Why can't the Kings beat the Oilers? A familiar pattern emerges in playoff elimination
EDMONTON, Canada — Stop me if you've heard this before, but the summer is starting early for the Kings after a first-round playoff loss to the Edmonton Oilers.
This one is a little different, though, because this was a season that had inspired rare promise before it ended Thursday in the same painful monotony as the last three, with the Oilers going on and the Kings going home.
And that's particularly disappointing since the Kings tied franchise records for wins (48) and points (105) and set one for home victories (31) this season. Yet it ended with the team breaking another record: it has now gone 11 seasons without winning a playoff series, the longest drought in team history.
A postseason in which the Kings seemed primed for a long run lasted just six games, the last a 6-4 loss to the Oilers at Rogers Place that leaves the organization once again shuffling off into the offseason plagued by doubt, frustration and one big question.
What happened?
'Having the season that we had, the group of guys in this locker room, and know, to come up short again? It sucks,' said captain Anze Kopitar, who scored the team's final goal of the season. 'It's frustrating. This one hurts a little more.'
Hurts a little more because the Kings lost more than a game and a series Thursday. They lost a golden opportunity. Rarely has a postseason set up so favorably for the team.
After acquiring Andrei Kuzmenko at the trade deadline, the Kings went on a tear, winning 17 of their final 22 games, averaging better than 3.7 goals a game. The once-punchless power play became potent; goalkeeper Darcy Kuemper went 15 games allowing two or fewer goals, the second-longest streak in the NHL's expansion era; and the team sprinted past the Oilers to place second in the Pacific Division, its best finish in nine seasons.
No team finished the season hotter nor healthier than the Kings.
That also meant the Kings, who had the best home record in the NHL in the regular season, would have the home-ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs. And if they finally got past an Edmonton team that limped into the postseason wounded, they would have faced Las Vegas in the second round and a team from a quartet of Winnipeg, Dallas, Colorado or St. Louis in the Western Conference final.
The Kings were a combined 8-4-1 against those teams in the regular season. It wasn't outlandish to think the Kings had a shot at the Stanley Cup final.
'It's all going according to plan,' one team executive whispered early in the playoffs. And then it wasn't, with the Kings once again tripping over a familiar hurdle.
'One hundred percent it's a missed opportunity,' Kings coach Jim Hiller said. 'We had great buy-in from our players. We believe we could have won the series. We believe we should have won the series. We didn't.
'So that's the bottom line.'
The Oilers have proven to be the kryptonite to even the most Superman-ish of Kings teams, with Edmonton the place the Kings postseasons go to die.
The teams have met in the playoffs 11 times since 1982 with the Oilers winning nine of those series, including the last four in a row. The last time the Kings beat Edmonton in the playoffs, in 1989, Wayne Gretzky led the team in points, current general manager Luc Robitaille was in his third season as a player while Kopitar, the only player on this year's team who was even alive then, was still in diapers.
The year's loss may be the most painful of the lot though.
The Kings had the home-ice advantage, one of the league's top three goaltenders in Darcy Kuemper and the top power play in the playoffs. They led in every game.
Yet they still lost in six.
The turning point in the series came in late in Game 3. After dominating the first two games at home, the Kings were leading the first game in Edmonton with about seven minutes to play when disaster struck. After the Oilers' Evander Kane tied the game on a controversial goal, Hiller challenged the call, arguing for goalie interference. He lost, Edmonton was awarded a power play, and 10 seconds later the Oilers went in front to stay.
In Game 4 the Kings led with less than 35 seconds to play when Quinton Byfield failed to make a simple clearance out of the Kings' zone. The Oilers pounced on the mistake to tie the game, then won it in overtime. They never lost again.
'You can pinpoint Game 3, we didn't close out,' Kopitar said. 'Definitely Game 4. It's a completely different series if we go home up 3-1 versus 2-2. But could've, should've, would've.'
The Kings simply wore down, especially on the blue line. That's why they gave up a playoff-worst 15 goals in the third period and overtime in the series. The Oilers scored just 12 times in the first and second periods combined.
Yet asked in his postgame press conference if he regretted how he used his defensemen, Hiller was curt.
'No,' he said.
And with that he walked away from the podium for the final time this season.
Then there's the offense. Kopitar and Adrian Kempe combined for 19 points in the series, but had just one goal and two assists combined after Kane's game-tying goal in Game 3.
'The chances were there. We just couldn't convert,' Kopitar said. 'Credit to their goalie, he made some good stops. Credit to their team. The last couple of games they played a solid checking game and made it harder on us to generate stuff.
'We fought and came up short.'
That's beginning to sound redundant.
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