Anze Kopitar<\/a>, their all-time leading scorer with 1,316 points (452 goals, 864 assists) in 1,521 games, retired after they were eliminated.<\/p>\nBut the Kings had only 26 games in the regular season and four in the playoffs with Panarin, whom they acquired from the New York Rangers on Feb. 4. Fiala sustained a broken leg while playing for Team Switzerland at the Winter Olympics in Milan on Feb. 13 and missed the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
Laviolette was hired June 9 to replace D.J. Smith, who took over on an interim basis after Jim Hiller was fired March 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has to be a plan to attack,\u201d Laviolette said at his introductory news conference the next day, \u201cand we\u2019ll work on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kings announced additions to the coaching staff Tuesday, including associate Phil Housley, who had 1,232 points (338 goals, 894 assists) in 1,495 games as an NHL defenseman from 1982-2003, and assistant Ray Whitney, who had 1,064 points (385 goals, 679 assists) in 1,330 games as an NHL forward from 1991-2014.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Whit\u2019 has got a high, high, high hockey IQ,\u201d Holland said. \u201c\u2026 Ultimately, he\u2019s going to be the guy that runs our power play, and I know he\u2019s going to get some help from Phil Housley. So, between Phil and Ray Whitney, and I think our power play\u2019s in good hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
Los Angeles needed to address the center situation. Haula had 38 points (14 goals, 24 assists) in 81 games for the Nashville Predators last season. Laughton had eight points (five goals, three assists) in 21 games for the Kings after they acquired him from the Toronto Maple Leafs on March 6.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Kopitar retiring, trying to replace his minutes down the middle was a priority,\u201d Holland said. \u201c\u2026 Hopefully between those two guys down the middle, they make us deeper.\u201d\u200b<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles finished 29th in goals per game (2.68) and 28th on the power play (17.0 percent) last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-738173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}