Angeles Analysis – Round 1, Game 2

Splitsville, Insiders.

The Kings depart Edmonton with a 1-1 series split, following a lopsided, 6-0 loss in Game 2.

How you view that is likely all about perception. Before the puck dropped in Game 1, you’d probably have taken the split. A split shows that the Kings can win a postseason game on the road, and that they can match a team that the external media views as superior, with no fear of the moment or the situation. If you were asked before the puck dropped in Game 2, however, with a win already in the bank, a split was less appealing, especially when the way the split came was through a six-goal defeat.

We covered Game 1 here, so today’s game will be a look into Game 2.

Despite the lopsided final score, the Kings actually played a pretty solid first period. They didn’t concede much in terms of quality chances in the opening 20 minutes, with both teams seemingly feeling out the game at times. The biggest opportunities in the opening frame fell to the Kings, who had the game’s first two power plays, but the visitors weren’t able to strike first in either scenario. Alex Iafallo had the best look, a shot that looked like it went in from the upstairs, press-box vantage point, though on replay it clearly did not.

From there, however, the game shifted, with the disparity on special teams only becoming that much more evident. After the Kings did not score on their two opportunities on the power play, Edmonton took advantage with two goals of their own on special teams to open the second period. You might say that Chris Rock took a harder shot than the one Mike Smith took early in the second period, but call aside, the Oilers scored their third power-play goal of the series shortly thereafter. That marked three power-play goals in four periods.

It wasn’t necessarily the power-play goal that swung the tide, however, but rather what followed. Not only did the Kings not convert on their second-period man advantage, but they conceded one the other way. With the second unit on the ice, the Kings were unable to hold in a puck on the half-wall, a play Todd McLellan said he would’ve liked to see made, which sprung an opportunistic penalty kill the other way. McDavid to Nurse off a Kings stick and in. From a chance to tie the game to two goals down, a massive momentum shift in an otherwise closely contested game to that point.

Struggles on special teams have been well-documented this season. Those same struggles existed in Game 1, but a superior performance at 5-on-5 glossed over an 0-for-4 night on the PP and two power-play goals allowed. Through two games, each team has had four power-play opportunities in each game played. Edmonton has five goals, Los Angeles has none. It’s unlikely the Kings are going to outscore the Oilers on special teams in this series, but that was never a prerequisite to winning the series. At some point, however, they will need to contribute in that area, whether it be the easy way – finding something on the power play – or the hard way – a nearly flawless penalty-killing effort against one of the NHL’s best power-play units.

As McLellan said after yesterday’s game, there is no magic formula to find at this point when it comes to the power play. There’s no diagram being drawn up on the plane ride home from Edmonton that will magically turn the Kings into a dominant team in those situations. All season long, even-strength play has driven the bus for success, but there’s a difference between converting at 16 percent, as the Kings did in the regular season and being -1 while a man up, as the Kings are through two postseason games. Players and coaches alike know that needs to change at some point in the series.

There’s also the larger-scale narrative that McLellan touched on, of Game 2 being an “eye opener” for some players who haven’t been through this before, and a “reminder” of what the playoffs are all about for some players who have. McLellan has been on both sides of lopsided losses in the postseason and said that experiences like this happen more often than you might think over the course of a playoff series. They just tend to get lost in the bigger picture of which team gets to four wins first, rather than how they get there.

This won’t be an article to sit and try to pluck smaller-picture positive from a 6-0 loss. Even from a puck possession standpoint, the only Kings player with an on-ice CF% over 50 percent was Blake Lizotte, one out of 18 skaters. Where we can shift the focus is in the larger picture. The Kings got the split in Edmonton and they’re in the fortunate position of being able to bounce back from this defeat, rather than watch it on TV. As McLellan said after the game, there are a lot of teams that would love to have the opportunity to bounce back from a 6-0 loss at this time of the year.

Around the NHL, we’re no further than Game 2 in any one series and already 6 of the 16 teams in postseason play have lost a game by four-or-more goals. The Blues/Wild series saw both games in that category. It’s not the Champions League, where goal differential matters in the aggregate and that’s certainly a larger-scale takeaway, even though it doesn’t feel like that great in the moment.

Today is a travel day for the Kings, as we head back to Los Angeles for Games 3 and 4. It’s a fresh day at the rink tomorrow, and the only scoreline that matters will be 1-1. The team is set to return to the ice tomorrow morning, with a 10:30 AM skate scheduled at Toyota Sports Performance Center.

It’s a best-of-five, Insiders!