D.J. Smith is leading a playoff series, but it's bittersweet because of who he replaced

Los Angeles Kings interim head coach D.J. Smith, top, talks with right winger Alex Laferriere (14) during the first period of Game 1 in the first round of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoffs against the Colorado Avalanche, Sunday, April 19, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo Jack Dempsey) (Jack Dempsey / Associated Press)

As a kid growing up in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit, D.J. Smith would look forward to the Stanley Cup playoffs the way other kids looked forward to Christmas.

“It's special as a kid growing up, just watching that first game of the NHL playoffs,” he said. “As a Red Wings fan, me and my brother [would] get it on Channel 50 back home, watch [Steve] Yzerman and the boys and it was exciting.”

Now Smith is coaching in those same playoffs after guiding the Kings on a mad dash to a wild-card berth. And while the games haven’t lost that special feeling they had when he was a kid, now they’re all business.

“To be up here isspecial,” he said. “But you’ve got to turn the page on that. I’ve got a job to do.”

Read more: Kings keep it close but fall to potent Avalanche to open playoffs

He did that job well in Game 1 of the Kings’ opening-round series with the Colorado Avalanche, pushing the NHL’s best team to the final horn in a 2-1 loss. The Kings have a chance to even the series Tuesday before returning to Crypto.com Arena for Game 3 on Thursday and Game 4 on Sunday.

Sunday’s game wasn’t the first time Smith stood behind the bench in a Stanley Cup playoff game. As an assistant, he coached the Maple Leafs in the postseason three times and he was also an assistant on Jim Hiller’s staff last spring when the Kings reached the playoffs.

None of those teams made it past the first round, but Smith said he learned a lot from the experience.

“You’ve got to slow it down in your mind. Things happen quick,” he said. “Big moments happen quick. Decisions have to be made quick. But they have to be made calmly. And the players need to know you're under control at all times.

“We know the task at hand. We have [a] game plan and then I’ve got to continue to make tweaks to it to give us the best chance to win.”

The game plan worked well enough in Game 1, where a mishandled puck led to Logan O’Connor’s breakaway goal early in the third period, a score that proved to be the difference. The Kings held the highest-scoring team in the NHL to just two goals, held the highest-scoring line in the league to just one point and won the battle of the special teams.

“We fall short. But there's a lot of good things,” Smith said after Sunday’s loss.

He hadn’t even left the Ball Arena before beginning work on the tweaks for Game 2.

“I think we could be on the net more. We’ve got to be more physical. We’ve got to hit their [defense] more. And I expect that in the next game.”

There could also be a roster change if Smith decides to have Andrei Kuzmenko, a good puck handler and offensive-zone presence, dress for the first time since undergoing surgery to repair a torn meniscus in late April.

“In order to beat this team, we’re going to have to be better than good,” Smith said Monday. “We need more zone time. We have to hold on to pucks. We can forecheck harder. We have to do a better job of creating.”

If being a head coach in the Stanley Cup playoffs is a dream come true for Smith, a hockey lifer, it may be a bittersweet one. He got the opportunity only after Hiller, a friend and colleague in Toronto, was fired with 23 games left in the regular season but he made the most of it, guiding the Kings to points in 17 of their final 23 games to climb over two teams and in the postseason.

Smith, 48, was a head coach for parts of five seasons in Ottawa, where he posted just one winning record and never made the playoffs. However that previous head coaching experience was one reason he was brought to Los Angeles as as the Kings’ top assistant in 2024 since it made him an ideal fallback candidate should Hiller falter.

When Hiller did, general manager Ken Holland promoted his understudy.

“I made the decision because I feel like our team hasn’t played consistent enough. We’ve underperformed,” Holland, who hoped the move would jolt the team, said at the time of the change.

And it worked. Under Smith, the Kings have played with added aggression and urgency and have become far more physical.

Read more: Kings (vs. Avalanche) and Ducks (vs. Oilers) face tough first-round task in NHL playoffs

“Once Smithy came in, he just changed the energy a little bit and we’re trying to be a little more aggressive versus sitting back,” captain Anze Kopitar said.

They’ve also bonded.

“We’ve really come together as a group,” forward Quinton Byfield said.

Now the challenge becomes doing something no Kings coach has done in more than a decade: getting the team past the first round of the postseason. If Smith can do that he might lose the interim tag in his title, which would make these Stanley Cup playoffs really special.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.