The Los Angeles Kings came into the 2024-25 season with a very clear goal: Get past the first round of the playoffs.
The Kings haven’t won a playoff series since beating the New York Rangers in the 2014 Stanley Cup Final for their second championship in three seasons. Since then, they’ve missed the playoffs five times and they’ve lost in the first round five times.
The biggest obstacle for Los Angeles has been the Edmonton Oilers, who beat them in seven games in 2022, six games in 2023, and five games in 2024. The Oilers cruised past the Kings in last year’s first-round series thanks largely to a power play that scored nine times on 20 opportunities over five games and a penalty kill that didn’t allow a single goal against.
To the surprise of nobody, the two Pacific Division rivals will meet for a fourth year in a row this spring, but this time, Los Angeles has the edge as the home squad. The Kings also figure to be a stronger team on the penalty kill with veteran off-season additions Darcy Kuemper, Joel Edmundson, and Warren Foegele in the fold.
“Everyone knows (the series between the Oilers and Kings) will come down to special teams,” Foegele told Jim Matheson of the Edmonton Journal when the Kings were in town earlier this week. “And the last few years, the Oilers have one of the best power plays. So it’ll be our job to not take so many penalties.”
The goal for general manager Rob Blake last summer was to bring in some players who have seen success in the playoffs. Outside of Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar, key parts of their 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cups, most players on the Kings have only experienced losing in the first round.
Kuemper won the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022 and had an excellent first season in Los Angeles, going 31-11-7 with a .921 save percentage. Edmundson, who won the Stanley Cup with the St. Louis Blues in 2019 and went on a deep run with the Montreal Canadiens in 2021, has been a very effective shutdown defender for the Kings.
And then there’s Foegele, who signed a three-year, $10.5 million contract with the Kings in the summer after reaching the Stanley Cup Final with the Oilers. The speedy winger scored 24 goals and 46 points, both career-highs, over 82 games in his first season with Los Angeles. He’s also playing on the team’s top penalty killing unit with linemate Phillip Danault.
“I’m playing PK more (with the Kings),” Foegele noted. “I started to do that more when (Kris) Knoblauch took over (as head coach). But first two years (in Edmonton) I didn’t, for some reason.”
Foegele, Danault, and Trevor Moore have been a dominant third line for the Kings, outscoring opponents 22-to-8 over 365 minutes together at even strength. The 28-year-old winger compared his role in Los Angeles to the one he played with the Carolina Hurricanes before being traded to Edmonton.
“No question we’re an identity line, a checking line, trying to play good defence first. We’ve embraced that the last month,” said Foegele.“Our team is probably defence first… It reminds me of my time in Carolina. There I played with Jordan Staal and the other winger would be (Nino) Niederreiter or (Jesper) Fast or (Andrei) Svechnikov. It’s kind of the same thing as here in L.A. It’s something I’m comfortable with.”
Though the Oilers are coming into this series with the Kings riddled by injuries, the team still boasts the top one-two punch in hockey with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl down the middle. Draisaitl led the NHL in goals with 52 by a wide margin despite missing 11 games while McDavid scored 10 points in four games in April heading into the playoffs.
The key for Los Angeles this year, as Foegele said, will be special teams. The Kings need to slow down Edmonton’s power play and they need to find some offence on the man advantage of their own. If not, it’ll be another first-round exit at the hands of the Oilers.
