- Share via
Kings forward Phillip Danault has played in more than 760 NHL games, including the postseason, in his 11-year career. But he’s not sure he’d ever played a game like Monday’s playoff opener with the Edmonton Oilers.
“It was a little bit shocking,” he said. “Big ups and big downs and up again. That’s emotional. And it’s hard to play a game like that mentally.”
The Kings and Oilers still might be playing had Danault not knuckled a poorly hit shot past Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner in the final minute to give the Kings a wild 6-5 win and 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, which resumes Wednesday at Crypto.com Arena.
“I’m still in shock,” teammate Quinton Byfield added.
And it’s only Game 1 — although it was a game that featured a little bit of everything, except, perhaps, logic.
The Kings have a small army of behind-the-scenes specialists, including a so-called fight coach, that have played important roles in the team’s success.
The Kings had two power-play goals. Edmonton scored twice after pulling its goalie. The Kings had two five-on-three advantages less than four minutes apart in the third period while the Oilers trailed by four goals late in the second period and three goals with 15 minutes to play, only to tie the score in the final minute and a half on two goals 36 seconds apart.
If you blinked in the final period, there was a chance you missed something you had never seen before.
“It’s why we all love it,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when you come to the hockey game. That’s why it’s so exciting.
“Guys out there were playing passionately and different things can happen. Tonight was one of those nights where, from an entertainment perspective, you just had to sit back and see how it ended. We played well.”
But did they play well enough to win?
“It’s doesn’t really matter how, at this point,” Hiller said.
Indeed it doesn’t. Because after adding up all of the goals, all of the penalties, the missed chances and the blown advantages, the only numbers that matter are the number of wins each team has. And the Kings have the advantage.
“We’re up 1-0,” Byfield said. “A win’s a win and we’ll take that.”
The Kings have been in this position before, however. They’re playing the Oilers in the first round of the playoffs for a fourth straight year and in two of the three previous series, the Kings won the first game only to lose the series. But each of those playoffs opened in Edmonton; this year the Kings have the home-ice advantage — and it truly is an advantage since the Kings had the best home record in the NHL.
The venue may not be the only difference. In the last three playoffs the Oilers dominated on special teams, holding the Kings scoreless on 47 of 57 power-play opportunities while scoring nearly half the time they had the man advantage. That script flipped early Monday with Andrei Kuzmenko, making his playoff debut, giving the Kings a 1-0 lead 41 seconds into their first power play. Kevin Fiala then added a second power-play goal in the third period, four seconds after the Kings had taken a five-on-three advantage.
The two goals — two more than the Kings had on the power play in all of last spring’s playoffs — gave them what looked to be a comfortable 5-2 lead. But that look proved deceiving with Corey Perry scoring to start Edmonton’s comeback with just more than 12 minutes left. Importantly, that goal also gave the Oilers enough hope that coach Kris Knoblauch pulled Skinner with about three minutes to play — and the strategy worked, with Zach Hyman scoring with 2:04 to play before Connor McDavid tied the score with 88 seconds left.
The first time the Kings beat the Oilers in a playoff series, in 1982, they rallied from a 5-0 deficit to win Game 3 at the Forum in overtime, a game that became known as the “Miracle on Manchester.” McDavid’s goal Monday appeared to set up another overtime and a potential “Fiasco on Figueroa” before Danault rescued the Kings with his second goal of the game on perhaps the strangest play of a strange night.
It began with the Oilers winning a face-off deep in the Kings’ end and sending the puck to McDavid, who circled back toward the blue line. When he tried to flip the puck back up the ice, Kings defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov poked it away, then caromed a pass off the boards and around Edmonton’s Evan Bouchard to teammate Trevor Moore charging up the center of the rink.
With a defender closing in, Moore pulled up at the top of the left circle, slipped the puck back to Danault, then watched as Danault’s shot tumbled end over end — barely avoided a leaping Warren Foegele, who was shielding Skinner in the crease — into the back of the net.
“I got all of it,” Danault joked.
“It’s a house-league shot. Like a little rainbow,” Byfield said.
“No lead is safe in the playoffs,” Byfield continued. “They’re coming all the time. We’ll learn from that.”
So will the Oilers, who left the ice on the short end of the score but riding a massive wave of momentum just the same. Not only did they rally from a 4-0 deficit, but also they did so behind two goals and four assists from Leon Draisaitl and McDavid, who were playing together for the first time in more than a month. Draisaitl, who led the NHL with 52 goals, and McDavid, who was fourth with 74 assists, missed most of the last five weeks of the regular season because of injury, leaving their fitness for the playoffs in doubt.
Not any longer.
“Now, every single shift, every play matters,” Edmonton forward Adam Henrique said. “Even when you’re down and something happens, you know it all matters because you push right to the end, and we showed that coming back and sticking with it and tying it up late. We gave ourselves a chance.”
Their next one comes Wednesday.
