April 22nd, 2025
JC Clemas
Wait… This isn’t Canucks hockey!
Yeah, if you hadn’t noticed, they missed the playoffs. I think we could all use a break from talking about them and instead focus on the hockey that really matters right now. What better series to look at than the one that Canucks fans have the biggest interest in as a fanbase? For the 4th straight season, the Kings and Oilers are facing off in the 1st round of the playoffs. The Canucks are quite familiar with both of these teams, and I’m sure the whole fanbase has their opinions on the latter of the two. So, in an effort to move on from the Canucks season, here’s the Kings/Oilers series through an outside viewers’ eyes. I’ll take you through each game, what happened, what we could see in the future, and of course, Andrei Kuzmenko.
Period 1
Well, that was a fun start!
The Kings drew an early power play and sent out a unit that has improved greatly since the addition of Kuzmenko. And sure enough, who else but Kuzy to score the first of the series? Kuzmenko planted himself in the crease, and Kevin Fiala did well in finding him for the tap-in. Anything Hyman can do, he can do better.
Just after that, the Oilers received their first power play of the game. Despite a couple of decent looks, they never really threatened. Special teams are a huge item to note in this matchup. In last year’s series, the Oilers absolutely shut down the Kings’ power play and stormed through their penalty kill. To score a power play goal and kill a penalty immediately is huge for the confidence in LA’s special teams.
Later in the period, the Kings would double their lead. Doughty threw one towards the net from the point. It bounced off to the side, where Byfield made a nice reflexive play to glove it down. From the goal line, he attempted to bank it off of Skinner and in, which almost worked. After the puck rattled off the post, Kevin Fiala was there to bat it in baseball-style, and the Kings were rolling.
Period 2
Not much going on in this one for the first 15. Quite a lot in the last 5.
The Oilers eventually absolutely collapsed. After Kempe fired one off Stuart Skinner and wide from the slot, 3 Oilers followed Kopitar behind the net, 1 covered Kuzmenko who was also behind the net, and all this allowed the pair of Kings to get the puck in front. There, waiting, was an unimpeded Adrian Kempe. Leaving Stuart Skinner alone to fend for himself against a 40-goal scorer may not be the move. Kempe stickhandled to the backhand, and after Skinner fell down, was free to shoot the puck into a yawning cage and make it a 3-0 game. It’s really hard to blame Skinner for any of these. The Oilers' defense had not been inspirational to this point, and it would only get worse.
Hockey coaches will often repeat the sentiment that you never put the puck up the middle in your defensive zone. Maybe Evan Bouchard was plugging his ears when they were saying that. Inexplicably, with the boards at his disposal, he cut the puck off behind the net and decided to try to backhand it to McDavid. McDavid wasn’t expecting it (because why would you?), and it instead went onto the stick of Phil Danault. In the slot. Alone. With Stuart Skinner to beat.
In other words, 4-0.
The great thing about being the Edmonton Oilers is that at any point, you can just put McDavid and Draisaitl together. That’s just what they did. With 6 seconds left in the period, Draisaitl made some nice off-puck movement to find open space, and there’s no world where McDavid is ever going to miss that. Perfect pass, perfect shot, 4-1 game with 6 seconds left in the period. Huge goal for the team to have some confidence going into the final frame. What are you even supposed to do about that goal? The Kings were in position, but those two are unstoppable 90% of the time. Maybe they should play together more often. Just give the other three lines 20-second shifts.
Period 3
Well, this was a weird one.
The Oilers carried that momentum into the third period. Just two minutes in, the Oilers' depth contributed for a goal that was a real grind to produce. The puck was dumped into the Kings’ zone. Skinner and Frederic fought against LA to force it into the front, where Mattias Janmark was waiting to make it a 4-2 game. That was Jeff Skinner’s first career playoff point. After over 1000 regular season games before getting to play in playoff hockey, you have to feel happy for him that he got an assist in his postseason debut. No matter how you feel about the Oilers, that’s a cool story.
After this, the refs started to get involved. They called two straight penalties on Edmonton. Both penalties seemed like the kind of thing teams usually get away with in the playoffs, so it was slightly agitating for someone who just wants even-strength hockey. The penalties gave LA 21 seconds of 5-on-3. That’s all the Kings needed. Right off the faceoff, Kempe teed up Fiala for a one-timer. Stuart Skinner was about 5 minutes late reacting to the pass, and it found twine. Back to a 3-goal lead.
The 3-goal lead did not survive for long. McDavid made a nice play to find Corey Perry for the tap-in. Corey Perry does not deserve a long paragraph. Moving on!
The Oilers killed off a separate Kings 5-on-3 (this one was more earned), which proved to be huge. With 2 minutes left and the goalie pulled, they scored to make it a 5-4 game. Walman made a nice play to keep the puck in, McDavid got it down low, and Hyman did what he does best: tapped it into the net off a feed from 97. Hey, if it were easy, everybody would do it. Drew Doughty quite simply did not have the best defensive showing on this play, dropping to his stomach in front of McDavid but still leaving about a foot of space for the pass to get through. When it’s on McDavid’s stick, it’s always gonna get through that gap.
