With playoffs looming, Kings end regular season matching franchise records for points, wins
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The Kings have been around for 57 years and 4,500 regular-season games. But they’ve never had a season like the one that just ended.
They’ve won the Stanley Cup twice, sent numerous players to the Hall of Fame and had players lead the league in scoring four times. But none of them accomplished what the players on this year’s team did.
Despite Thursday’s 5-1 loss to the Calgary Flames, the Kings finished the regular season with 48 wins and 105 points, matching franchise records in both categories. Their 25 losses equals the fewest ever in an 82-game schedule.
By most measures, it was a historic performance.
“We’re proud of the regular season,” coach Jim Hiller said.
Samuel Helenius scored twice, David Rittich made 28 saves, and the Kings spoiled the Kraken’s home and season finale.
However all of that will mean nothing come Monday when the Kings open the postseason against the Edmonton Oilers, their longtime nemeses, at the Crypto.com Arena. Game 2 will be played in Los Angeles on Wednesday before the series moves to Edmonton for Games 3 and 4 next weekend.
“We’re excited. We’re trying to win the Stanley Cup,” defenseman Jordan Spence said. “We have to refocus on our play, on our goals.”
Chief among those goals is to finally beat the Oilers, who have eliminated the Kings in the opening round in each of the last three postseasons and in eight of 10 playoff matchups overall. But the Oilers had the home-ice advantage in seven of those previous 10 series. The Kings will have it this year and home has never been sweeter: The Kings are a league-best 31-6-4 at the Crypt this season, with the 31 wins marking another franchise record.
Yet despite the historic regular season, history is not on the Kings’ side in the postseason. In addition to their dismal playoff history with Edmonton, the only other Kings team to win 48 games as well as the one that earned 105 regular-season points — they were different teams — both lost in the first round.
On the other hand this year’s team is riding a massive wave of momentum, having won eight of its final 10 games while averaging 4.2 goals over than span. No team in the Western Conference finished better.
That sprint to the finish began at the trade deadline when Kings general manager Rob Blake acquired winger Andrei Kuzmenko and a seventh-round draft pick from the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for a third-round pick in 2027.
Kuzmenko had spent time with three teams in two seasons, scoring in double digits just once since a 39-goal rookie season with Vancouver. So the deal appeared underwhelming.
Instead it changed the Kings’ season.
When Kuzmenko joined the team, the Kings were third in the Pacific Division, closer to missing the playoffs then to the top of the table. But no team in the league has been better since then, with the Kings winning 17 of their final 22 games.
“Is it a coincidence? I don’t know,” said Glen Murray, the Kings’ director of player development. “But I think he is part of the reason for sure. He is a right-handed shot, talented, skilled, and loves to make plays and loves to score.
“That kind of goes through the team and sometimes you can’t see it [but] you can feel it and it’s fun to watch.”
The Kings ranked 23rd in the 32-team NHL in scoring before the trade deadline. But since adding Kuzmenko, who has scored five goals and assisted on 12 others, they have scored 81 times.
He’s also helped turned around a power play that had converted just 15% of its opportunities before the trade, remaking it into one of the league’s best. That negates what proved to be a massive issue for the Kings in last year’s playoffs, when they failed to score in 12 man-advantage situations while allowing Edmonton to score on nearly half its chances.
The Kings will also be stronger in goal this spring thanks to another trade that saw Blake retrieve Darcy Kuemper from the Washington Capitals last summer. Kuemper’s 2.02 goals-against average is second-best in the NHL among goaltenders with more than 11 starts. What’s more, Kuemper is 13-4-4 lifetime against the Oilers, including a 3-1 record this season, when he gave up just one goal in his last three games with Edmonton.
Then there’s the fact the Oilers are limping into the playoffs. Defenseman Mattias Ekholm is out for the series while center Leon Draisaitl, who leads the league with 52 goals, appeared in just three of the Oilers’ final 14 games because of a lower-body injury. Connor McDavid, sixth in the NHL with 100 points, missed nine of the final 14 games with injury as did goaltender Stuart Skinner. The Oilers have not had a full, healthy lineup since March 4.
But none of that — the Oilers injuries nor the Kings’ record-setting regular season — will matter Monday when the teams take the ice both winless and unbeaten at the start of the unforgiving postseason. The first team to four wins will go on and the first to four losses will go home.
“The beauty of the playoffs is, everybody realizes it’s on,” Hiller said. “It’s a lot of work to get here. And we’re proud to be here.
“But it is over. Now let’s go again.”
