Los Angeles Kings: What Willie Desjardins brings to the table

The Los Angeles Kings have fired their head coach John Stevens and have replaced him with Willie Desjardins as an interim coach.

When the Los Angeles Kings acquired Ilya Kovalchuk in the summer, the hockey community had two schools of thought. The first being that the Kings who are a notoriously old and slow team just acquired yet another veteran to tack on some years to their average age. Meanwhile, the second was that the Kings acquired a player who can add more scoring to their offense-parched team.

The former is proving to be true, as the Kings are currently last in the Pacific Division, with a 4-8-1 record. They are still last in the league in scoring, averaging only 2.15 goals a game. After they went through a four-game losing streak, the team responded by having a closed-door meeting to try and get out of their funk.

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After the meeting, the Kings ended up losing another two games, making it a 6-game losing streak. They currently have the league’s worst goal differential (-17) and are 26th in save percentage (in large part due to Jonathan Quick‘s injury). When your team can’t score or stop the puck, there’s a problem.

To replace Stevens, the Kings brought in former Vancouver Canucks’ coach, Willie Desjardins. Desjardins was let go by the Canucks back in April of 2017 and was hired by Hockey Canada to coach the men’s Olympic team in Pyeongchang.

Desjardins may not have the most prestigious resume, but his mentality and coaching strategies are exactly what the LA Kings need right now. The Kings are a slow team with a lot of superstar names like Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty. A majority of their veterans are locked up long-term and this team will look the same for the next few years. It’s Desjardins’ job to work with what he as and that is his specialty.

Back when he coached the Medicine Hat Tigers in the WHL, his assistants were Jim Nill and Shaun Clouston. Clouston had high praises for his former colleague, talking about how Desjardins would talk to individual players for hours, talking about their game and making connections.

"“I think that he does a great job of individually getting the best out of each player. So it’s not just x’s and o’s with Willie. It’s building relationships with each of his players.”"

The second quote is especially important because Desjardins is inheriting a hairy situation. The team has no cap space to catch up to the rest of the NHL’s blazing speed so he will have to develop a system to combat that with the players he’s given.

What Stevens tried to do last season and 13 games into this season was to inject some youth and speed into the lines. He wanted to transform the way the Kings played and it sort of worked, but at the end of the day, that wasn’t where this team’s strengths are.

"“Every team has different personnel and different strengths and weaknesses, but the underlying theme of all those teams is that they want to win and they have leaders that want to win. If you don’t have the leaders that want to win, it’s difficult to win. The underlying theme is the leadership and what they want and the desire they have.”"

Desjardins is an extremely intense coach that expects the best every night. His expectations have been high since he started coaching and this mindset will be no different once he starts coaching the Kings. His flexibility and understanding that not all teams are created equal is exactly what this team has been lacking.