The Kings could find themselves with home-ice advantage throughout the Western Conference playoffs or they might start the postseason on the road, and Thursday’s bout with another surging club, the Edmonton Oilers, could go a long way in determining the fate of both franchises.
In the West, there can be no looking ahead or game-planning, even for the Kings and Oilers, who have owned the NHL’s best points percentages in March.
There certainly can’t be any looking back, to last spring when Edmonton eliminated the Kings in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Not when the top three teams in the Pacific Division –– the Vegas Golden Knights, the Kings and Edmonton –– are divided by three points, the same spread among the three teams vying for the West’s final wild-card berth. The Central Division is even more cutthroat, with a solitary point separating the three clubs perched atop its standings.
The races tightened on Tuesday, when Edmonton toppled Vegas and the Kings fell 2-1 to the Calgary Flames, who inched closer to a second straight playoff appearance while leaving the Kings two points back of Vegas.
“This time of the year, you’ve got to score in order to win. So, we came up a bit short, but it certainly wasn’t the worst game that we’ve played,” team captain Anze Kopitar said. “There’s some positives and we’ve got to look ahead now to Thursday.”
The Kings find themselves just one point ahead of the Oilers, meaning Thursday’s match could create some separation, level their positions or even see Edmonton leapfrog the Kings with a regulation win. Edmonton has gone 11-2-1 in March to roar into the divisional race, while the Kings posted an NHL-best 9-1-2 mark.
Edmonton’s attack has thrived with their 4.71 goals per game in March leading the league comfortably. They boast its best power play this season and have been converting at an even better rate this month. Yet they are in the bottom third of the league defensively, and the Kings’ only three March losses came at the hands of hot goalies, most recently that of Calgary’s Jacob Markstrom.
“That’s what happens this time of the year. You’re going to get the other team’s best, and obviously, that team, being pretty desperate in the position that they’re in,” Kopitar said.
The Kings and Oilers met twice previously with the Kings prevailing 3-1 in Edmonton behind dogged checking and then 6-3 at home on the strength of four power-play goals. The Kings also piled up four man-advantage markers against the St. Louis Blues last week, making them the only team to accomplish that feat twice this season.
While the Kings have invigorated their power play with balance across two units, Edmonton leans heavily on its top grouping. Mainstays Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins have combined for a staggering 174 power-play points, led by McDavid’s 67. Although all three players have surpassed 50 power-play points, only one other player in the NHL has more than 35 this season, Tampa Bay winger Nikita Kucherov with 44.
McDavid and Draisaitl have also done plenty of damage at even strength and even shorthanded. They have combined to capture six of the last seven scoring titles and three of the past six Hart trophies as the league’s most valuable player. McDavid’s 143 points already blew past his previous best of 123. Draisaitl’s 116 points also represent a career high. Winger Evander Kane, who missed both meetings with the Kings this season, returned to the lineup in mid-January and was a force in last year’s riveting seven-game series.
With such weaponry at its disposal, Edmonton naturally gravitated toward shoring up its back end. They signed former Kings goalie Jack Campbell over the summer, but his performance hasn’t matched his lucrative contract, opening the door for upstart Stuart Skinner. At the trade deadline, the Oilers zeroed in on veteran defenseman Mattias Ekholm, who’d spent his entire career with the Nashville Predators.
A former teammate of the Kings’ leading scorer Kevin Fiala and the NHL’s first star of the week Viktor Arvidsson, Ekholm has been among the very highest-impact acquisitions thus far. After notching a modest 18 points in 57 games with Nashville, he has nine in just 14 appearances with Edmonton, while amassing a plus-14 rating, the best figure in the league since his March 1 Oilers debut.
While they may not make an impact down the stretch, the Kings closed out last week by signing a pair of players to entry-level contracts. Defenseman Cole Krygier, whom they acquired from the Florida Panthers shortly before putting pen to paper, and forward Alex Laferriere, a Kings third-round selection in 2020, have made the leap from college to the minor-pro level.
Kings at Edmonton When: 6:00 p.m. Thursday
Where: Rogers Place
TV/Radio: Bally Sports SoCal/iHeart Radio
