When Peter Laviolette has wanted a trusted voice throughout his coaching existence, he often turns to Kevin McCarthy. The former NHL defenseman has eagerly been a sounding board for the longtime head coach. Their bond is tight, forged over two decades working together for multiple teams.As Laviolette is formally introduced Wednesday as the newest head coach of the Los Angeles Kings, McCarthy will see a coaching lifer refreshed by some time away from the grind, but enthusiastic to be back behind the bench. The thrill doesn’t wane even if the Kings will be Laviolette’s seventh team.“Around November of last year, I think, he had that itch again,” said McCarthy, a devoted lieutenant who served as an assistant coach for Laviolette with the Carolina Hurricanes, Philadelphia Flyers, Nashville Predators and Washington Capitals. “You watch more hockey, you’re talking to some more people. He was ready to come back, obviously.“Sometimes you have to wait for the right situation to come along. You’re watching other people get jobs, so it can be a little frustrating at times, I’m sure. I know that he’s really excited about this opportunity because he really feels that this is a long-term situation here in L.A. because they got a lot of good young players and he really feels that the way that he wants his teams to play is well-suited for what he has in L.A. right now.”The 2025-26 season was the first in which Laviolette wasn’t behind an NHL bench since lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 campaign. He’s had extended breaks before, whether it was during the 2012-13 labor dispute or the COVID-impacted 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. He’s also been fired in-season. But he’s usually worked at some point every hockey year.Time off came 14 months ago with his dismissal from the New York Rangers, which allowed him to recharge his batteries and be part of this hiring cycle. Now the coach who is seventh on the all-time wins list has been tasked with taking the Kings to a higher level, one that’s escaped them since they captured their second Stanley Cup in 2014.What can the Kings expect from Laviolette as he becomes their fourth coach in a four-season span? As someone who has stayed a confidante even while he’s embraced retirement, McCarthy said they will skate from the first day of training camp and be on the attack when the puck is dropped, adopting an aggressive, active mindset that will embolden players who have long operated in a defense-focused environment.To McCarthy, Laviolette’s plans remind him of when they joined Nashville after Barry Trotz’s 15-year run coaching the Predators.“Obviously, Barry Trotz is a very good coach, and he was a really good defensive coach,” McCarthy said. “Some teams, you have to play that way because you don’t have the offensive players to make a difference. But we got there at the right time. There was a lot of guys that we knew that had a lot of offense in them and we felt that playing that style of hockey — we knew these guys knew how to play without the puck and now it was just a matter of trying to open these guys up offensively.“It’s not something that comes by accident. It’s something that (Peter) works on every day in practice. Some form of offensive play. And so, in training camp they can expect — well, first of all, they can be expected to be a high-tempo practices with a lot of skating. Each day he’s going to work on something, one part of the system. But he’ll always work on the offensive side of the game as it goes on and throughout the year. It’s a situation where I really believe that (it’s) repetition, repetition and that eventually just becomes a second-nature tool.”Over five-plus years in Nashville — his longest stint over six previous stops — Laviolette boosted the Predators’ offense into a top-10 outfit. In shorter turns with the Capitals and Rangers, he guided his teams to the upper third of the NHL in scoring.The Kings plummeted to 29th in scoring last season, the first time they failed to average three goals per game since 2021-22. Their 2.68 goals per game was the lowest since 2014-15, which is notable given how the last five years of scoring across the league are at the highest sustainable level since the early 90s.But Kings general manager Ken Holland acknowledged as he conducted his coaching search — if not earlier when he fired Jim Hiller in March — that their highly disciplined defensive approach was too restrictive and didn’t maximize the abilities of their most talented players. Laviolette, though, has overseen players who have flourished with the freedom his system provides. Artemi Panarin, with whom he’ll be reunited, is the most recent example, having piled up a career-high 120 points with the Rangers two years ago.“One thing that I found is that whatever team he goes to, the offensive guys, the guys that are your point-getters, they loved the style of play that he instills,” McCarthy said. “We still got to play strong defense, but the offensive guys like it because they’re always in motion. We’re trying to get the puck back, but we’re not sitting back. You’re always pressuring the puck. In that style of play, especially for skilled players, they like that. They want to be able to play that style of game.”Another Laviolette trait is the activation of defensemen. It doesn’t matter if they are creative playmakers from the blue line or stay-at-home types, all are expected to press forward when there is an opportunity to keep pucks in the offensive zone. It could mean leaving the Kings goalies more exposed, but as McCarthy said, that’s a risk worth taking to generate more scoring chances of their own.“If you have to rim the puck and you got two guys (forechecking), that D is up there slamming those walls,” McCarthy said. “You can’t slam walls if you’re not up in the play. It’s a really demanding system because you got to skate. … You don’t just sit back there and sit at the blue line. You got to be involved. Either with the puck or without the puck, you got to be moving in order to create ice for somebody else.“That’s the one thing that I think the players are going to really enjoy, the style of play offensively.”Laviolette has long been a proponent of the 1-3-1 neutral zone trap, designed to force team to dump pucks in or force turnovers by cutting off offensive-zone entries. But while the Kings played it for years under Todd McLellan and then Hiller in his first full season, Laviolette’s 1-3-1 can be far more pressurized and fluid depending on game situations. For instance, McCarthy said his teams deploy a two-man forecheck particularly off faceoffs and will often revert to the 1-3-1 when making line changes or protecting leads.“Guys get caught out there sometimes, you can’t be that aggressive,” he said. “So, you just got to wait and fight another day. But for the most part, it’s a read.”Kings players will also appreciate, the longtime assistant coach attests, that Laviolette holds star players as accountable as fourth-line grinders or third-pairing defensemen. He feels that approach encourages a buy-in from the entire team, which has factored in teams often showing vast improvement in his first season.“What I like about Lavy is there’s no gray area with him,” McCarthy said. “It’s black and white. He’s also telling the big guys that you got to play a certain way. There’s a certain style of play. There’s a certain work ethic. There is a certain way that you have to perform from practices to games and what is expected of you. He’s not afraid to call those guys in, whether it’s as a group or individually, show a video that is where you need to get better. I think the skilled guys appreciate that and I think the other guys too. They’re held accountable and to a standard.“I think that’s what makes a team bond together is because they’re all in it together. They’re all pulling on the same rope together and they understand that they’re being held accountable to how they play.”