The Los Angeles Kings head into Saturday’s home clash with the Edmonton Oilers having received a reminder of what it takes to reach the next level.
The Kings are coming off a 3-2 loss to the defending Stanley Cup-champion Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday and looking to apply those lessons against an Oilers team that appears to have snapped out its early-season doldrums.
The Kings boast the Western Conference’s best winning percentage, but they had no illusions after losing to the Golden Knights. Vegas was full marks for the win and showed its championship pedigree.
“They commit, they won a Cup by doing that,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “They play their D-zone coverage a certain way, where their big defenseman are near the net and they sell out. It obviously is a championship brand.
“They didn’t win by getting away from that and they still have it in their game. So, it was good for us again to play in a game like that. For me, the disappointment wasn’t (not) getting three (goals), it was giving up three.”
Los Angeles continues to be in the mix for Western Conference supremacy, but a couple of numbers are concerning. As the Kings prepare to face the Oilers — who have dispatched them in each of the past two years in the Stanley Cup playoffs — they have only a 4-4-0 record in their past eight games and are only 7-6-3 at home.
The Vegas loss provides a template for what the Kings must improve.
“I wouldn’t say we played a bad game, but we could have definitely been sharper and, you know, connect on more plays, which probably would have resulted with a few more chances,” captain Anze Kopitar said.
The Oilers arrive on the heels of a dominating 5-0 win over the San Jose Sharks on Thursday, which has them riding a three-game winning streak.
After a horrible start to the campaign, especially for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations of its own, the Oilers appear to have turned the corner. They have won 11 of their past 14 games and moved above the .500 mark on the season. The next goal is to jump into a wild-card position.
“We are getting better,” coach Kris Knoblauch said. “If we’re not getting better each day, teams are going to be passing us, and we’re not in a position to do that.
“We need to be getting better because we have a lot of teams to pass if we’re going to make the playoffs. So, I like where we’re going, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”
Granted, the Sharks sit at the bottom of the league standings, but the Oilers, in their first game since the holiday break, exploded from the opening draw with four goals in the first period to kick off a three-game road trip through California.
With a solid lead in hand, they clamped down defensively to help secure goaltender Stuart Skinner his second shutout of the season.
“It was big for us to come out of the gate after a break and get a big win,” defenseman Darnell Nurse said. “I thought we came out in the first period and played really well, and then Stu made some huge saves down the stretch for us to keep the game where it was.”
– Field Level Media
