The Kings thawed out the ice-cold Winnipeg Jets but cooled down their nemeses, the Edmonton Oilers, and now they’ll pivot directly into a rubber match at home with the Dallas Stars on Monday.
Winnipeg had lost 11 straight games and 16 of its last 18, but won comfortably against the Kings on Friday. The black and silver rebounded a night later in Edmonton with a shootout win, despite allowing a combined three goals to Oilers stars Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid.
It was yet another game decided by a single score, as 33 of 44 have been, effectively, for the Kings. They’ve come out on the right side of just four of 11 decisive results, but won 15 tight contests while picking up another five wins’ worth of points from overtime and shootout losses.
“We’re a grinding team. We don’t give up much, and it makes teams play the way we want to play,” Brandt Clarke told Sportsnet postgame. “There’s not a lot through the neutral zone, there’s not a lot of chances on either side of the ice, and when that happens, there’s not many blowouts. We’re comfortable in those kinds of games, and we know we can scrap it out when we need to.”
The Kings and Coach Jim Hiller’s tenure at their helm have begun to have a nine-lives feel. They turned in a 10-game stretch that was eerily similar to the one that got Todd McLellan fired two years ago, then took consecutive games from the formidable Minnesota Wild.
They followed that with deflating defeats against San Jose and Winnipeg, then turned in a gutsy, undermanned effort in Edmonton. Corey Perry returned to score a goal against his former cohorts, but Joel Armia did not, nor did Trevor Moore and Anže Kopitar. Kopitar will miss the Dallas game at a minimum after joining Moore on injured reserve retroactively ahead of the Edmonton triumph.
“Anytime we play these guys, there’s a little bit of extra juice, they’ve ended our season in (each of) the past four years,” said Alex Lafreniere, who stepped in for Kopitar once again. “So yeah, anytime we can come in this barn especially and play those guys, we’re all pretty juiced up for that and we want to take it to them.”
Yet winning in Edmonton has been a challenge overall for the Kings. It took the absences of McDavid, Draisaitl and others for them to thump the Oilers 5-0 and break a four-game slide at Rogers Place last spring.
In the postseason, the Kings have won four of 13 games in Edmonton across the four playoff series, with only one of those victories coming in regulation in contrast to eight of their nine losses coming in 60 minutes’ time.
They’ll carry the momentum from their shootout victory into the matchup with Dallas, with whom they have split two games this season. They won, 3-2, in overtime on Oct. 23 and then fell, 4-1, on Dec. 15, with both contests unfolding in the Lone Star State.
The Stars were 25-7-5 on Dec. 21 but have since dropped seven of their past eight decisions, most recently stumbling against the Sharks in overtime.
In sum, they’re one of just two teams (the other is the Colorado Avalanche) who have three players with 50 or more points: leading producer Mikko Rantanen, top goal-scorer Jason Robertson and balanced contributor Wyatt Johnston.