EDMONTON, Canada — For the fourth time in as many years, the Kings’ season came to an end with a first-round playoff loss to the Edmonton Oilers. The coup de grace came Thursday in a 6-4 Oilers win at a raucous Rogers Place, which has become a house of horrors for the Kings.
Edmonton got goals from Adam Henrique, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman, Darnell Nurse, Trent Frederic and Connor Brown. For the Kings, Quinton Byfield, Brandt Clarke, Jordan Spence and Anze Kopitar scored.
The Kings haven’t beaten the Oilers in the postseason since 1989, but this loss may be the most painful of the nine playoff series they’ve dropped to Edmonton. The Kings tied franchise bests for wins (48) and points (105) and won a team-record 31 times at home this season, finishing ahead of the Oilers in the Pacific Division for the first time in seven years.
They seemed primed for a long playoff run, but once again, they couldn’t beat Edmonton.
“Having the season that we had, the group of guys in this locker room, to come up short again, it sucks. It’s frustrating,” Kopitar said. “This one, this one hurts a little more.
“Having home ice and getting off to a good start with the first two games, winning the first two games. And then just not able to close games out. It cost us ”
The Kings went out like warriors though, carried out on their shields after a wild end-to-end Game 6 in which the teams combined for at least 10 goals for the third time in the series. There were 51 total goals, an average of 8.5 per game.
So much for conservative playoff hockey.
“We believe we could have won the series,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “We believe we should have won the series. We didn’t. So that’s the bottom line.
“They outplayed us, in my mind, one game. And the [Game 4] overtime. We lose the series.”
With their backs against the wall the Kings set the frenetic pace early, with Byfield scoring 79 seconds into the game, one of four goals in a manic and exhausting first 5 minutes 55 seconds. Only one potential Stanley Cup elimination game in the last 60 years featured the first four goals scored more quickly.
Byfield’s goal, his third of the series, came on a breakaway in which he beat Leon Draisaitl up the slot, deked Edmonton goalie Calvin Pickard to his left, then slipped the puck behind him and into the net. It was the second-fastest goal to begin an elimination game in franchise history, trailing only Wayne Gretzky’s score in the first minute of Game 7 versus Edmonton in 1989.
That should have been a good omen since that was the last time the Kings beat the Oilers in the deciding game of a playoff series. It wouldn’t happen again Thursday.
Edmonton evened things on Henrique’s deflection in traffic less than two minutes later, but Clarke needed just 33 seconds to put the Kings back in front on a snap shot from inside the right circle. That lead was short-lived too, with Nugent-Hopkins equaling things for the Oilers on a wrister from the edge of the left circle less than six minutes into the period.
Hyman then put the Oilers ahead for good with their third goal on a play that began innocently enough, with Nugent-Hopkins sending the puck off the boards after a faceoff in the Kings’ end. The carom found Nurse at the point and he sent a one-timer toward the goal that Hyman redirected into the net.
Nurse, given plenty of space in the high slot, doubled the advantage on a wrist shot that got just under the crossbar late in the second period; Frederic made it 5-2 just 96 seconds later on a tip-in from the crease at the end of an Oilers breakaway.
But still the Kings would not quit, with Spence scoring two minutes before the second intermission to keep the score close. The Kings pulled Kuemper for an extra attacker with 4:18 left and were rewarded when Kopitar scored with 53.3 seconds to play, but the Kings got no closer thanks to Brown’s empty-net goal, Edmonton’s fourth of the series, in the final two seconds. That left the Kings to begin focusing on next season while the Oilers moved on to play Vegas in the second round.
“We felt like we were the better team,” forward Adrian Kempe said. “We couldn’t close out the games that we should have. So that came back to bite us.
“It’s tough. It sucks when you play that well over five or six games like this.”
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