The Kings have turned a corner against top competition this season and now seek to springboard off some quality wins and their first truly tangible promise of home-ice advantage to start the playoffs, as they host the Nashville Predators on Saturday.
Last year, the Kings extracted only 15 victories from 39 matchups against the other 15 playoff qualifiers and won a paltry eight times in 23 contests versus the other seven Western Conference entrants. This time around, they’ve delivered 17 wins in 30 games when facing presently postseason-bound teams, and 10 of 16 against the West’s best. Though their home/road splits have been drastic against contenders (13-0-0 at home; four wins in 17 road games), they’ve upped their overall winning percentages from .385 against all playoff teams and .348 versus Western ones in 2023-24 to .567 and .625 in 2024-25.
“We’ve been doing a great job of embracing the challenges of playing these top teams all year. We get up for them and I think they bring out our best hockey,” said offseason trade acquisition Darcy Kuemper, who posted a shutout against the Eastern Conference’s most successful squad
That victory, the Kings’ fourth straight to give them an NHL-best 22-3-4 home mark, elevated them above their tormentors in recent seasons, the Edmonton Oilers, for second place in the Pacific Division. If their narrowest of leads were to hold, the Kings would likely host Edmonton in the first round after starting on the road in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Less than a week before the Kings were solidifying their designs on home ice, they were dangling just three points from plummeting from the playoffs completely, now seeing their way to being eight points clear of the second wild-card spot.
Offensively on Thursday, it was Kevin Fiala working his magic, first on the power play with a one-timer and then five-on-five as he set up Quinton Byfield, all in under 50 seconds. They were two players who began the year by disappointing, in terms of both production and consistency, but have flourished of late. Over the past two months, Fiala has 11 goals, 11 assists and 22 points in 23 games to lead the Kings. He and Byfield have played with Alex Laferriere and, at times, Adrian Kempe, with Byfield ranking second on the team in scoring in that two-month span (19 points from Jan 14 to March 14).
Fiala has had some push-and-pull dynamics with coaches in the past. Notably, he and Bruce Boudreau got off on the wrong foot in Minnesota for numerous reasons, including Boudreu’s aversion to the swap of Fiala for trusty Mikael Granlund. But by the end of Boudreau’s tenure, Fiala was the first person to text him after his dismissal and by the end of Fiala’s time in the Twin Cities, it was Boudreau positing how essential he was to the Wild’s attack.
Fiala, a complex, often emotional and always passionate-about-winning winger, experienced some friction with Kings coach Jim Hiller earlier this year, but now feels things are in a much better space.
“It took some time, but now we’re in the stage where we understand each other, we know each other and we believe in each other,” Fiala said. “Especially in the second half, there’s been a lot of belief in me, and there’s a lot of confidence right now.”
For Nashville, belief has been hard to come by as their Supermarket Sweepstakes of a summer ultimately left their cupboard more bare than it was last year, when a hungrier group made the playoffs. Now, their three cranks of the accelerator in free agency this season have moved the needle in the wrong direction.
The Preds entered a back-to-back set with the Ducks on Friday and Kings on Saturday as winners of four consecutive decisions, however, and even without top defenseman Roman Josi, who’s been out since Feb. 25 with an upper-body injury.
Nashville at Kings
When: 5 p.m. Saturday
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV/radio: KCAL (Ch. 9)