LOS ANGELES — The problem for the Los Angeles Kings on Friday was not that they kept the lights off in the arena as long as possible before the Edmonton Oilers’ morning skate, but that they turned them on for the game.
With the stage aglow and Crypto.com Arena crackling for the first Stanley Cup playoff game in Los Angeles in more than four years, the Kings weren’t ready when the lights came up. Showtime belonged to the Oilers, who scored twice in the first six minutes and embarrassed Los Angeles 8-2 to take a 2-1 lead in the first-round series.
Edmonton’s advantage feels greater than one game.
Including Wednesday’s 6-0 dismantling of the Kings in Edmonton, the Oilers have pumped in two touchdowns over two games and won by a dozen goals on aggregate. And Connor McDavid has just one of Edmonton’s 17 goals in the series. Think about that for a minute. Sixteen goals have been scored by other Oilers.
On Friday, Evander Kane had a hat trick, and Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins each scored twice. The Oilers chased Kings starter Jonathan Quick halfway through the second period, and Edmonton starter Mike Smith has been close to perfect since his third-period giveaway in Game 1 enabled Los Angeles’ 4-3 win.
The teams are on different trajectories. Game 4 is Sunday.
“I’m not a big believer in momentum carry over,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. “I think you have to re-establish things. We expected a push from them. Certainly, you know, lots of shots on net from all angles and all that kind of stuff, but I thought we displayed some perseverance and persistence and some patience to our game and struck when the time was right.
“I feel a real esprit de corps amongst our group — people that are working hard for each other. It’s a fun group to stand behind tonight.”
Yes, these Oilers may finally be different than the teams that largely squandered McDavid’s first six seasons while winning only one playoff series. Certainly, no Edmonton coach has used “esprit de corps” to describe his team.
“It takes everybody,” McDavid said simply when asked about contributions from throughout the lineup.
“Just finding ways to win games, that’s all that matters this time of year,” he said. “Doesn’t really matter how it looks or what happens. I think we’ve done a good job of playing well, playing hard, we’ve been physical. They kind of pushed back today and I thought we responded well.”
Seven seasons and nearly 700 points into McDavid’s reign, the Oilers are trying to win just their second playoff series since 2006. Naturally, that has created a fair bit of baggage. The weight gets heavier each time the Oilers lose a series. Sometimes it feels like the burden increases by the game, like when they lost the opener on Monday.
But the funny thing about baggage is that everyone has some from somewhere. Lucky are the rare few unencumbered by disappointment and failed expectations. The Kings aren’t carrying steamer trunks on their backs like McDavid and Leon Draisaitl are, but their fanny packs may be starting to feel heavy.
As an organization, the Kings have not won a playoff game on home ice since lifting the Stanley Cup against the New York Rangers in 2014. That remarkable achievement came with some free passes. Ask fans in Toronto and Vancouver how much suffering a Stanley Cup triumph would be worth.
To be fair to the Kings, a youngish team that has evolved from its rebuild and returned to the playoffs perhaps a season or two sooner than forecast, they have neither the pressure nor expectations the Oilers face to win soon.
But the Kings lost all three home playoff games in a 4-1 opening-series loss to the San Jose Sharks in 2016, and went 0-2 at what was then the Staples Center while being swept by the Vegas Golden Knights in 2018. Friday was the return of playoff hockey to Los Angeles.
And a Kings team trying to learn how to win, largely remade but with a few key holdovers from more prosperous times, was embarrassed by the Oilers for the second straight game. Edmonton led 5-0 halfway through Game 3.
Maybe arena staff, clearly under instructions from the Kings, should not have kept Crypto.com dark and the nets hidden away when the Oilers came out for their morning skate a few minutes before their official 11:30 a.m. start time on Friday. The Kings take morning skates at their practice facility in El Segundo, near LAX airport, and it’s common for visiting NHL teams to get on the ice early when it’s unused by the home team.
Maybe the Kings lost their watch in El Segundo. An extra 15 minutes of skating and drilling might have burned a little more Oilers energy. Instead, Edmonton jumped on L.A. at the start.
Skating four-on-four – thanks largely to the Kings’ Brendan Lemieux, who shows the same respect for opponents that his father did – McDavid and Draisaitl perfectly executed a two-on-one to make it 1-0 at 3:50.
When Trevor Moore took a holding-the-stick penalty at 5:46, the Oilers’ lethal power play needed just 23 seconds to make it 2-0, McDavid making another brilliant goal-side pass for Hyman to tap behind Quick.
Smith handled 19 first-period shots – the Kings fired from everywhere but generated few quality chances – but the Oilers ended the contest before the game was 30 minutes old. Kane sandwiched a pair of rebound goals around a terrific solo effort by Hyman, all in a span of three-and-a-half minutes, to make it 5-0 early in the second period.
And after goals later in the frame by Anze Kopitar and Phillip Danault at least got the L.A. crowd back into, the Oilers pumped in three more late in the third, two by Nugent-Hopkins and a third by Kane.
“Anytime you can come into someone’s building and get the jump on them, I think it’s huge,” McDavid said. “We were able to do that. But I thought they had a great first period, honestly. We made a couple of good plays and kind of held on there in the first, and I thought our game got going there early in the second.”
Woodcroft said he expected the Kings, after losing badly on Wednesday, to deliver their best effort in Game 3.
“And we were ready for it,” he said. “I thought we were surgical in taking advantage of opportunities that presented themselves. I thought they ran around a little bit to try and get physical with us. We handled it with good composure. We made more plays than them and we ended up getting the win tonight.
“What I take most joy out of as a coach is watching all of the people in our lineup contribute and bring that type of effort and intensity. Because it’s been quite noticeable.”
