Monday night’s game between the Edmonton Oilers and Los Angeles Kings had all the markings of two teams who have faced each other in the first round of the playoffs for three straight years and were set to square up in the playoffs for a fourth in a week.
There was bad blood, clearly, as explained by the 69 penalty minutes and the Kings were able to take it by a score of 5-0. No surprise, given the long list of players absent the Oilers lineup.
What happened between the two sides — multiple scrums, shoving matches and Darnell Nurse cross-checking Quinton Byfield when he was already down on the ice — only left Edmonton with fewer players. Nurse’s night ended because of that cross-check that too ended Byfield’s night late in the second period, getting assessed a five-minute major and a game misconduct.
The team was without Corey Perry for a stretch of ten minutes from another misconduct after getting into it with referee Wes McCauley, who loves to put himself in the spotlight on National Television. Vasily Podkolzin, too, was shown a long sit down after he got into it with Kings defenceman Brandt Clarke.
“I think overall, we didn’t execute and play as well as we did the night before,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch after the game. “LA brought a lot more to the table than Winnipeg did the night before.
“We got behind early, they score about three power play goals — I know one was after it expired, but pretty much a power play goal — and that was just too much for our group to overcome.”
There’s not much to pull from the boxcars or the underlying numbers or anything like that in a game like this. The Kings were clearly the better team and when you realize the Oilers had over $42-million worth of players out of the lineup, it was easy to see where this game was going.
But, unironically, Knoblauch found one bright spot.
“Yes we did,” he said when asked after the game if the team walked away without any injuries. “It was a good night,” he added with a smile.
“We haven’t had a good night for a while, so anytime you lose like that and still are happy about things, you know things haven’t been going well on the injury department, and tonight — everything is good.”
If anything, the biggest takeaway is the clear disdain these two teams still have over each other. For Edmonton, it’s because of the greasy game the Kings play. For Los Angeles, it’s the fact they lost to the Oilers in Game 7 in in 2022, Game 6 in 2023, and Game 5 in 2024.
“That’s a good team over there, it’s a good team in here — it’s going to be a good series,” said Oilers winger Connor Brown. “It’s going to be a good series.
“It’s exciting, that’s what it comes down to. It’s exciting. Obviously a bit of a frustrating one tonight, but come next week, it’s going to be exciting. We have a high sense of belief in this group. We think we can do something special, so it will be a fun one.”
Before the good stuff gets going in Los Angeles, the Oilers will take a quick trip to Southern California to visit the San Jose Sharks Wednesday, closing out their regular season.
Buckle up, folks. It’s playoff season in Oil Country.
Zach Laing is Oilersnation’s associate editor, senior columnist, and The Nation Network’s news director. He also makes up one-half of the DFO DFS Report. He can be followed on Twitter, currently known as X, at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.
