Kings to hire Payne as assistant

Dean Lombardi confirmed, via email, this morning that the Kings will hire Davis Payne as an assistant coach to replace Jamie Kompon (as first noted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Payne fills the qualifications that Darryl Sutter set forth last week — in this post — when he talked about hiring an assistant coach. Payne is young (he turns 42 in September) and has a deep connection to the Western Conference. He took over as interim coach of the St. Louis Blues during the 2009-10 season and held that job until he was fired 13 games into last season.

Payne played eight seasons at the NHL, IHL and ECHL levels as a winger, including 22 games with the Boston Bruins in the mid-1990s. He is also a former ECHL and AHL head coach.

Rules for Blog Commenting

No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.