyday lineup spot, which to anyone watching should have been obvious. But Holland couldn’t do that. He couldn’t guarantee he’d be an everyday player, so Spence was gifted to Ottawa.

No, Holland had his eyes set on bigger fish. After years of not being able to transition pucks from defense to offense, completely hindering an offense that includes some pretty talented forwards, Holland thought the answer to their offensive woes was the defensive duo of Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci.

He screwed it up.

If his thought that the 105 point team was good enough to make a Conference Final wasn’t delusional enough, multi-year signings of Dumoulin and Ceci surely cemented the delusion.

Mind you, these two immobile defencemen came just one summer after a multi-year signing of another incapable puck mover, Joel Edmundson. Rest assured, no group of forwards can overcome a defense group that boasts Edmundson, Dumoulin, and Ceci.

And yet, perhaps the biggest of Holland’s errors was retaining head coach Jim Hiller. (Ok, no, that’s not true, it was Dumoulin and Ceci, but Hiller was….right there.)

“Jim Hiller did a fabulous job in leading the team to 105 points,” Holland said of Hiller in last spring’s press conference. Note the 105-point total being mentioned again. It’s as if all Holland did was look at the end result and not the dull process that led to it.

Anyone who’s been watching hockey the past several years should realize that yes, of course, you need to be able to defend, but it’s impossible to win if you can’t score. The Kings couldn’t score. They still can’t score.

To the surprise of no one, the LA Kings were not a 105-point team in 2025-26. They weren’t a 100-point team. They weren’t a 95-point team. No, the Kings eked their way to 90 points, thanks to an NHL-record 20 overtime/shootout losses. Hiller played games not to lose. So, they didn’t lose….in regulation. They lost in overtime or the shootout.

Despite the writing being on the wall with Hiller and the team’s performance, Holland waited until March 1st to move on from Hiller. D.J. Smith was named interim head coach and he did about as good a job as you could ask for given what he was working with. At the least, he tried to get the Kings to play to win, as opposed to playing to hang on.

Credit where it’s due, under Smith the Kings brought a valiant effort to their first-round series against the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche (LA outhit the Avs!), but were easily cast aside in a four-game sweep.

So, now what?

As Hockey Royalty’s Kyle Garcia wrote, there are many more questions than answers for Holland and the Kings this offseason. Kyle does a good job breaking those down, so I won’t look to rehash those here. There will also be time in the coming weeks to speculate on who could come in to fill key roles.

While I suspect Holland will try to take some big swings behind the bench and at the center position, the team simply doesn’t have much in the way of prospects. The Athletic ranks the LA farm system 27th in the NHL. How they pull off acquiring a top-six centerman with little to offer is going to be quite the challenge.

But you know what? It’s all moot. The center doesn’t matter. The coach doesn’t matter. As long as the defense group is as it is, it does not matter. Ken Holland has a mess that he and prior GM Rob Blake created. Holland has to find a way out of at least two of the three albatross contracts that are Edmundson, Dumoulin, and Ceci. Having one anchor can be managed; three is impossible.

If I had a guess? Edmundson probably is tradeable. His numbers look quite good propped up next to Brandt Clarke, so Holland would be wise to try to cash in on that. Playong alongside Clarke, Edmundson had a 52.1% CF% and 51.8% xGF% (per Natural Stat Trick). When not with Clarke, Edmundson had a 44.8% and 38.0%, respectively. That and for the second straight season, virtually every LA skater (including his defense partner) was much better without Edmundson than with him.