I think Rosen got it right when he said a couple of guys fall on their sword and the fans get smoke blown up their ass in the form of The Plan 2.0.
Blake and Hiller are the obvious guys to fall. My guess is Blake quits immediately and Jim keeps the interim tag for a couple of months before the real next coach is hired. I'm sure they'll allow him to interview in the interim. Who knows, if Sturm bounces then Hiller might want the Ontario job.
I think Luc stays and it is because Dan Beckerman isn't prepared to overhaul the franchise. And the team, while disappointing in the post season, remains a playoff team next year and for a couple more, as long as Kopitar and Doughty are still productive.
As for the new GM, my money is on Bergie. And he'll get the official title, not interim. There are just too many connections to the front office to assume anyone else has the inside track. And I think there is no appetite for a protracted GM search. The only thing that makes me hesitate somewhat is I can see Luc wanting to look like a sharp President who scours the league for the next man (or woman) to be our GM.
The single biggest pressure point is the question of whether to buy out Dubois now. I've already heard the fake news about QB's next contract being the biggest question of the off season. First, all he is owed is his qualifying offer by, I believe, July 3rd. And then he has until camp to accept it. In the interim, they negotiate. So there is no deadline for QB until camp or the regular season or December deadline. He has zero rights and leverage and his 50 point season doesn't earn him a big money, long term deal, a la Stutzle. And his young age is going to make comparables difficult. Finally, Lafreniere signed a 3 year $2.35M deal last summer and scored like 40 goals this year. So he's going to fall somewhere north of there, but I doubt it's more than $5M on a short term deal, 2-3 years.
But the decision on Dubois is due first, before the draft or free agency, and it's purely driven by his age and birthdate. My guess is that it is too large a change at this time if you include the new GM and coach in the equation. Frankly, the only hope I have of them actually buying out Dubois is if Blake remains GM. He'll have the job security to make the tough decision. But I don't really see either scenario happening.
I think The Plan 2.0 will include a weighty post mortem on the Dubois year one disaster. One of the lessons learned will be that it turned out the head coach completely screwed up Dubois' line mates and deployment. Fingers will be pointed directly at Blake, McLellan and Hiller for not turning Dubois into Phil Danault, but more physical.
On a podcast, McLellan was recently interviewed and spoke at length about his admiration of Torts and their close friendship. I didn't know that before. And it was interesting to think about Dubois' notorious time under Torts and some of the comments right after McLellan got fired about the lift in the mood of the locker room. We were told McLellan was a hard coach who could be a real downer. When were uniformly fed the line about the only real problem with the team was confidence, what they meant was Todd was a good task master but didn't do a good enough job pointing out good things when the team was struggling to key players, like Dubois and I'm sure others will be called out (Gavrikov, Anderson, any other guys who regressed to the point of underperforming their contract value).
So assuming the answer to the Dubois question is that he is coming back, then we get right back to the question of next head coach. If it is Bergie's call, then the top two candidates that jump to my mind are Claude Julien and Gerard Gallant. I won't go into why, just look at the names. But whoever it is, I'm almost certain it will be a veteran coach. The big names are Quennville and Berube, but they'll have multiple suitors, and I don't see the Kings over paying for the next coach in order to win a bidding war. As for the rest of Blake's supporting cast (Emmer, Muzz, etc), I think they're on the clock for getting fired and busily updating their resumes since five minutes to go in the third period last night.
Bottom line, I foresee us continuing to operate like a mom and pop franchise, while Beckerman keeps Luc in charge. Hell, who know what TF these guys will do after this massively disappointing (by their own public expectations) season. All I know is that us fans will continue to cling to the ever fading memories of 2012 and 2014 as this front office continues to blow smoke up our collective rears.
