D.J. Smith returns to NHL head coaching. He takes over a veteran LA Kings team on an interim basis.
There’s a familiar name stepping back into the NHL head coaching spotlight, this time in Southern California.
The Los Angeles Kings have hired former Ottawa Senators head coach D.J. Smith to take over their bench on an interim basis after the firing of Jim Hiller on Sunday. Hiller becomes the second coach to be fired this season after Columbus parted company with Dean Evason and gave the role to Rick Bowness back in January.
Interestingly, this season's two NHL coaching subs share something in common. They were both doomed to fail, taking over Ottawa Senators teams that were years away from being good.
Smith was hired by the Senators in 2019, just after they had traded away all their best players. Bowness took over the expansion Senators in 1992 at a time when expansion teams were still universally bad by design.
Smith coached four seasons for the Sens posting a record of 131-154-32, good for a points percentage of .464.
Prior to his time in Ottawa, Smith and Hiller were assistants together in Toronto under Mike Babcock. When Smith was fired by Ottawa in Dec. 2023, Smith took a job in LA as Hiller's assistant coach.
On Sunday, he took Hiller's job.
The Kings had just dropped five of six, including a massive beatdown at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers, and it sounds like that was probably the final straw.
"Couple of tough games going into the Olympic break and I was hoping that the time off and then the mini training camp, that our team was able to respond," Kings GM Ken Holland told LA Kings Insider. "Tough couple of games coming out, especially the game against Edmonton on Thursday night.
"On Friday, I did a lot of thinking. I didn't do it on Friday because Friday was an off day, the players weren't here and we played at 4:00 on Saturday. I didn't want just a new coach behind [the bench] and make the move going into a game."
The Oilers game had to be particularly frustrating as the last thing anyone wants is to be pounded 8-1 by the team they used to run. Holland was GM of the Oilers from 2019-24.
During that same time period, Smith was in Ottawa, vainly trying to mould a young roster that was poorly insulated by fading veterans. GM Pierre Dorion was patient with Smith, almost to a fault, and never got the chance to fire him. Dorion lost his job a month before Smith got his walking papers.
Now in Los Angeles, the personable 48-year-old Smith now has a more veteran roster to work with, one that's built to win now, so it's hard to believe that his second NHL coaching chapter won't be more successful than the first.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
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