With Edmonton Oilers going downhill fast, can the series be saved?
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Well, it didn't get any better in Game 2.
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It got worse. A lot worse.
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A night that was supposed to mark the return to form of the high-flying, playoff-proven Edmonton Oilers deteriorated into the same keys to defeat that buried them in Game 1.
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It starts with a penalty kill that is being eaten alive (five goals on L.A.'s first nine power plays). Plus defensive breakdowns and mistakes that look straight out of the Decade of Darkness play book. Then goaltending that isn't delivering the big save when they need it. And finally dead hands from the goal scorers.
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Basically everything that could go wrong in a 6-2 kick in the groin went wrong Wednesday in Los Angeles. Offence, defence, goaltending, power play and penalty kill, the Oilers were let down by all of it and now they're in big, big trouble.
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And the Kings, after being eliminated by Edmonton three years in a row, can smell blood and see the frustration. All teams want to win a playoff series, but this one has been burning in L.A.'s gut for three years.
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'There is hunger on their side, of course, you can sense that, but it's not anything we're not able to match,' sighed Leon Draisaitl, after one of the most humbling defeats he's ever had to explain. 'We just have to find it and we have to find it quick. We have to start playing here. Obviously it hasn't been good enough.'
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Being down 2-0 in a series after giving up 12 goals against in two games is something nobody expected from an Oilers team that was supposed to be preparing all year for this moment.
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For them to come unglued like this is deeply concerning and the stats back it up — teams that fall behind 2-0 on the road have an 11 per cent chance of coming back to win the series. And unless we see a vastly different Oilers team on Friday in Edmonton, you can cut that number down to zero.
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'We're not happy with the position we're in at all,' said defenceman Darnell Nurse. 'But this group has been through a lot, we know what it takes and how much we have to step up in the next game.'
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The objective coming in was to keep the Kings to two or fewer goals against given that Los Angeles is a remarkable 43-0-2 when scoring three or more goals in a game this year.
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So giving up six a night is pretty much the equivalent of tying a brick to your ankle and jumping off a bridge.
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'You don't have much chance of winning,' said head coach Kris Knoblauch, who didn't get a big game from anyone Wednesday. 'Especially against a team that's very good defensively and doesn't give up many goals against.'
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Even Edmonton's big guns were invisible. Putting Connor McDavid and Draisaitl together and playing the heck out of them was supposed to be Edmonton's nuclear weapon, but it blew up in their face. While Anze Kopitar and Adrian Kempe combined for three goals and five assists in the win, McDavid and Draisaitl combined for one point in the loss.
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