LAK GAME 83: ODDS HIGH, STAKES HIGHER

EDMONTON, AB — Just prior to the 2024 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs commencing, the culmination of the events in Utah and Arizona keeps the number of National Hockey League franchises at 32 … for the moment.

Since the 2014-15 NHL season, 29 of those 32 teams have tasted playoff success – defined as winning a playoff series. Two of the three teams without a playoff round victory over the past decade, the Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres, will not have an opportunity to join the others by virtue of missing the 16-team Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The third team? The Los Angeles Kings.

The last time the Kings won a playoff round, Justin Williams had been handed the 2014 Conn Smythe Trophy moments before the Stanley Cup was paraded around the ice in Los Angeles for the second time in three NHL seasons. Forwarding to present day, only three players on the current roster celebrated that June day that Alec Martinez threw his “jazz hands” into the air – Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and this season’s returning hero Trevor Lewis – but there’s also been an arena name change, five different coaches (the deposed Darryl Sutter, John Stevens and Todd McLellan, and one prior and current interim coach, Wille Desjardins and Jim Hiller) and two General Managers (Dean Lombardi and the incumbent Rob Blake).

It's startling that Los Angeles has gone that long without tasting a playoff series victory given the 2020 postseason that was conducted during Covid times had 24 qualifying teams and the 2021 postseason format retuned to 16 teams albeit in a realigned division setup. The timing of the Kings’ rebuild coincided with those difficult days and had them out of the playoff picture, but the return of normal times has not resulted in postseason success.

There has been progression – Monday will mark the third consecutive postseason appearance for the Kings, and they’ve done so by averaging a shade over 100 standings points, a level of success many other franchises would sign for.  But with the Edmonton Oilers waiting for their third consecutive playoff dance that seemed destined from mid-season on, if Los Angeles can’t find a way to vanquish its playoff dragon, progression turns to plateauing.

An annual return to the postseason without success won’t be satisfactory for the fan base and that thinking should extend to the front office and ownership group.

Getting that elusive postseason success will be a major task and though the Oilers have controlled the outcomes since the start of the 2022-23 season by winning nine of the 14 games, the path to the second-round through Edmonton is far less treacherous than the opponent Los Angeles would have faced, the Dallas Stars, if they had not rallied in the dying minutes of the final game on the league slate. The domination Dallas displayed in the three game regular-season series was far greater than the edge Edmonton had over Los Angeles in their four meetings.

The Stars don’t possess a player that can singlehandedly win a series in Connor McDavid, but the well-balanced roster Dallas GM Jim Nill has constructed proved to be no match for the Kings outscoring 14-3 in sweeping the three-game regular-season series with the goal differential an accurate representation of the run of play.

It’s a less daunting task to defeat the Oilers, but the degree of difficulty remains high.

The Kings will enter the series as decided underdogs, their roller coaster season raises questions as to which team will show up on Monday night for Game 1 at Rogers Place given the various versions we have seen over the first 82 games – the road warriors version, the ‘they can’t win after 60 minutes’ one, the sudden and season-ending great home record one or the one that played without intensity in the final 10 days of the season with playoff positioning still at stake.

As for the stakes, while they are always high once you get to Game 83, they’re even higher for certain individuals:

• Interim Coach Jim Hiller – The tag in front of Hiller’s name has him sitting with the highest stake at the playoffs table. Hiller assumed the helm with the team in a nosedive – three wins in 17 games at the time Blake shifted him one position behind the bench – and re-installed confidence in the floundering team. He finished with a respectable 19-12-1 record in 32 games but his future as head coach likely lies with what occurs in the next seven or less games.

• Matt Roy/Viktor Arvidsson/Cam Talbot – All three need to be impact players from both a team and personal perspective. The trio is scheduled to hit unrestricted free agency on July 1 and their post-season performance will impact their standing as a King, as well as their wallets. Less than strong play from any of the three will make it a more difficult task to advance to the second-round. Roy is a steady presence and the team’s leading shot blocker, Arvidsson changes the dynamic offensively, especially on the first powerplay unit and Talbot must be the better goaltender in this series.

• PL Dubois – The highlight of his season may be the change in how he’s referred to – from Pierre-Luc to the current PL. He gets credit for playing all 82 games and being available to the media as much as any King but the balance ain’t pretty. Some nights he was invisible, others marginal and a random impactful game, but the player who management believed would be a difference maker never showed up. The front office still believes in him (one individual said to me last week “he’s got more in him to give, we just have to get it out of him.” But with his future secure as he’s ending the first season of a big multi-year deal, there’s not much at stake other than overcoming the public perception of Dubois possessing one of the worst contracts in the NHL.  

• Rob Blake – Though the organization hasn’t disclosed how much term is left on his deal, it’s believed Blake is under contract for one more season after this one. If the Kings fail again in Round 1, there will be calls for a change in direction but with ownership more invisible than Dubois on his worst nights, there’s no clarity as to how much accountability there will be for Blake or his boss, team President Luc Robitaille. If he still is in command without a playoff round win, he has to explore comprehensive changes.

As for Los Angeles’ chances for success, there’s a point of view that not much has changed one year removed from losing in six games to Edmonton. The Kings’ regular-season wasn’t an improvement – finishing third in the Pacific Division again but with four less standings points, the previously mentioned lack of results against the Oilers and one of their productive playoff performers from last season, Gabriel Vilardi (2 goals, 2 assists in 5 games) now toiling in Winnipeg.

