The Los Angeles Kings put together an exciting win on Friday night over the Dallas Stars, a 5-4 shootout win. The Kings scored early but the Dallas Stars did not go away and the game went back and forth with either team not able to build more than a one-goal lead.
The Kings extended their win streak to three games and improved an already impressive home record to 17-3-1 on the season. In addition to that, head coach Jim Hiller set a franchise milestone as the coach to reach 50 career wins the fastest, a feat he accomplished in only 86 games.
With tonight's victory, the @LAKings improved to 50-29-7 under Jim Hiller. By doing so, Hiller becomes the fastest head coach in franchise history to reach the 50-win mark, doing so in 86 games. pic.twitter.com/M64U3Q7gvl
— LA Kings PR (@LAKingsPR) February 8, 2025
Hiller was named interim head coach about this time last year and helped get the Los Angeles Kings to the playoffs for the third straight year. He showed the franchise enough that they would remove the interim tag and make him the permanent head coach moving forward.
Los Angeles Kings have bought into Jim Hiller's philosophy
After the game, center Phillip Danault was asked about the offseason shift so that this team would become bigger and harder to play against. He mentioned that the Kings have seen the benefits of that and that the team has bought into what Hiller wants this team to be.
There is no question that last season, Hiller had to work with what the team had and kept a lot of the same philosophies from Todd McLellan during the season. This year though Hiller wasted little time making changes and it started with moving away from the 1-3-1.
However, the biggest challenge for Hiller is yet to come and that is getting the Los Angeles Kings past the first round of the playoffs. This is something they haven't been able to do in close to a decade but with the way they have played at home they have a good chance to do that this season.