EDMONTON, Alberta — The Kings were done in by the Edmonton Oilers once again.
The Oilers beat the Kings, 6-4, in Game 6 of their first-round playoff series on Thursday night, ending the Kings’ season in the opening round for the fourth consecutive spring – and this one might be the toughest one yet for the Kings and their fans to digest.
They held home-ice advantage, took a 2-0 series lead and looked poised to finally solve their nemesis, but the Oilers reeled off four consecutive wins to close out the series and celebrated at Rogers Place, denying the Kings the chance to host a winner-take-all game at Crypto.com Arena this weekend.
“This one’s tough to swallow obviously. Having the season we had, and to have the guys in this locker room and come up short again – it’s frustrating – this one hurts a little more,” dejected Kings captain Anze Kopitar said.
“Especially having home ice, and off to a good start with winning the first two games and then just not being able to close games out – it cost us.”
Quinton Byfield, Brandt Clarke, Jordan Spence and Kopitar scored for the Kings, while Kevin Fiala and Alex Laferriere each posted two assists and Darcy Kuemper made 23 saves.
Connor Brown had a goal and two assists, Trent Frederic had a goal and an assist and Adam Henrique, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Darnell Nurse also scored for the reigning Western Conference champions, who will face the Vegas Golden Knights in the conference semifinals. Calvin Pickard made 22 saves.
The Kings held 1-0 and 2-1 leads in the first period on goals from Byfield and Clarke, but Edmonton grabbed a 3-2 lead by the first intermission. The Kings allowed two goals just 1:36 apart from Nurse and Frederic late in the second period, and the three-goal deficit proved too much to overcome.
Spence cut the margin to 5-3 with 1:59 left in the second, and Kopitar scored his second goal of the series with 55 seconds left in the third, but Brown’s empty-netter with 1.2 seconds left halted the Kings’ comeback.
“The chances were there. We just couldn’t convert,” Kopitar said. “You have to give credit to their goalie, he made some great stops, and credit to their team. The last couple games they played a solid checking game and made it harder on us to generate stuff, but we fought.”
Down 3-2, the Kings pushed for the tying goal in the middle period, but Pickard, who was inserted as the starter in Game 3, came up with some big stops, including robbing former Oilers forward Warren Foegele on a breakaway in the second period.
The two quick goals by Edmonton late in the second killed the momentum the Kings were building and they were still in a tough spot down two goals entering the third.
The Kings emptied their tank in the final frame – but Pickard stood his ground against their furious rally.
Despite being down, the Kings showed no quit.
“That’s been throughout the whole season (no quit),” Kopitar said. “It’s been the character of this group, the not-giving-up part. There haven’t been many games where we’ve mailed it in.
“Even if we had an off night, we always came back strong playing the team game. Tonight was no different. The effort was there, the fight was there, but we came up short.”
The Kings will no doubt look at this as a missed opportunity. In addition to home-ice advantage and the early series lead, their power play and penalty kill units were strong for the bulk of the series – but late in the series, some cracks in their special teams started to form and the Oilers seemed to score a timely power-play goal whenever they needed it most.
In Game 6, the Kings were 0 for 2 on the power play, while Edmonton scored on its only chance – a goal from Nugent-Hopkins in the first period.
“One-hundred percent, it’s a missed opportunity. It’s very clear it’s a missed opportunity for us,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “Especially when we had great buy-in from our players.
“We believe we could have won the series, we believe we should’ve won the series. We didn’t, so that’s the bottom line. We had our chances to get it done … didn’t get it done.”
Momentum swings are part of hockey, as every postseason proves, but Hiller believes his team was the better squad for most of the series. Despite losing Game 5 in their own arena, where they had been so dominant all season, the Kings didn’t fold in Game 6.
“They outplayed us, in my mind, one game,” Hiller said. “And the overtime (in Game 4), I’ll give them the overtime too, there’s no question. We lost the series. That (momentum) part doesn’t really matter.”
The Kings will no doubt point to their inability to close out games. They held third-period leads in each of the first four games but found themselves tied 2-2 after the overtime loss in Game 4 in Edmonton.
“You can pinpoint Game 3, and we didn’t close out Game 4,” Kopitar said. “That’s a completely different series if we go home up 3-1 versus 2-2, but coulda, woulda, shoulda.”
Kings forward Adrian Kempe felt this was going to be the year they finally got past the Oilers.
“The previous two playoff series, I felt like we maybe weren’t close enough to be as good as they were, but this series felt like besides the last home game we had, it felt like we were the better team,” he said. “We couldn’t close out the games when we should’ve and that came back and bit us.
“It’s tough. It sucks when you play well over five of the six games and come out like this.”