So, what needs to change for the Kings to emerge victorious? The case for a season wins looks like this:

• Full health – For the first time all season, the Kings will enter Game 83 with an entirely healthy roster. Carl Grundstrom’s return from LTIR gives Hiller a full complement of fit bodies that could lead to the return of a 12 forwards, six defensemen deployment for Game 1. The majority of the games of his tenure have seen the 11 forwards/7 defensemen alignment borne primarily out of team health more than performance. Additionally, Kevin Fiala was not at 100% in last year’s series after suffering a late season knee injury in Colorado.

• A better goalie – While it’s true Joonas Korpisalo helped saved the 2022-23 regular-season, his subpar post-season was a key to the team’s postseason failure. As the series lengthened, the Oilers got a book on him, beating him high at key times. Talbot has endured a difficult midseason run to return to the form of his early season play and at minimum has to maintain it and likely has to raise it for him to defeat his old mates.

• A better Quinton Byfield – The emerging star got chirped nicely by his teammates when he cashed in over $400,000 of bonuses by getting a goal and an assist in Game 82 against Chicago. Even more importantly than the cash – if he didn’t achieve the goal and assist thresholds, he’s getting paid over the summer – he played the type of game necessary in Game 83 after going through a stretch of 20 games without scoring. His aggressiveness from the opening faceoff, the willingness to go to the net and stay there to convert setups from his linemates. A late change by Hiller has him off Anze Kopitar’s line with a possible partnership with Dubois and Grundstrom, an interesting line combination.

• The penalty kill – The Oilers’ powerplay isn’t as scary as it was last season (from a league-leading 32.4 percent success rate and an incredible 46.2 in the post season in 2022-23 to 26.3 percent conversion rate this season) and the Kings went from the worst post-season penalty kill to the second best in this regular-season, but that doesn’t mean Los Angeles can parade to the box without risk. Connor and Leon will get theirs with the man advantage, it’s a matter of how much they eat on the powerplay, but Edmonton’s powerplay cannot be the deciding factor.

• Holding serve at 5-on-5 – In prior seasons, the convention was that if you could contain Edmonton on the powerplay, you can achieve victory by outplaying them at 5-on-5. With the coaching change to Kris Knoblauch behind the Edmonton bench, it’s no longer the case. The Oilers were second in the league in scoring at 5-on-5 and weren’t far behind the Kings in yielding goals (143 vs. 153 over 82 games). It’s a big ask for Los Angeles to match production from a top-six forwards perspective (Connor, Leon, Zach Hyman’s amazing goal-scoring season, etc.), so Los Angeles’ playoff fate may rest with what they can get offensively from lines not centered by Kopitar and Phil Danault.

• Expose Stuart Skinner – His performance stands to be as impactful as McDavid or Draisaitl and it’s a tale of two Skinners when it comes to the Kings. The regular-season Skinner is stellar – 5-2-0 in eight games with a Goals Against Average of 1.89 and save percentage of .943 – but playoffs Stu is not a mirror image, going 3-2-0 in six games with a GAA of 3.43 and a .890 save percentage. If Los Angeles can make Skinner pay on their high danger scoring chances, their odds of winning the series will be greatly enhanced.

• “Wanting it more” – I spoke with Drew Doughty on Saturday. There is no question he relishes the opportunity to eliminate the Oilers from the post-season and he believes is the mental/intangible part of the game that will drive his team’s success.

“As much as we want to send them home, we want to just win a playoff series even more,” Doughty said. “We’re not going to dwell on what happened last year. We’re going to learn from what we did wrong last year. And to be honest, I think it just comes down to wanting it more than them and playing with more heart and more grit. I think that honestly a lot of the difference in any playoff series is the emotion. You got to get some lucky bounces; we have to keep them off the powerplay, there’s no doubt about that. We have a lot of confidence in our penalty kill, but their powerplay is going to succeed if you keep giving them looks.

“It’s just the emotion and I think that is the biggest part about any playoff series. It’s not that we didn’t have it last year, we did at times, but we didn’t have for the whole series, and we didn’t have it to close out the series, which is the most important time to have it. I think if we play with the right emotion, not going too high and again too low, that’s how we’ll win the series.”

THE PREDICTION

Los Angeles is a clear underdog in the series; Edmonton’s play under Knoblauch has been excellent and they present the same problems they did in the two prior series triumphs over Los Angeles. Pound-for-pound they possess the better roster and have two potential X-factors in Evander Kane – though not 100 percent healthy, he rises to the occasion against Los Angeles – and old friend (!) Corey Perry. This duo potentially makes the Oilers bottom-six forwards better and deeper than in prior seasons.

The Kings will rely on its effective 1-3-1 defensive scheme to limit Edmonton’s superior offensive talent and while you’ll hear plenty about the scheme effectiveness should the Oilers find a way to overcome it for a third successive postseason, the pressure to win this series sits more with Edmonton. Despite being the favorites, beating a team in three straight post seasons is a difficult task and for all the questions about the Kings passive defensive approach being successful in the playoffs, there will be far more questions about the Oilers inability to win with the presence of the best player in the game and a running mate in the top five. McDavid and Draisaitl have played together for nine seasons and have yet to win a Western Conference Finals game much less a Stanley Cup, the pressure to win is far greater in Alberta than California.

But it won’t be enough for Los Angeles to emerge with a series win. They’ll have to execute at close to perfection because most of the numbers point to an Edmonton series win and given their inconsistencies up to and including Game 82, I don’t see them eliminating the weaknesses in their game (offensively average, lack of overall size, inability to limit McDavid and Draisaitl) that will result in the same outcome from last Spring.

Oilers in 6, and if that comes to fruition, I’m eager to see the dominoes that fall behind it in Los Angeles.