THE Kiss have seen each of the last three seasons ending with defeats in the playoff series in the first round against the Edmonton Oilers. What if the current NHL season ended on Saturday, guess who the Kings would face the first round of the playoffs?
It made the morning of Saturday in Crypto.com Arena, the first meeting of the season between the teams, an important measurement stick for the Kings and a chance to deposit a marker against the Oilers, who could again determine their fate next spring in Edmonton, right?
“I don't know”, Kings Forward Phillip Danault shrugged before the match. “No matter what you do during the regular season, I don't know if they affect something. When we get to the playoffs, it's totally a game.”
Kings coach Jim Hiller accepted. If someone thought that kings hoped to look through the ice, look at the oilers in the eyes and throw the glove, he was not among them.
“We are not going to go so far forward,” he said. “It is a team from our division with which we had problems, which we want to beat. I wouldn't make it a more important deal. ”
Which does not mean the 4-3 victory in extension of the KingsOne in which they got up with deficits twice, did not make sense. Far from it. Because the victory, on Quinton ByfieldThe second goal of the match, not only equaled the teams for second place in the Pacific division classification, but he also confirmed that the gap between the two teams on ice could also close.
The Oilers clearly become the white whale of kingsthe enemy who must be defeated. Consequently, each playing, each before -one, each shot to the goal was imbued with additional meaning – whether the players and the coach wish to admit it or not.
“Everyone knows This is our rivalry“Said Danault.
The Kings and the Oilers have met 10 times in the playoffs, Edmonton winning the series eight times. In the history of the NHL, only one team – Pittsburgh's Penguins, who beat Washington's capitals nine times in 11 tries – faced the same opponent in at least seven eliminatory series and was more successful.
The goalkeeper of Edmonton's Oilers, Stuart Skinner, abandoned the winning goal in overtime in front of the Kings Phillip Danault striker on Saturday.
(Mark J. Terrall / Associated Press)
The last time the Kings beat Edmonton in the playoffs, Wayne Gretzky led the Points team. It was in 1989.
And regular season meetings have been almost as unilateral in recent years, the oilers winning three of the four games last season and 11 of the last 15 dating from 2019. This changed on Saturday, just as the teams changed.
The Kings, who changed the way they played in the neutral area and on the penalty since last season's debacle, also added seven players since their last meeting with the crypt oilers eight months ago. Edmonton separated from 10 players during the same period.
Wing Warren generated is on these two lists, after spending three seasons in Edmonton before signing a three -year free agent contract with the Kings last summer. “They have new parts, we have obtained new parts,” he said.
Some of these new pieces played a role in the result on Saturday, Foegele obtaining a goal and two assists for the Kings, who also obtained a goal from the newcomer Tanner Jeannot. Kasperi Kapanen, affirmed by the Oilers in derogation a month ago, and former King Viktor Arvidsson represented two of the three goals of Edmonton.
Kapanen started the scoring, hitting at home the rebound of a long Connor Brown Wrister halfway from the first period. Byfield corresponded to less than three minutes later, by digging the washer of the end boards and marking on a Wryter from the edge of the right game circle. Foegele, credited with a decisive pass on this objective, then put the Kings forward just before the first intermission with an involuntary help of Brown, who obtained his skate in the manner of a centering of centering, deviating the puck in Foegele, which swept it by goalkeeper Stuart Skinner.
The oilers needed less than four minutes from the second period to erase this deficit with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins marking on a power game only 12 seconds after Alex Laferriere left to trip. During the playoffs last spring, nine of the 22 goals of the oilers against the Kings came with the advantage of the man.
Arvidsson gave Edmonton his head again on a Wrister between the circles after Leon Draisaitl has stripped defender Vladislav Gavrikov of the washer deeply in the end of the kings with eight minutes to do in the second period. But the Kings would not leave, with Jeannot in the evening the match by redirecting a pass of Jordan Spence from the edge of the fold 2½ minutes in the third, preparing the field for the winner of Byfield 3:19 in the additional period.
A few seconds before Byfield shooting, Skinner asked the officials a stop in play due to a problem with his mask. He did not understand, the Kings obtained their first victory in six games in overtime instead.
Hiller, however, was held at the script, refusing to call the game something other than 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 said,” lost again against Edmonton. Overtime too. Terrible “. So it's really difficult to separate.
“It was an important game for us, for sure (and) a fairly entertaining hockey game. Probably the best or most entertaining of the year. ”
The playoffs will determine if it was something more than that.
