New coach Desjardins says LA Kings have “got to win now”

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Willie Desjardins realizes the Los Angeles Kings have more than enough time to turn around their dismal start to the season.

The interim head coach still wants his Kings to play as if their season and their jobs are on the line in early November.

Desjardins ran an energetic practice Monday to begin his tenure with the Kings, who fired John Stevens and assistant coach Don Nachbaur on Sunday in a shakeup of the struggling club. Desjardins didn’t promise any magic solutions to the Kings’ woes, but he plans to impress urgency upon his new players.

“I think the theme we had was that we can’t wait,” Desjardins said. “You only have so many years that you have a chance to win, and you’ve got to win now. The easy road would be to say that we can’t do it this season. You can’t afford to waste a season, because you never know what’s going to happen. It’s the same with me. I didn’t know if I would get another shot at the NHL, so this is my chance. I’ve got to make it work, and that’s the same message to the players.

“You’ve got to find a way to make this season work. What exactly it is, we’ve got to find out.”

Desjardins didn’t land his first NHL head coaching job until he was 57 years old, leading the Vancouver Canucks from 2014-17. After taking the young Canadian national team to Olympic bronze medals last February, he returned home to Medicine Hat, Alberta, and started a hockey school.

General manager Rob Blake abruptly called him last week with the chance to take over the struggling Kings, who haven’t returned to the heights they reached during their Stanley Cup championship seasons in 2012 and 2014. Los Angeles still has a wealth of top-end NHL players, including defenseman Drew Doughty, captain Anze Kopitar, forward Jeff Carter and goalie Jonathan Quick, who is injured.

After the Canucks fired him, Desjardins didn’t want to return to the NHL as an assistant coach. He was thrilled to get another chance to be a head coach with a team possessing as much talent as the Kings — even if his current contract only lasts until the end of this season.

“Coming in here, it’s a great situation,” Desjardins said. “I think there’s lots to work with. Sometimes you have situations where you don’t have much of a chance to be successful. They’ve got a lot of good pieces here. There’s some really quality people within this team, some high-end guys.”