Kings News: Todd McLellan is out as Los Angeles head coach

The Los Angeles Kings won their final game before the All-Star break. Alex Turcotte's first good NHL game led to that win.

This was a big win for the Kings as their recent slump has them on the playoff bubble after being pretty secure about a month ago.

It appears as if that win wasn't good enough for management as they made a big change on Friday morning.

The Los Angeles Kings have fired head coach Todd McLellan. He is being replaced by Jim Hiller who was named as the new interim coach for the remainder of the season.

The Los Angeles Kings have fired head coach Todd McLellan on Friday

This is a huge story in the NHL as he is one of a few coaches to be let go already this year. Now, the Kings will try and move on with a new leader.

With the expectations placed on this team before the season and then their good start, there isn't much wiggle room. They believe this team can be/should be better.

Following the firing of McLellan, there are only five coaches in the league who were with their current teams in 2019 or earlier.

Jon Cooper was hired by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2013, Mike Sullivan was hired by the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2015, Jared Bednar was hired by the Colorado Avalanche in 2016, Rod Brind'Amour was hired by the Carolina Hurricanes in 2018, and Sheldon Keefe was hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2019.

This is a results-based business and teams will act quickly if they aren't getting the results that they want. The Kings did just that.

Los Angeles does sound grateful to McLellan for helping them get to where they are today. The General Manager Rob Blake made that clear in his statement. The social media team also put out a separate post thanking him which is very classy. You don't always see stuff like that when changes are made.

This Kings team has a lot of good veteran leadership and it is on them now to help them get out of this rut. The players can't blame the coach anymore. They probably shouldn't have been able to do that before anyway but there is always a scapegoat.

Drew Doughty believes that guys in the room need to be more team-focused. Well, now is the time. With a good captain like Anze Kopitar there too, it will be interesting to see how they all respond going forward with the new interim coach.