Former Oilers GM Ken Holland officially becomes the Kings GM
Last Monday, the Kings fired Rob Blake as their GM, hot on the heels of the Oilers beating them in the first round for the fourth straight year. If you want to watch his time with the LA media, you can watch that here.
I have to think the first order of business will be to get more scoring talent into the lineup, or at least get the current crop of scorers to produce more in the playoffs. In terms of trade chips, I have to think that center Philip Danault has to be at the top of the list. He's making $5.5 million to play on the third line, not a good situation, cap-wise.
A lot of Holland haters, while he was here in Edmonton, pointed to some of the more negative moves he made, but refuse to acknowledge the good things he's done. The truth is, the Oilers still have Ken Holland's fingerprints all over them. That will change once the Oilers current playoff run is done as Stan Bowman will finally have a full offseason to truly remake the Oilers in his own image. However, I don't expect too many major moves unless they're cap dumps, as Holland had largely built the Oilers up to where they are now, so much of the work was already done for Bowman.
The biggest thing Bowman's had to deal with thus far was figuring out what to do with the Broberg and Holloway offer sheets, something he now won't have to deal with this time around unless he doesn't issue a QO to Evan Bouchard, which I can pretty much guarantee will never happen.
Anyway, back to Holland. He's coming into a similar situation he did when he first came here in Edmonton, although Edmonton hadn't made the playoffs in two seasons prior to Ken Holland's arrival and only once in the last 13 seasons prior. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were already here, so he had to build around them. The first move he made was to rid the Oilers of the albatross around their necks at the time when they traded Milan Lucic to Calgary for James Neal. Oh sure, Neal's productive time with the Oilers lasted only a single season, but at least his contract wasn't buyout proof like Lucic's. Calgary was forced to play the now big and slow Lucic on their fourth line for most of his time in Calgary, and as expected, he didn't really move the needle for them.
Holland is coming out of retirement because, in his words, he "can't live a stress free life." He's wired for the pressure of a GM job. Like here in Edmonton, he also has the backing of Kings ownership to do whatever he wants - a latitude he's earned through a long career of success - and build the team into a team like the Oilers. Rumour has it he may go big game hunting and try to lure one of Marner or Tavares from Toronto, or so Jim Matheson says in the Journal article linked.
Only time will tell if he'll be as successful in LA as he was in Detroit and to a lesser extent, here in Edmonton. Throughout his media availability, he kept emphasizing that LA put up 105 points this past season, so don't expect too many major moves from Holland, although I would say bringing in more elite scoring talent can't be out of the question. He is also attracted to the weather in the LA area, and his grandkids are excited to go to nearby Disneyland. They may be less excited when they see the traffic they'll have to get through to go there, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.