Mediocre? Unentertaining? These Kings?
They mostly were, until they weren’t at all, and now they’re rearing to make the fourth time a charm against the Edmonton Oilers, who have knocked them out of three consecutive first rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“We’re in a good mindset, for sure, way different than last year. In the four years I’ve been here, this is the most confident I’ve felt,” said center Phillip Danault, who’d identified this as a critical campaign at the outset of the year after a “step sideways” last season.
In early March, the Kings were in the midst of a season-long losing streak that saw them score just eight goals in five consecutive defeats. They’d endured a stretch a month earlier where they dropped six of seven games and deposited just nine pucks in the process. Their power-play was low-capacity, too, lower still on the road, and overall their goal-scoring woes spanned the better part of two seasons.
Yet since the March 7 trade deadline passed and bargain-bin pickup Andrei Kuzmenko cemented pieces into place on their attack, the Kings accumulated more points in the standings than any other team. They were also the league’s No. 2 offense, stingiest defense and even became a top-10 man-advantage unit on the road as part of an overall uptick in power-play potency.
Quinton Byfield, whose sizzling chemistry with Kevin Fiala (as well as Alex Laferriere and, briefly, Adrian Kempe) was building before the deadline said there existed a mix of elements that had been gaining steam within the Kings’ existing group and a switch that flipped once Kuzmenko arrived.
“I think it’s a little bit of both. It was building to that, beforehand we were getting a little unlucky. Right now, everybody’s feeling good about themselves and their ability to score,” said Byfield, who lauded Kuzmenko’s playmaking ability despite his longer-standing reputation as a goal-scorer.
Last year, not only did the Kings struggle offensively in the spring –– they scored one goal in two home games, losing both, and they were the only postseason qualifier that didn’t convert on a single playoff power play –– they were also torched on the penalty kill, despite having enjoyed tremendous regular-season success. They cranked up the pressure, aggression and attention to detail alike, revamping the PK rather than resting on their laurels.
Another key audible by the Kings was pulling the plug on their eight-year commitment to Pierre-Luc Dubois after one season before which they sank piles of both assets and cash into his acquisition.
They got goalie Darcy Kuemper back for him, and both distressed assets delighted with career years. Dubois was reinvigorated by Washington Capitals coach Spencer Carbery, while Kuemper burst forth with the Stanley Cup-quality goaltending he provided the Colorado Avalanche in 2022 and was voted the Kings’ team MVP.
“It’s fun watching our top unit on the power play right now, it’s really exciting,” forward Trevor Moore said. “Then our penalty kill, I don’t even know where we are in the league, but it just feels more aggressive and it feels so confident. When you have Darcy in net, it makes a world of difference.”
There’s also the intrigue of former Kings flanker Viktor Arvidsson and one-time Oilers forward Warren Foegele switching places in free agency this offseason. Arvidsson was a vital but oft-injured figure in the Kings rise from irrelevance these past three years, but Foegele has stepped in to give them an incredibly sturdy two-way winger.
That isn’t the only script that’s already flipped in this series.
For the first time in four years, the Kings have home-ice advantage, which during the season was immense as they won a franchise-record 31 home games and had the best home points percentage in the NHL. They’ve been back in California since April 16, while Edmonton had to travel to begin the series.
An extra flight won’t be the only obstacle Edmonton will have to surmount, however.
Kings-killer Evander Kane, he of 12 goals in the 18 playoff matches these past three springs, hasn’t played all year. Tough guy Trent Frederic made only cameos in blue and orange after arriving near the trade deadline. Former 100-point scorer Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and last season’s 50-goal guy Zach Hyman have been nicked up down the stretch, as has goalie Stuart Skinner. On defense, so have Troy Stecher and John Klingberg, while Darnell Nurse was suspended a game for his cross-check to Byfield’s head in the finale of the season series, one the Kings won 3-1. Mattias Ekholm, Edmonton’s most stalwart rearguard, will miss the series altogether.
Even Maurice Richard Trophy winner Leon Draisaitl missed 11 of the final 14 games of the campaign, and five-time scoring champion Connor McDavid had 15 absences, his most since he broke his collarbone as a rookie in 2015-16.
“We have this aura about us that we’re the walking wounded, but we’re just fine,” McDavid told reporters. “Everybody’s going to be ready to roll. Everybody is doing whatever they can. I don’t like this whole notion that we’re the walking wounded here. We’re ready to roll.”
“I just don’t like the theory that people are counting us out,” he continued. “We’re a great team here; bumps and bruises along the way. We’re a great team when we’re healthy. And we are healthy.”
For the Kings’ part, they possess perhaps the two most precious assets a team can have at the start of a playoff run: health and momentum.
Only the St. Louis Blues, who lost Saturday’s Game 1 of their series with the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Winnipeg Jets, were hotter down the stretch in terms of points percentage than the Kings. The Kings also have their full array of players, nearly, minus hard-nosed winger Tanner Jeannot (lower-body, week-to-week).
“We’re coming into the playoffs this year, feeling really good about ourselves. I don’t know if we could say the same last year,” Moore said. “We’ve come into these playoffs hot, that’s important. We believe in ourselves and we’re a really tight group.”
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