The Los Angeles Kings have a playoff spot assured entering their final regular-season contest, a visit to the Calgary Flames on Thursday night.
What has not been decided is whether the Kings (35-26-20, 90 points) will finish third in the Pacific Division or be a Western Conference wild-card team. They are tied with the Anaheim Ducks for third in the Pacific and trail the team in the first wild-card spot, the Utah Mammoth, by two points. Anaheim visits Nashville on Thursday, while Utah hosts St. Louis.
Los Angeles clinched a postseason berth with a 5-3 win over the host Seattle Kraken on Monday night.
“It’s been a climb, for sure, and it probably didn’t look very good a while ago,” said Kings interim coach D.J. Smith, who replaced Jim Hiller on March 1. “Credit to the guys and the leadership. … They’ve played playoff hockey for a while now. It’s allowed us this opportunity. We’ll see what happens now the rest of the way, and maybe we can climb another spot.”
Los Angeles, which is 6-0-2 in April, picked up another point on Tuesday night with a 4-3 overtime road loss to the Vancouver Canucks.
The Kings are 13-20 in overtime and shootouts this season.
“The good thing is we only got one more game where we’re going to deal with these 3-on-3 overtimes,” Smith said. “We get to overtime (in the Stanley Cup Playoffs), you’re going to play 5-on-5, and we’re going to find out.”
Quinton Byfield, who scored twice on Monday and has at least one goal in five consecutive road games, and Alex Laferriere had a goal and an assist each against Vancouver on Tuesday.
“We know how important all these games are,” Laferriere said. “We know we can pass anybody in the standings on any given night. It was a sense of relief for us to know that we clinched, but we knew that we still wanted to push and get as high up in the standings as we could.”
Thursday night will be captain Anze Kopitar’s final regular-season game. The 38-year-old announced before the season that this would be the final chapter of his 20-year playing career.
Kopitar has 38 points (12 goals, 26 assists) in 66 games in 2025-26.
He got his 864th career assist on Tuesday to go along with 452 goals for 1,316 points in 1,520 games.
It will also be the last regular-season game for the Flames (33-39-9, 75 points), who will miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season. They lost 3-1 to the visiting Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday night.
Calgary had won its last two at home and had gone 7-0-1 in their last eight on home ice.
Dustin Wolf made 36 saves and Blake Coleman scored the Flames’ lone goal to reach 20 for the fourth time in his career.
“It’s cool,” Coleman said of reaching the milestone. “For whatever reason, round numbers, they just feel good. It’s not an easy achievement to get to. Ask (coach Ryan Huska), I’ve got bad hands, so even more difficult for me to get there.”
Defenseman Zach Whitecloud left late in the second period after a puck hit him in the face. He is questionable for Thursday.
–Field Level Media
