New assistant coach?

Reports have indicated that the Kings are prepared to hire John Stevens as an assistant coach to replace Mark Hardy. It’s far from surprising, given that Stevens is an experienced coach with previous ties to Terry Murray and some of the other members of the Kings staff. Stevens was fired 26 games into this season as head coach of the Flyers, who of course went on to reach the Stanley Cup Finals. If Stevens comes aboard, it would be one of those strange coincidences in sports. After Ken Hitchcock was fired as Flyers coach in 2006, Stevens took over and retained Murray as an assistant coach, and Murray stayed for one more season before taking the Kings job. Now, just a couple years later, Stevens could end up as an assistant under Murray. With the Flyers, Stevens developed a reputation as a “nice-guy” coach whose teams couldn’t get it done in the playoffs.

So what’s holding it up? As previously written, nobody on the hockey-operations side of the Kings can have a contract longer than Dean Lombardi’s contract, and Lombardi’s current contract is set to expire next summer. There have already been multiple meetings/conversations about an extension, but so far nothing has come of them, and there is real concern (stated privately) that if an extension is not reached soon, some members of the organization might seek jobs elsewhere. It seems likely that this will all get sorted out this week, but one can never predict.