For the Kings, Tuesday night’s pivotal Game 5 of a tied first-round playoff series with the Edmonton Oilers will arrive on the heels of two third-period collapses in Canada and shift the series back to Southern California.
The Kings have had a penchant for playing it safe and encountering danger anyway, downgrading a one-goal edge through two periods into a three-goal loss on Friday and turning a two-goal lead with 12:09 remaining into a disastrous overtime defeat on Sunday.
Those direct hits came after a harrowing near-miss in Game 1, which the Kings led 4-0 and 5-2, but ended up winning 6-5 on a tie-breaking goal with 41 seconds to play.
Kings coach Jim Hiller is tired of hearing it, and the fans are even more exhausted looking at it.
Hiller, who was the subject of ridicule on the national broadcast, was peeved by a reporter who inquired tactfully about how the Kings could better protect third-period leads. That was immediately following a game that saw them outshot 33-13 in the third period and overtime on Sunday, culminating in Leon Draisaitl’s OT winner.
“Next question, please,” snapped Hiller, adding that it was The 4th Period’s Dennis Bernstein’s “favorite question” to which Bernstein responded that it had “happened three times” in four games.
Hiller, who played Trevor Lewis in a scoring role during overtime among other puzzling decisions with his self-shortened lineup and whose failed challenge effectively cost the Kings Game 4, likes to make reference to Lewis as “Wild Thing,” the closer from the baseball film “Major League.” The Kings, however, have been channeling their inner Mitch Williams, the former Philadelphia Phillies reliever with the same nickname who gave up the World Series-winning home run to Toronto’s Joe Carter in 1993.
They have struggled mightily to seal a series that would be over otherwise after two victories and two more games with leads at the second intermission, the type they retroceded only twice all season, both in overtime.
Yet after Sunday’s game, there was only a torrent of “what-if” and “aw shucks”-type comments from Hiller and forward Warren Foegele. Foegele attempted to whittle the difference between winning and losing to puck luck and aver that the Kings “pushed harder” in Sunday’s third period, during which they so heavily immersed in a prevent defense that they proved incapable of flipping any switch in overtime.
“Like I just said, if you were listening, we just didn’t get the bounces really,” Foegele responded testily to The Athletic’s Eric Stephens.
The Kings scored the eighth-most and allowed the ninth-fewest third-period goals in the NHL during the regular season, but in the playoffs they’ve surrendered a league-worst 11 third-period goals while scoring just five, leading to a pair of disastrous losses in Edmonton that knotted the series.
Though what tied for the second-highest-scoring three games to open a series on record tempered a bit in Game 4 – the final was 4-3 after nearly 80 minutes of action – that was mostly because of the 44-save performance from Darcy Kuemper. Kuemper, who was named a Vezina Trophy finalist on Monday, allowed five or more goals just twice all season and four or more only five times. He’s given up four or more in three games and five twice already in this series, with the Kings forcing him to absorb much of the play late in games.
One trend that has held for the Kings’ has been their stark home/road splits. They boasted a .756 win percentage during the season on home ice, but a substandard .414 mark on the road, where they let Edmonton catapult off the mat to convert a 2-0 deficit into a three-game series.
The Kings’ nearly 60% power-play conversion in Games 1 through 3 turned into an 0-for-3 pumpkin on Sunday while the Oilers continued to find their touch with a second straight two-goal effort with the extra man, converting on four of five opportunities in Edmonton.
That the Kings would play two of potentially three more games in this series at home, where they had the NHL’s best points percentage and two playoff wins this season, provided some reassurance at the very least.
“We’re looking forward to going home,” Foegele said. “We like playing at home, we’re comfortable there and now it’s best-of-three.”
KUEMPER IN ELITE COMPANY
Kuemper is one of three finalists for the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s most outstanding goaltender this season, as voted by the league’s general managers.
Kuemper, 34, is a first-time finalist and was nominated alongside a pair of former winners: Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck (2020, 2024) and Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy (2019).
In the first season of his second stint as a King, Kuemper finished in the top five in the NHL in goals-against average (2.02, second), save percentage (.922, third) and shutouts (five, tied for third).
He was lights out from his Dec. 7 return from a second stint on injured reserve onward and particularly strong down the stretch, when he had 15 consecutive games with two or fewer goals allowed. That represented the second-most in the NHL since the 1967 expansion, trailing only Calgary Flames icon Miikka Kiprusoff’s 16 straight in 2003-04.
Kuemper was the “backbone” of the Kings, Hiller said repeatedly.
“He’s just been very, very consistent. That’s really what you want in a goaltender,” Hiller said earlier this season.
The Saskatoon native also symbolized hope and resurgence within a wayward build, giving the Kings their best season between the pipes since at least 2018 and doing so after being acquired in exchange for embattled big-ticket center Pierre-Luc Dubois over the summer in a cost-reducing, loss-cutting trade with Washington.
He stabilized a position of severe need and at a time when the Kings had squandered assets and placed their once-promising resurgence in peril after they fell to the Oilers in a third consecutive first-round series.
Before their current clash with the Oilers, captain Anže Kopitar was asked what he felt the difference was between this campaign and the three previous ones.
“I guess if I compare it to last year, Darcy has been unbelievable for us,” Kopitar said.
GAME 5: OILERS AT KINGS
What: Western Conference playoffs, first round
When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV: KCAL (Ch. 9), TBS
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