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Kings still hurting and second-guessing after series loss to Edmonton

May 6, 2025

EL SEGUNDO –– The Kings held their exit interviews but there were more questions than answers from a club that parted ways with its general manager on Monday morning after bowing out of a playoff series it led 2-0 before holding third-period leads in Games 3 and 4.

Vanishing acts in those two games, a desiccated effort in Game 5 and some too-little-too-late surges in Game 6 left them reverse swept by the same Edmonton Oilers that have escorted them out of four straight first rounds, leading to the dismissal of GM Rob Blake.

“This one hurt, like, big time. In past years, I’m not gonna say we didn’t think we could maybe win, but this year I truly felt we were going to win the series,” Drew Doughty said. “We’re very tight off the ice, on the ice everyone bought into what we were supposed to do, and I think this is the best team we’ve had here in a long, long time.”

Indeed it was, in some qualified ways, the best Kings campaign ever, as they tied single-season bests for wins and points while raising the bar for home victories. That was fueled by a sharp ascent from 12th to sixth in the league standings and from 23rd to 14th in goals-per-game from March 8 onward. The Kings continued their offensive surge, particularly on the power play, in the postseason, but became much more vulnerable defensively when facing Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and their cohorts over half a dozen matches.

“We definitely made progress, the regular-season record showed (that). But, at the end of the day, that’s not what you’re playing for,” captain Anže Kopitar said. “You’re playing, obviously, to win the championship, and we failed to do so, so it’s disappointing. We felt like this year would be different. We got off to a good start, but we couldn’t close.”

A failed challenge in Game 3 that let the winner stand and invited Edmonton to summarily score a power-play game-winner off the resulting bench minor did the Kings in, and then a pair of failed clears –– one by Doughty before Edmonton’s second goal and one by Quinton Byfield before the late equalizer that sent the contest to overtime –– loomed large in Game 4.

“My thought process was that I didn’t want to ice the puck on an empty-netter, so I tried to make the safe, smart play and chip it out, and I didn’t get it out,” Byfield said. “If I make that play there, we’re up 3-1, so it’s a tough one to swallow and I think all summer I’ll be thinking about that.”

That sort of risk-averse mentality hurt the Kings repeatedly in the series, with Doughty and others averring that they were not told to sit back and absorb play late. Doughty pointed to “human nature” as a reason for the Kings’ tentativeness. Winger Kevin Fiala remarked that the St. Louis Blues also went into a defensive shell before allowing a tying goal with 1.6 seconds left in a Game 7 they ultimately lost in double overtime to the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday.

Still, there was no denying the impact of Games 3 and 4, which converted a potential convincing series victory into yet another deflating defeat. The Kings’ road struggles persisted as they won none of the three games in Edmonton and turned in perhaps their flattest performance at home, where they had the NHL’s best points percentage this season, in Game 5.

“They took the series over from there. We came back home and we were gassed from the overtime. There were just little key moments that cost us big time,” Phillip Danault said.

Part of both the safety-first-and-last mindset was the deployment by coach Jim Hiller and his staff, which leaned very heavily on three forward lines and two defensive pairings. While Adrian Kempe, who led the Kings with 10 points in the series, said he personally didn’t feel fatigued playing such intense minutes, it was a strategy that might have been foreseeably untenable just the same.

“I can only speak for myself in that case, but playing three lines through almost a full series could be tough,” Kempe said. “It could be tough if you go further in the playoffs. I think that you maybe need to play some more lines and more guys to not have the top guys get too tired.”

“You look at Edmonton, in previous years, how much they played Leon (Draisaitl) and Connor (McDavid), you watched the next rounds and thought maybe they were getting tired, too.”

Given how the series went and that Blake was sacked, there was no shortage of heat under the collar of Coach Jim Hiller. He was asked how he would evaluate his own performance in the series against Edmonton.

“I haven’t gotten to that, necessarily. It was a hard series. You can always look back and say, ‘Maybe we could have done this,’ or, ‘Maybe we could have done that,’” Hiller said. “In the end, you make decisions in the moment with the information you have, and it didn’t turn out for us.”

Hiller was also asked about his own job security, and he said he was going about his day-to-day duties as head coach.

“I haven’t had any of those conversations yet,” Hiller said. “I do understand that whenever there’s significant change like that, there’s usually more [changes].”

Orange County Register

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Kings still hurting and second-guessing after series loss to Edmonton

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