EDMONTON — It can’t be a good thing for the Los Angeles Kings that the sellout crowd at Rogers Place for Game 1 was so loose and carefree by the second period it was trying to get the wave fired up as the Edmonton Oilers shifted into cruise control.
And it wasn’t a good thing that hundreds of hats rained down on the ice after Zach Hyman’s third goal of the night — and the Oilers’ third power-play goal of the night — came on Connor McDavid’s fifth assist.
The subsequent derisive chant of Cam Talbot’s name or the orange and blue pom-poms waved right in the goalie’s direction weren’t good either. Monday’s 7-4 trouncing, which was more decisive in nature than the final score showed, was so un-Kings-like that you wondered if there were imposters dressed in the visiting white jerseys.
It’s distressing that the Kings, who have spent the last two summers making major trades for Kevin Fiala and PL Dubois to close the gap and get an edge on the Oilers, emerged from Game 1 against their playoff obstacle with Talbot having faced 44 shots. Too many were of the high-danger variety, some of which came on odd-man rushes.
“That’s not our motto,” Doughty said. “That’s not the way we play. It’s frustrating. You just got to put that game in the past and get back to doing what we do best and that’s good two-way hockey. That one’s over.”
It’s deeply concerning that the Kings took four minor penalties and watched the Oilers make them pay on three of them. The penalty kill that was torched in last year’s six-game loss and restructured to where it improved from 24th last season to second in the NHL was again no match for an always-scary Edmonton power play.
Before the game, Mikey Anderson talked of the great strides the Kings had made when short-handed. He pointed to having Vladislav Gavrikov for an entire season and bringing back Trevor Lewis to form a strong tandem with Blake Lizotte. Talbot had a strong .914 save percentage and the Kings could feel comfortable with a structure in which they could be more aggressive as he handled forwards down low.
Instead, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins got a tap-in from Leon Draisaitl in the second period and Hyman had a layup on Talbot’s doorstep after McDavid hit him with a pass. Between those easy power-play conversions, Draisaitl fired in one of his patented sharp-angle one-timers from the base of the right circle.
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“Two things that have been and are strengths of ours are penalty kill and limiting rush chances,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “That’s what we do well, and we didn’t do either of those well tonight. That’s the obvious. I think everybody saw that. We’ll have to fix that.”
They didn’t make it easy on Talbot, who too often had to abandon his positional game and was at the mercy of the Oilers. Six goals got by him, marking just the second time over 32 playoff starts he has allowed that many. When asked if David Rittich would be an option to start Game 2, Hiller said, “Sure. Everybody’s always an option.”
However, Hiller didn’t pin the poor performance on Talbot.
“Cam was fine,” he said. “I’ll back it up. I thought our forwards made it too hard on our D and then our D, as a group, we made it pretty tough on Cam. He made a lot of saves. He made some good saves. They were coming down the wing cracking him on some odd-man rushes.
“Nothing there for Cam but there’s just no way we can give that many chances. That’s just not us. We’ll clean it up.”
The game was played at the Oilers’ favored track-meet pace and the Kings either took too long to catch up or did a terrible job slowing them down. Doughty said it was tough on the defense when McDavid and the rest of his mates were flying through a neutral zone their 1-3-1 setup is supposed to clog up. “We got to fix that,” he said. “We know that. We’ll fix it.
“We know how good they are at it. We’ve played them so many times. That’s probably one of the poorest we’ve ever done against them in the last three years in my opinion. Yeah, we want to muck it up more, but we also don’t want to be taking penalties after the whistle and stuff like that. It’s a fine line and we got to ride that line.”
The only good takeaway is that they got four pucks by Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner, though there were fortunate bounces when Adrian Kempe put an intended pass for Quinton Byfield off the skate of Oilers defenseman Evan Bouchard and Dubois added a garbage time goal, banking a shot off Darnell Nurse. Even Trevor Moore’s late score came on a chance created with a broken Oiler stick.
But they once again took too many penalties and couldn’t keep McDavid or his cohorts down. The Oilers are better and that’s a troubling sign for a Kings club that keeps doing the same thing against them — or worse.
Game 2 is Wednesday. In the last two years against them, the Kings won Game 1 twice and ultimately had series leads but could not put them on the ropes or land a knockout blow. This is different. They’re chasing the Oilers from the get-go and that’s not a good place to be when they already can’t keep pace with them.
Something must change right away, or this will be over in short order. Because it’s been proven the same won’t work against this opponent.
“We’ve gone through this, oh anyway, over the last couple months of the season where we had a game — whoever it had been (against) — where we didn’t play well at all and we were disappointed,” Hiller said. “I’m here to tell you that every time we’ve had one of those, we’ve come back with a strong effort.
“We’re going to have to do that tonight. We’ve been through that. But we’re going to have to be much better than we were tonight. That’s very clear.”
Added Kempe: “I think we’ve shown in the past that we can come back against good teams. That’s a strength of ours. Obviously tonight, didn’t happen. Overall, just got to be better next game.”
The mood inside Rogers Place was so jubilant that former Oilers enforcer Georges Laraque drew huge cheers when his image was flashed on the video board. The party was on, and the Kings were left to clean up their mess afterward. And if it doesn’t get better in Game 2 or the rest of this series, they could have a bigger mess to deal with at season’s end.
(Photo of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scoring on the Kings in Game 1: Codie McLachlan / Getty Images)
