Kings move to bring Stanley Cup-winning experience behind the bench, reportedly hiring Peter Laviolette

The Los Angeles Kings are expected to turn to Peter Laviolette as their next head coach, a decision first reported Monday and confirmed by multiple outlets citing league sources. The hiring would put a Stanley Cup winner back in an NHL dugout, after the Kings went through their own coaching turnover and were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Colorado Avalanche. Laviolette, 61, has been a head coach across numerous NHL stops and is widely viewed as a coach with proven playoff experience and a history of quick team-improvement in his early stints.

According to Sportsnet, the Kings are prepared to name Laviolette, choosing him over other reported candidates that included D.J. Smith (who served as interim coach), and Jay Woodcroft. Sportsnet also framed the hire as an “experience behind their bench” move, and noted the Kings’ recent playoff pattern: it was the team’s fifth straight first-round exit. The Avalanche sweep closed the season for a group that, at minimum, had already shown it could reach the postseason, but still struggled to make the postseason jump that Los Angeles has been chasing.

Sportsnet’s account of the coaching decision also emphasized Laviolette’s breadth, listing his head-coaching stops across the New York Rangers, Washington Capitals, Nashville Predators, Philadelphia Flyers, Carolina Hurricanes, and Carolina’s rival conference mate, the New York Islanders. Sportsnet further said Laviolette won the Stanley Cup with Carolina in 2006, and reached the Stanley Cup Final as runner-up with Philadelphia in 2010 and Nashville in 2017. In other words, this is not a hire built solely on regular-season reputation, it is also intended to land a coach whose career includes deep playoff runs.

The ABC7 Los Angeles report, citing sources told ESPN, added contract detail, describing the deal as three years. That same report said Laviolette did not coach in the NHL last season after being fired from the Rangers following two years. ABC7 also linked the timing to the Kings’ own coaching transition, noting that Los Angeles fired Jim Hiller shortly after the Olympic break and finished the year with Smith as interim coach, going 11-6-6 under Smith. ABC7 further described a “major boost” after the Kings’ trade for Artemi Panarin, a winger Laviolette previously coached in New York.

For Los Angeles, the hire carries immediate roster and tactical implications, even though the reported story is about leadership rather than personnel. Laviolette’s teams have historically placed an emphasis on structure and start-of-game execution, and the Kings are now betting that a change at the top can tighten the gap between postseason participation and postseason success. That matters even more given how quickly first-round exits have piled up, with the Kings’ latest playoff ending underscoring that experience alone has not been enough to carry them past the opening hurdle.

What to watch next is whether the Kings’ front office follows the coaching hire with staffing moves and a clear message about the systems they want to install. An early tell will come during the offseason as Los Angeles organizes training-camp priorities and defines roles for its core veterans and emerging players. If Laviolette is able to deliver the kind of early-season impact that has made him an attractive option in multiple searches, the Kings’ next playoff test will come with far higher expectations than “getting in.”

Confidence remains limited until the team makes an official announcement. Still, the convergence of reporting on the same target, the multi-year structure described by ESPN-linked sources, and the specific references to the coaching search’s final choices all suggest this is more than a rumor about a possible candidate. In the NHL, the difference between “reportedly” and “announced” is meaningful, but this appears to be a serious endgame move for Los Angeles’s bench plan for 2026-27 and beyond.