Kings Make Webster Part of Past : Hockey: They fire him as coach with one year left on contract. No replacement expected to be named soon.

Tom Webster has thrown his last stick for the Kings.

They fired their coach Monday, ending his sometimes brilliant, sometimes erratic three years at the helm.

After losing in the first round of the playoffs, the Kings took a long look at their future and decided that Webster wasn’t part of it.

“When you reorganize your team, unfortunately, the first place you look is the coach,” General Manager Rogie Vachon said. “I don’t put all the blame on him. Some of the players also have to be held accountable.”

But Webster, 43, was deemed expendable. He leaves with one year remaining on his contract.

Vachon ruled out picking a successor from within the organization. Assistants Rick Wilson and Cap Raeder will be retained, but their future with the club will be determined by the new coach.

Vachon also dismissed the idea that retiring defenseman Larry Robinson might have a shot at the job.

“I love Larry, and I’m going to try my best to keep him in the organization,” Vachon said. “But it would not be fair to put him in that situation when he hasn’t coached before. But we’d like to keep him around.”

One name floating around is that of Herb Brooks, former U.S. Olympic coach whose 1980 team won the gold medal in the “Miracle on Ice.” Brooks is coaching in the American Hockey League for the New Jersey Devils’ affiliate.

“To be honest with you we do not have too many names together right now,” Vachon said. “It’s going to be a long process.”

Some of those Vachon might consider could still be working for teams in the playoffs for some time. Vachon couldn’t even guarantee that the Kings would have their coach by the draft in late June.

“I hope they consider that the main thing is to get the team back on the right track,” Raeder said. “If we’re part of it, great. If not, good luck to them.”

Neither Webster nor owner Bruce McNall was available for comment.

Under Webster, the Kings won their first Smythe Division title a year ago, along with a club record 46 victories. Overall, Webster had a mark of 115-94-31, making him the second-winningest coach in team history. Only Bob Pulford, with 178 victories, won more, and he had five years to do it.

The playoffs hurt Webster. In his first two years, the Kings, riddled with injuries, were eliminated in the second round.

This year proved to be an even bigger disaster. The Kings were knocked out in the first round by their archrivals, the Edmonton Oilers.

Webster’s problems, however, went far beyond the ice. There were the illnesses and temper tantrums that caused him to miss more than 30 games, leaving Wilson and Raeder in charge.

Everything seemed to happen to Webster. Showering one morning in his Edmonton hotel room, he leaped out to answer the phone, slipped and fell, causing a serious ear injury that required surgery and forced him to miss 15 games over the span of a month.

There were other absences because of a cold or the flu.

Those were beyond Webster’s control.

But then came the absences because he lost control.

He was kicked out of one game a season ago for telling a referee, after what Webster thought was a bad call, “Your helmet was squeezing your brain too tightly.”

He was ejected later in the season for throwing a stick onto the ice in anger at another call.

And he was suspended for four games, two of them playoff games, and fined $5,000 for exchanging punches with Doug Gilmour, then with the Calgary Flames.

When things went bad this season, Webster went back to his trusty stick. This time, he threw it at referee Kerry Fraser, grazing one of the referee’s skates.

Webster was suspended for 12 games, the longest such penalty ever given an NHL coach.

That was the beginning of the end. A furious Vachon sent Webster to the team’s minor league club at Phoenix for a week, an embarrassing move that clearly demonstrated Vachon’s feelings.

Those feelings certainly weren’t soothed by the fact that the Kings were 3-8-1 during Webster’s suspension, plunging the team into a run of mediocrity that might have killed its hopes of repeating as division champion.

With the club still slumping in early March, Vachon showed up for a game in Pittsburgh and hinted at Webster’s firing.

Two clutch victories saved Webster temporarily.”He’s a very tense person, and we’re just trying to get him through the year,” one club official said.

While fingers are pointed at the Kings’ poor individual performances this season, Webster can’t be expected to take the blame for the players he was given. But team officials had other problems with him.

They talked, off the record, about Webster’s lack of leadership. Players and officials complained that he wasn’t involved enough in practices or strategy sessions, that he only showed up for the games.

When the NHL strike temporarily shut down the season, Webster told people he was happy because, if the season didn’t resume, the Kings couldn’t be eliminated from the playoffs. And he couldn’t be fired.

But eventually, the strike ended.

And so did Webster’s stormy regime.

Webster’s NHL Coaching Record

Season Team W L T PTS Finish 1986-87 Rangers 5 7 4 14 1989-90 Kings 34 39 7 75 Fourth 1990-91 Kings 46 24 10 102 First 1991-92 Kings 35 31 14 84 Second Total 120 101 35 Playoffs 12 16

NOTE: Records count games that Webster missed due to suspension or illness. The Kings advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1990 and 1991, and were eliminated in the first round this season.