Hear from Head Coach Jim Hiller, 24 Hours out from the Trade Deadline

Weird day for a practice story.

As far as the day-to-day details, they just don’t seem all that important with the trade deadline now less than 24 hours away. The Kings have certainly been mentioned when it comes to several different players around the NHL, though they have yet to make a move until this point. Last season, the Kings did not make a trade of any variety, though there was less smoke going in than there has been this year. There’s more right now and more obvious areas to add, but prices around the NHL have been pretty nutty so far this week.

Hard to get a true read on the state of things. Certainly feels like the Kings would like to improve the roster, but at what cost, in which tier would they do their shopping? You hear a lot and one conversation seems to be different than the next.

In speaking with Jim Hiller, he admitted he has a wish list, as every coach around the NHL does. As I would imagine you’d hear 31 NHL Head Coaches say, they’d like to add to their group in a variety of different ways. Even rebuilding coaches, as Hiller mentioned, don’t want to subtract from their current team, even as they understand the bigger picture that requires it. No one wants to lose players and no one wants to get worse.

For Hiller, he didn’t go into specifics on what exactly he’d like to add. He understands the true wish list is probably a little bit unrealistic in some ways. He added that the list has changed from the start of the season until now, as the Kings have developed as a group and as certain players have perhaps developed, in one way or another, that have either filled roles he didn’t expect or not filled roles he did expect. What Hiller essentially said was of course he’d like to get a piece or two he feels helps his team get better. He’s been in active conversation with Rob Blake and the management team on that topic, but understands that, ultimately, he’s here to coach. He provides input which is considered and he believes the conversations to be between two sides on the same page. But there’s still that line there.

“We have regular conversations with our management and coaching staff, I think there’s some good synergy there,” Hiller said this morning. “I would say, ultimately, we have our job to do and they do their job. I think, sometimes, they probably would like to give us more advice and we would probably like [to give them more advice] but there’s a reason that you don’t do that, because you have a job and a specialty and a focus, and that’s this and management has this, so it’s good to be on the same page, but I think it is important to have lines drawn and you do your job, we do our job. Together, we build a team.”

The team in place right now is one with a lot of varying types of players on it. There are those like say Anze Kopitar who are obviously not sweating a possible move. But that’s not everyone. If a player is like me, or likely any of us, they see and read the same things we all do. They know tomorrow is deadline day and for several players on the Kings right now, their names have circulated in rumors, regardless of how substantial those rumors might actually be. Even for an individual who is balanced, it’s hard to avoid it.

While most have said that the impending deadline hasn’t impacted the team’s 0-3-2 record over the last five games, it’s possible it has, even subliminally. The players are human, after all, and they’ve got access to seeing and hearing the same things we do.

“Let’s just think about this, I know I’m checking what’s going on, was there a trade, you guys are doing the same thing, so why would they be any different,” Hiller said. “The difference for all of us is we’re probably not moving anywhere. There’s players in league that are friends, maybe, not even just them, they see friends move, they know there’s families, the kids, so it is a difficult thing and it’s unavoidable. I think everybody probably feels a little stressed during this time.”

While for say a Kopitar, there’s no risk of a trade, with the deadline comes perhaps the chance that you say goodbye to a longtime teammate, a friend. Only two years back Kopitar and Doughty saw Jonathan Quick traded and that was coming from a team adding in hopes of contending, not a team selling off assets. Goes to show that side of the business.

As Hiller laid out, there are three different types of trades. There’s the subtraction trades, when teams are the ones selling. There’s trades when you add for draft picks or prospects, and no one on the active roster is involved. The third situation, though, involves players coming in, with players currently on the team going out the other way. From his experience as a coach in this league, those are the toughest for a group.

“The really difficult one is when you add and that there’s current roster players that are going out, so now that really brings some different emotions into it, because you’ve added, so you’re excited, but you’ve lost somebody too,” he said. “It would be just like anybody else, any other group you’ve been part of, family, friends. Somebody leaves, goes across the [country], moves to the East Coast, you don’t get to see them for a while, somebody you really enjoyed being around, it kind of sucks. Somebody moves into your area, you’re like, okay, this is great, good to see it. It’s just emotions, but everybody does understand that’s part of it. Very few guys haven’t changed teams over the years, you look at Kopi and Drew, and then you look at Trevor Lewis, who has had great success here too, but he’s gone to other teams and been through that process. It’s rare to stay on one team.”

So what could we see between now and tomorrow at noon Pacific?

If Hiller knows, he certainly wasn’t sharing. He expressed confidence in his team as currently assembled, without adding a player. He said that Jordan Spence was not held out of the lineup last night with regards to a trade, but rather wanting to get Brandt Clarke back in and not liking 11/7 when either Clarke or Spence is the seventh defenseman, which puts a younger player into a difficult position. He has said in the past that perhaps a forward in the top nine, with Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe could be the spot that has had the least consistency but again, he wasn’t tipping his hand too far.

Should the Kings add a player, or multiple players, he’ll integrate as best he can. you don’t know the personalities coming in or the skillsets until they walk through the door, so it’ll be interesting how things shake out with a team like the Kings. On the room side, it’s a veteran group and there haven’t been many personality conflicts with deadline deals. Even with Quick leaving and Vladislav Gavrikov coming in, there wasn’t any ill-will towards Gavrikov and he fit in very quickly. On the playing side, the onus falls on Hiller to maximize that usage. If he and Blake are truly on the same page, it should be a player who fills the role the coach wants.

“You never know exactly how it’s going to work out,” he added. “The great thing about hockey, our sport and the players, is everybody is embraced from the outside in so quickly and there isn’t a long period of adaptation, as far as just becoming comfortable with your teammates, because guys are so good to each other, they have a lot of respect for each other. There really is surroundings – who you play with, where you play, what your role used to be – there are so many factors that sometimes it works out and sometimes it just doesn’t. There are good players and sometimes it just doesn’t translate. Sometimes, other guys come in and there might be lesser roles and they end up having a bigger impact. It’s really, really hard to judge, as you know, if you look at all the history of it. Some have worked out great, but there’s been plenty of times where it just hasn’t worked.”

So that’s that……for now.