Speaking of McDavid, his contributions to the comeback were not done there. If nobody else is going to do anything, he’s just going to do it all himself. Storming into the zone 30 seconds later, he chipped it to himself off the boards around Mikey Anderson, cut in towards Kuemper, and snuck it five-hole. Doughty played for the pass (which was likely not coming), leaving Kuemper all alone to deal with the greatest player in hockey. That was not the move. To overtime we go.
Nah, I’m just kidding. After that beautiful comeback by Edmonton, where all hope was lost and Connor McDavid dragged them out of the pits of despair, that was not the end of the scoring in the third period. Trevor Moore rushed into the zone on a partial breakaway, but was angled off. He dropped it off to a trailing Danault, who was able to tee up a one-timer. Danault didn’t get all of it. The puck slowly and dramatically fluttered through the air towards the net. The Oilers’ defense was not in position, allowing Warren Foegele to drive the net and screen Skinner without being ushered away. That proved to be enough. The puck slowly knuckled through Skinner and into the back of the net. 6-5. Game over. What even just happened?
Overall Thoughts
The Kings were not as stable defensively as their regular season identity has become. There’s just something about the Oilers that takes that out of them. Their defense definitely did drop off at the end of the season, but their offense took a step forward, so it’s a fair trade-off, I suppose. Kuzmenko is influencing the team. On the other hand, Stuart Skinner played roughly as expected. Though you can’t fault him for a lot of those, the goalie is definitely at least somewhat to blame when you allow 6 goals. I wish that we had got this version of Stuart Skinner in the final couple of games of round 2 last season. We can’t have nice things.
Connor McDavid is still the best player on the planet. Though he didn’t have the best regular season in the league and has missed time recently due to injury, he’s just absolutely inevitable. He finished the game with 1 goal and 3 assists. The goal he scored was a beauty, and I feel bad about the fact that there wasn’t more time to admire it. That is a daunting player to play against in the playoffs. Unless it’s game 6 or 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Then you’re good.
This has to end up as the best instalment of the Oilers/Kings playoff matchups. If that game told us anything, it will. Absolute chaos. Just when you think the game’s out of hand, here come the Oilers to drag themselves back into it. The Kings had all kinds of chances for a dagger (the 5-on-3, multiple shots at the empty net) and just could not ice the game. Edmonton had the will, and Darcy Kuemper became a different goalie than we saw in the regular season this year. His numbers were on par with Skinner’s. You never want to be there.
The Oilers’ secondary scoring will need to step up more for Edmonton to take this series. This game proved that Connor McDavid cannot do it all by himself. If you need 6 points out of McDavid to win a game, you probably deserve to lose that game. They did. While the team got a goal from Janmark, there weren’t a lot of inspiring performances deeper in the lineup. Most notable was Ryan Nugent-Hopkins posting a doughnut. The good news is that nobody played to their full potential besides McDavid, and the game was still close. Edmonton could have it if their other guys play the way they can.
Andrei Kuzmenko Recap
I was worried about how he’d fare in this game. Making your playoff debut is a big deal, and he hasn’t been immune to breaks in his confidence throughout his career. If one thing went wrong, he may have just had a bad game.
If you couldn’t tell by the game summary I gave you, he didn’t have a bad game. In fact, he had a pretty good one
Kuzmenko tallied 1 goal and 2 assists for a huge playoff debut. He picked up right where he left off in the regular season when he was cutting through other teams like butter. According to MoneyPuck, his xGF% was at just under 60%, which, funny enough, was higher than McDavid’s. He had other opportunities to produce as well. One of the times was a wrap-around in the 2nd where Skinner juuuust got over in time to kick it off the goal line. Another time, he spun it to the front of the net, but just a little bit too fast for Adrian Kempe to get his stick on it.
Kuzmenko was noticeable in this game. He’s going to have to be if LA wants to slay their dragon (intentional Shorthouse reference). If he can continue to have these performances, the Kings are looking great. He doesn’t have to score 3 points in every single game of the series, but he needs to provide a consistent spark throughout the game that can ignite the team and give them some momentum. He has the ability to do that, and he showed it last night. Sorry to sound like Rick Tocchet, but he still needs to be a little bit harder on the forecheck. At the end of the day, though, it’s hard to criticize someone who just put up 3 points in his playoff debut.
Great work, Kuzy!
Game 2
Game 2 is slated for Wednesday night at 7 pm Pacific. If you weren’t excited about this series before, I hope you are now. Though we don’t get to watch the Canucks in the playoffs this season, there’s still a ton of great hockey to watch. It also may be all for the better. Watching the Kings/Oilers ending, followed by Dallas winning in overtime just 30 seconds after, made my heart start beating at an unhealthy pace. Imagine if Vancouver were playing in a game like either of those. How did we ever survive game 4 against Nashville or game 1 against Edmonton??? Beats me.