What can Ken Holland do to take the Kings to the next step?
A familiar is back in the front office.
Per Daily Faceoff insider Frank Seravalli, and first reported by Rod Pedersen, the Los Angeles Kings are closing in on hiring Ken Holland to become the team’s next general manager.
The move might be sour for some fans north of the border, as Holland left the Edmonton Oilers last summer after five seasons, putting together a roster that made it all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. In three of those seasons, the Oilers knocked the Kings out of the first round of the playoffs.
The question is—can Holland be the guy to make Los Angeles a true contender? After four first-round exits at the expense of the Oilers, the team parted ways with Rob Blake after eight seasons. With the proposed addition of Holland, a four-time Stanley Cup champion executive, the Kings clearly want to try to go deeper into the postseason.
On Tuesday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss whether Holland is the right guy to help the Kings take that next step.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Any sort of idea that this was going to be a Kings team that would maybe take a step back and say, “Do we need to reassess how we’re building? Do we need to retool?” My feeling is, you don’t hire Ken Holland if you’re going to do that. You hire Ken Holland if you’re trying to take that next step and become a Stanley Cup contender sooner rather than later.
Frank Seravalli: Just a reminder with Ken Holland, as you would know from Edmonton, that that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to happen in year one that he’s at the helm. This is going to be a build that’s going to take probably a little bit of time to add and continue to accumulate some pieces. I don’t think this is a situation where they’re going to be trying to tear it down or go in the rebuild direction again. They already did that. They got Quinton Byfield and Brent Clark and Spence and that group of players that are from that era. They missed on a lot of draft picks, to be honest, which is part of the reason why the Kings are where they are.
You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…