In a meeting with Kings officials on April 30, the opening question was directed at Dean Lombardi, president and general manager, and it was about the future of his man behind the bench, Marc Crawford.
Lombardi responded by saying Crawford was the coach "right now."
Apparently, right now was just that.
The shelf-life of right now barely extended into June, and didn't even reach the upcoming NHL entry draft. Crawford's rocky two-season tenure with the Kings ended Tuesday when the team announced he would not be back for a third. He had one year left on his contract.
Despite Lombardi's quip, the move was a surprise in terms of timing. An immediate change after the season, in which the defensively challenged Kings (32-43-7) finished second-to-last overall in the NHL, would have been less of a stunner.
Lombardi, on a conference call with reporters, termed it "a gut call" in terms of projecting the team's future and accelerated youth movement.
What happened between the end of April and Crawford's firing, in part, amounted to an organizational change in philosophy.
"I think we looked at what's happening in free agency, where the payroll is, where it's going, we had the time to look at the draft and how it's going to affect us next year," Lombardi said. "We also had the time to look at some of our young players and where we think they'll be, in the last couple months, in terms of integrating them.
"It just comes down to, I guess, fit, and there's no doubt we're committed to the way we're going after my meeting with ownership this week. It's more evident than ever that they're committed to building a young core, for lack of a better term, the old-fashioned way."
And Crawford's previous NHL success, most notably in Colorado, has come with veteran players. If anything, the Kings will be getting much younger on the defensive end, an uneasy alliance with Crawford's often-bellicose, in-your-face management style.
His record with the Kings was 59-84-21 and he did not respond to several phone messages for comment.
"I think it's fair to say we did not expect the team to be out of the playoffs in January," Lombardi said. " . . . Certainly that goes into the equation when you're evaluating your coaching staff and players. The most important thing for me was going forward."
The search for the man who would be Kings' coach No. 22 may well start and finish in the hallways of the team's offices in El Segundo.
