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Kings’ playoff exit hurt more because team was so close

May 1, 2023

EL SEGUNDO — As the NHL’s first round crashed to a close with a Game 7 in New Jersey on Monday, the Kings were left to lick their wounds from a fierce battle with the Edmonton Oilers, who eliminated the black and silver in six games on Saturday.

While it’s a familiar feeling – they were eliminated by Edmonton in seven games during last year’s opening round – the Kings spoke of novel coalescence and a bright future at Sunday’s exit interviews, while still healing from a series that featured a pair of overtime games and two one-goal games.

“In the group, this year, the camaraderie in the room was amazing. Every guy would do anything for each other, and you’d feel that every day in practice and every day in games,” center Blake Lizotte said. “When you have a team that’s like that, that has a special bond away from the rink, these losses sting quite a bit more when you’d give the shirt off your back for everyone in the room.”

Lizottte has been a career King, but even newly acquired winger and top point-per-game scorer Kevin Fiala felt the love, despite being disappointed with the Kings’ finish.

“It felt like home, quickly. I’d been in Nashville and Minnesota longer than here, and I feel like I’ve been here the longest,” Fiala said.

Here is a quick glance at the pluses and minuses of what was, by points total, the second-best regular-season in the 55-year history of the franchise.

Special Teams

Plus: The power-play

Minus: The penalty kill

Not only did the Kings make a historic about-face on the power play, which General Manager Rob Blake attributed to a combination of improved personnel and competition between units, they carried their success into the postseason, connecting on one third of their opportunities.

Over a full season, that would have been the best mark in NHL history, edging out this year’s Oilers. Edmonton set the record during the campaign and then exploded for a 57.1% mark in the postseason, which once again exposed a Kings penalty kill that struggled through the bulk of the season.

“Power play was a difference, a huge turning point for us this year, we gained a lot of momentum and we won a lot of games like that, too,” center Phillip Danault said. “We needed to be better on the kill, that was obvious.”

Offense

Plus: Production

Minus: Timely scoring

Where two years ago the Kings could barely muster one scoring line, flanking Kopitar with an aging Dustin Brown and utility man Alex Iafallo, last year they cobbled together a pace-generating second line and this year they often featured their leading scorer and a 20-plus-goal-scorer, Gabe Vilardi, on their third line. The results were tangible as the Kings finally reified the vision of Coach Todd McLellan for a high-tempo, high-chance, high-possession and, now, high-scoring system, all while playing a stingy 1-3-1 trap that flummoxed many attacks.

Yet in the playoffs, the Kings scored their two overtime winners following Edmonton penalties and, in one case, because of an alleged missed high stick as well. After four hermetically sealed affairs to begin the series, Edmonton came up with a decisive win in Game 5 and a late tiebreaker in Game 6 that sealed the Kings’ fate. While the Kings had dominated five-on-five play and mostly been burned by two of the three Edmonton 100-point scorers this season as well as its power play, Game 6 saw Edmonton accumulate four even-strength goals, two of which came from their fourth line.

“We were flat-out a better team this year than last year. We were because of personnel, the players that we had available to us and we improved in a lot of areas. But, to my point, so was Edmonton,” said McLellan, who coached Edmonton for more than three seasons.

Defense

Plus: Depth

Minus: Decisions

The Kings’ went from lacking a serviceable NHL defense corps to burgeoning with options in short order, but they’ve still got pieces of their blue-line puzzle strewn about the dinner table. Sean Durzi played a significant and clear-cut role quarterbacking the second power-play unit and also showed growth as a penalty killer. But his five-on-five role saw him shift sides, change partners and ultimately drop to the third pairing once Vladislav Gavrikov was acquired from Columbus. Durzi appreciated the experience but seemed to hint at a desire for more consistency, much as Fiala did when asked about his linemates.

Though veteran Alex Edler seems like a long shot to return to the Kings and Sean Walker expressed doubts about his being a King next year, despite being under contract, that’s not the extent of their moving pieces on defense. They would like to re-sign Gavrikov, an unrestricted free agent to be, give Durzi a solid evaluation in his upcoming contract year and also integrate some prospects. Jordan Spence mostly bided his time in Ontario this year and prospect Brandt Clarke returned to the OHL to put up nearly two points a game against his peers. Blake said, in so many words, that he’d penciled Clarke into the Kings’ lineup. McLellan added that, much as they’d done with changing some of captain Anze Kopitar’s responsibilities to reduce fatigue, he was ruminating on how to ease some pressure off top defenseman Drew Doughty.

“We’ll have to look at managing him a little bit,” McLellan said. “That’s probably a fight we’ll have because he wants to play 26 minutes a night and he’s very capable of it, but we need to get (80-plus) games out of him.”

Goaltending

Plus: It made it through the season

Minus: Who knows what’s next?

In a puzzling move, former GM Dean Lombardi invested the first pick the Kings had in the 2011 draft into Christopher Gibson, when the organization had a budding Jonathan Quick and the tantalizing prospect Jonathan Bernier. Since that point, the Kings haven’t invested anything higher than a third-round pick into a goalie and their limited commitments have been even more fruitless than they have been sparing.

This season, they cycled through Cal Petersen, who was sent to the minors and fared worse than expected there; Quick, whose potential hall-of-fame tenure came to an abrupt and unceremonious end at the trade deadline; Pheonix Copley, who’d last seen regular NHL duty in 2019; and Joonas Korpisalo, the impending UFA who started all six playoff games.

Copley is signed for next season at a modest cap hit, while Petersen’s carries a whopping $5 million annual average value. On a day where both goalies drew a little attention and praise, there was also talk of re-signing Korpisalo, meaning any quotes might only add to the confusion in net.

Coaching, health and intangibles

Though leading postseason scorer and top goal-scorer Adrian Kempe said the series might have been different if the Kings were fully healthy (three important forwards missed at least one game), they lost significantly fewer man games to injury this season and had their full array of players available for Game 6.

McLellan will return for the fifth season of his five-year contract, and one could expect assistants Jim Hiller and Trent Yawney back. McLellan and Edmonton coach Jay Woodcroft, who remained the closest of friends, paused their relationship again during the series but resumed it immediately at the series’ conclusion. Woodcroft’s theatrics, including requesting a podium rather than a table for the postgame news conference and some braggadocious moments behind said podium, receded as he became highly complimentary of McLellan and his staff following Game 6. McLellan returned the favor Sunday but, in the NHL as in all sports, the players win championships. With Quick gone, Doughty and Kopitar are the last vestiges of the only two Stanley Cups in Kings lore, from 2012 and 2014, as other big-game performers like Kempe and Danault hope to add to the organization’s legacy.

“I’ve seen this group mature now,” Kopitar said. “I think this window, if we’re not quite in there yet, is approaching. We’re taking strides in the right direction, the group is getting tight and I’ve seen that before.”

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