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The Kings’ playoff push had stalled by the time the team hit the trade deadline last month. They had lost five straight, a season high, and had scored just eight times in that span.
And their special teams... well, they weren’t very special. Qualifying for the postseason was in doubt and making a run once they got there seemed out of the question.
So general manager Rob Blake, after kicking the tires on a number of different trades, responded by adding journeyman winger Andrei Kuzmenko in what, at the time, seemed like an underwhelming move.
But Blake obviously knew what he was doing because the trade has changed the team’s season and it’s certainly changed the way the team has performed in the playoffs, where the Kings hold a 2-0 lead over the Edmonton Oilers after Wednesday’s 6-2 victory at Crypto.com Arena.
Phillip Danault scores in the final minute as the Kings manage to overcome a four-goal surge by the Edmonton Oilers to take a 6-5 win in their playoff opener.
The series will resume with Game 3 on Friday in Edmonton followed by Game 4 on Sunday. Game 5, if necessary, will be played in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
“He’s just really been a difference-maker,” coach Jim Hiller said of Kuzmenko. “He’s such a unique guy. And he loves hockey. He can’t stop talking about hockey. You just love to see the passion.
“We’ve said it a thousand times: what an addition to our team.”
Kuzmenko had a goal and an assist Wednesday but he also had a lot of help from linemates Adrian Kempe, who scored twice and added two assists, and Anze Kopitar who had a goal and three assists. The other scores came from Brandt Clarke and Quinton Byfield.
Add it all up and the Kings, who were eliminated by the Oilers in the first round in each of the last three seasons, have outscored Edmonton 12-7 in winning the first two games of a postseason series for the first time since the 2014 Stanley Cup finals.
They won that series in five games but haven’t won a playoff series since. So they’re not celebrating this one just yet.
“It’s the first one to four,” said Warren Foegele, who had two assists against his former team Wednesday. “We still have a long road to go. Tomorrow it’s back to focusing on Game 3.”
However, the fact they’re in this position at all, Foegele said, is in large part because of Kuzmenko.
“He’s one of the more underrated players in the league,” Foegele said. “He’s a big body, good skater, has a great release, and he plays hard. He’s physical and he’s got that bite to him that’s kind of annoying to play against.”
He also plays with uncommon enthusiasm, which has given a veteran team a needed spark.
“He has definitely brought that for sure,” said Glen Murray, the Kings’ director of player development. “He loves to make plays and loves to score. That kind of goes through the team. Some people can’t see it. We see it.”
Since Kuzmenko joined the team, the Kings have lost just five times in 24 games, including the playoffs, and averaged more than 3.8 goals a game. And their power play, which ranked 27th in the 32-team league in the regular season, has gone from being an embarrassing weakness to a strength.
In the two playoff games with Edmonton, Kuzmenko has scored two goals and assisted on three others — all but one of those scores coming on the power play. As a team, the Kings have scored five times in 10 chances with the man advantage.
That’s a big change from last year’s playoff series with Edmonton, when the Kings were held scoreless on all 12 of their power-play tries.
“Confidence is the main thing,” Kempe said of the power play. “We get Kuze at the deadline, he’s been great. He makes a lot of plays. He’s been working really hard with the puck, without the puck, and he’s doing a great job. He’s getting rewarded.
“So I think everybody on the team is really happy to have him. He’s been a big factor. You score some goals, you get confidence. It kind of builds off that.”
But if last month’s trade has given the Kings an extra hitch in their giddy-up, it’s been no less transformative for Kuzmenko, who has been passed around like a bad rumor since a 39-goal rookie season with Vancouver in 2022-23.
That was four teams ago.
He finally made his playoff debut Monday, scoring — on a power play, naturally — less than three minutes into the game.
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.
“I want to help this team because this team believed in me,” said the Russian-born Kuzmenko, whose English is still a work in progress.
Help? He’s pretty much resurrected a team that was given up for dead seven weeks ago and likely saved Blake, who needs at least a first-round playoff victory to get a new contract.
That second job, however, is only halfway done.
“We’ve still got to go up to Edmonton and make a difference and keep playing the way we’ve been playing,” Clarke said. “And good things are going to happen.”
