30-04-2025
All Oilers, all the time as Edmonton pulls away from Los Angeles
Things were close for a few games, but that sound you heard Tuesday night in Los Angeles was the Edmonton Oilers pulling away from the Kings — probably for good, if the last five periods are any indication.
A series that started in L.A.'s favour, with the Kings up 2-0 and a break or two away from putting Edmonton in a place they couldn't recover from is now All Oilers All The time.
If it's possible to blow a team away 3-1 with an empty-netter, that's what happened in Game 5 in Los Angeles, where the Oilers outshot the Kings 46-21 and took a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series with a chance to wrap things up for good Thursday night at Rogers Place.
The Oilers controlled Game 5 from the start, outshooting Los Angeles 19-4 in the first period and 14-8 in the second period, a carry-over from the third period (16-6) and overtime (17-7) of Game 4.
They swarmed them from the opening shift and the Kings couldn't do anything to keep them off.
The only thing preventing Edmonton from being up about 4-0 by the halfway mark was Kings goalie Darcy Kuemper, who took an .881 save percentage into the game. He was all-world when Los Angeles was under siege so the Oilers had nothing to show for it but 0-0 after 20 minutes and 1-1 after 40 on goals from Andrei Kuzmenko and Evander Kane.
That was fine with them, though, given that they outscored Los Angeles 11-5 in the third periods of the first four games.
They only needed one this time. Mattias Janmark, from Viktor Arvidsson and Vasily Podkolzin, scored the game-winning goal 7:12 into the third period to give Edmonton its first lead of the series. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins added the empty-netter.
Officiating in the playoffs continues to be substandard and there were some key misses Tuesday, none worse than when Quinton Byfield covered the puck with his hand in the L.A. crease during a second-period scramble.
Referee Kendrick Nicholson, who was standing on the back of the net watching the play from five feet away, either missed it or chose not to call it, robbing the Oilers of what should have been a penalty shot.
E-mail: rtychkowski@
