The Kings have seen each of the last three seasons end in first-round playoff losses to the Edmonton Oilers. And if the current NHL season had ended Saturday, guess who the Kings would face in the first round of the playoffs?
That made Saturday’s matinee at Crypto.com Arena, the first meeting of the season between the teams, an important measuring stick for the Kings and a chance to put down a marker against the Oilers, who could once again determine their fate next spring in Edmonton, right?
“I don’t know,” Kings forward Phillip Danault shrugged before the game. “No matter what you do during the regular season, I don’t know if they affect anything. When we get to the playoffs, it’s totally another game.”
Kings coach Jim Hiller agreed. If anyone thought the Kings were hoping to stare across the ice, look the Oilers in the eyes and throw down the gauntlet, he wasn’t among them.
The Kings lose a close game Sunday in Washington for the second day in a row after one-goal loss in Philadelphia on Saturday.
“We’re not going to get that far ahead,” he said. “It’s a team in our division that we’ve had problems with, that we want to beat. I wouldn’t make it a bigger deal.”
Which isn’t to say the Kings’ 4-3 overtime win, one in which they rallied from deficits twice, was meaningless. Far from it. Because the victory, on Quinton Byfield’s second goal of the game, not only tied the teams for second in the Pacific Division standings, it also confirmed the gap between the two teams on the ice may be closing as well.
The Oilers have clearly become the Kings’ white whale, the foe who must be vanquished. As a result, every faceoff, every forecheck, every shot on goal was imbued with extra meaning — whether the players and coach wanted to admit it or not.
“Everyone knows it’s our rivalry,” Danault said.
The Kings and Oilers have met 10 times in the playoffs, with Edmonton winning the series eight times. In NHL history only one team — the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have beaten the Washington Capitals nine times in 11 tries — has faced the same opponent in at least seven playoff series and had more success.
The last time the Kings beat Edmonton in the postseason, Wayne Gretzky led the team in points. That was 1989.
And the regular-season meetings have been almost as one-sided in recent years, with the Oilers winning three of four games last season and 11 of the last 15 dating to 2019. That changed Saturday, just as the teams have changed.
The Kings, who have switched the way they play in the neutral zone and on the penalty kill since last season’s postseason debacle, also added seven players since their last meeting with the Oilers at the Crypt eight months ago. Edmonton has parted with 10 players over the same period.
Winger Warren Foegele is on both those lists, having spent three seasons in Edmonton before signing a three-year free-agent contract with the Kings last summer. “They’ve got new pieces, we’ve gotten new pieces,” he said.
Some of those new pieces played a part in the outcome Saturday with Foegele getting a goal and two assists for the Kings, who also got a goal from newcomer Tanner Jeannot. Kasperi Kapanen, claimed by the Oilers on waivers a month ago, and former King Viktor Arvidsson accounted for two of Edmonton’s three goals.
Kapanen got the scoring started, banging home the rebound of a long Connor Brown wrister midway through the first period. Byfield matched that less than three minutes later, digging the puck out from the end boards and scoring on a wrister from the edge of the right faceoff circle. Foegele, credited with an assist on that goal, then put the Kings ahead just before the first intermission with some unintentional help from Brown, who got his skate in the way of a centering pass, deflecting the puck to Foegele, who swept it by goalie Stuart Skinner.
The Oilers needed less than four minutes of the second period to erase that deficit with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scoring on a power play just 12 seconds after Alex Laferriere went off for tripping. In last spring’s playoffs, nine of the Oilers’ 22 goals against the Kings came with the man advantage.
Arvidsson gave Edmonton the lead again on a wrister from between the circles after Leon Draisaitl stripped defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov of the puck deep in the Kings’ end with eight minutes left in the second period. But the Kings would not quit, with Jeannot evening the game again by redirecting in a Jordan Spence pass from the edge of the crease 2½ minutes into the third, setting the stage for Byfield’s winner 3:19 into the extra period.
Nick Blankenburg scores in overtime to lift the Nashville Predators to a 3-2 victory. Quinton Byfield and Alex Laferriere score for the Kings.
Seconds before Byfield’s shot, Skinner asked the officials for a stoppage in play because of a problem with his mask. He didn’t get it, with the Kings getting their first win in six overtime games instead.
Hiller, however, stuck to the script, refusing to call the game anything other than just another date on the schedule.
“It’s so tempting to do that, right? Based on the results,” he said. “If we lost, we would have been saying, ‘lost again to Edmonton. Overtime too. Terrible.’ So it’s really hard to separate.
“It was an important game for us, for sure [and] a pretty entertaining hockey game. Probably the best or most entertaining of the year.”
The playoffs will determine if it was anything more than that.
