LOS ANGELES — The momentum from a road victory and the confidence of being the NHL’s top team at home after the All-Star break meant little for the Kings on Friday night as they meandered through a 6-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers at Crypto.com Arena, falling behind 2-1 in their first-round playoff series.
The Kings ruled the roost down the stretch, going 14-3-1 at home since Feb. 10, but that provided no solace as they found themselves trailing the same club that eliminated them from the postseason in 2022 and 2023. The Kings held leads – 3-2 and 2-1, respectively – in those series, but are still in search of their first edge of 2024 after being shelled in Game 1 before winning Game 2 in overtime.
Game 4 in the best-of-7 series is Sunday night.
Drew Doughty scored the Kings’ only goal. Cam Talbot has started all three games, and made 34 saves on Friday.
Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl have been the most prolific performers in the NHL across the past three postseasons, and they each added three points to their ostentatious totals with Draisaitl scoring twice. Evander Kane picked up a goal and an assist. Zach Hyman scored twice to extend his goal streak to three games. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins dished out three assists. Stuart Skinner stopped 27 shots.
Edmonton had three more power-play goals and is 7 for 15 with the man advantage in the series.
In the third period, there were two big scrums, both of which ended up creating two-man advantages for Edmonton.
On the second, Draisaitl scored his second goal of the evening and third of the series off a kneeling one-timer from low in the right faceoff circle with 7:22 to play.
Before that, Andreas Englund attempted to stir the pot but nailing Kane at center ice and, in the ensuing fracas a complex sorting of penalties left the Kings with four minors and the Oilers with two, creating a five-on-three situation for two minutes.
During that power play, Hyman scored his second goal of the game and his NHL-leading sixth of the playoffs to cushion the Oilers’ lead after he redirected McDavid’s purposeful pass from the left circle to the right post, 6:37 into the stanza.
The second period saw an exchange of goals, with both sequences created by players who ultimately didn’t receive so much as an assist for their efforts.
The Oilers made it 4-1 when Draisaitl pressured Matt Roy as he played a lob into the Kings’ zone. Draisaitl recovered a missed shot behind the net, sending the puck to Nugent-Hopkins, who fed Cody Ceci for a shot that was deflected in by Kane. It was Kane’s first goal of the series after tallying 10 times in 13 playoff games against the Kings in the past two seasons.
Before the series, Doughty said he didn’t want to overplay the motif of redemption against an Oilers team that had bounced the Kings from consecutive campaigns. But his goal 5:32 into the second stanza atoned, at least in part, for a brutal opening 20 minutes for the Kings’ top defenseman.
It was rookie Alex Laferriere, at the end of a very long shift, blowing up big Vincent Desharnais behind the net and keeping the puck in the Oilers’ zone to extend the play. That allowed the Kings to make a line change on the fly, with Mikey Anderson locating Quinton Byfield zooming off the bench. Byfield found an activated Doughty for a tap-in goal at the back post. After not scoring a playoff goal since 2016, Doughty has two in the past two games alone.
Edmonton’s opening salvo saw them mount a three-goal lead, scoring at even strength at 6:42 and 15:36 before adding a power-play goal with 1:26 remaining.
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While there were few Kings on their toes early, Doughty had a particularly rough period. He was on for both of the first two goals – on the first he committed a careless turnover that led directly to the score and on the second he – and in the penalty box for slashing for the third.
With Doughty in the box, McDavid received the puck at the goal line, first driving toward the far post and, after his advance was rebuffed, stuffing a shot inside the near one for his first goal of the series.
Edmonton went up 2-0 when Kane appeared to be poised to attempt a wraparound but instead banked the puck off the side of the net to Draisaitl for a sharp-angle shot that he fired through Doughty for his second goal of the postseason.
On the game’s first goal, after the Kings controlled the puck off a defensive-zone faceoff, Doughty’s feeble backhanded pass into the middle of the ice was devoured by Mattias Ekholm. He found Hyman so open at the net front that he was able to shoot the puck on his forehand, swipe at his rebound and finally pop it past Talbot.
NOTE
Kings captain Anze Kopitar played in his 95th career playoff game, passing Luc Robitaille for the most in franchise history.
More to come on this story.