Although it remains a mystery who the Kings’ starting goaltender would be on opening night next season, the team announced that it has made yet another tweak to the coaching staff that will be guiding its netminders.
Mike Buckley, formerly of the Pittsburgh Penguins, was named goaltending coach. He assumed the role of Bill Ranford, who held that title for 17 years before ascending to his newly created position of director of goaltending.
This reorganization tracks with the addition of North American goalie scout Matt Millar as well as some overtures the Kings have made to deepen their once-neglected talent pool between the pipes. When the recently departed Jonathan Quick arrived at the top level of the organization, he was part of a robust competition in goal. But over the course of his tenure as the starter, the Kings only invested one selection in the first two rounds of any draft in a goalie – Christopher Gibson (2011), who never played a game for them.
Last season, not only did the Kings make a trade under some duress for a veteran puck-stopper, playoff starter Joonas Korpisalo, but they also acquired a coveted goalie prospect in the University of Michigan’s Erik Portillo. Buckley will soon work directly with Portillo, much as he oversaw the development of Matt Murray in Pittsburgh.
Buckley, 46, had a similar progression to Ranford’s: he served eight years as goalie coach before being promoted to a supervisory role. But the most vital parallel is that Buckley, like Ranford, was part of a coaching staff that won two Stanley Cups, with Ranford’s coming in 2012 and 2014, just before Buckley won back-to-back rings in 2016 and 2017 with Pittsburgh.