Kings vs. Oilers: Weird Is The Word

This was a weird game. There’s really no better way to describe it. After all it was Edmonton, and with the Kings track record with teams who aren’t playoff contenders the last three games hasn’t been stellar. On the other hand, the Kings were yet to lose 4 games in a row and yet to lose a game to Edmonton this year. In fact they were on an 8 game home winning streak against them. Last season they won all four games against the Oilers. By some miracle this season they pulled off winning all five!

16 seconds in it seemed the game would be easy and the Kings would steamroll over the Oilers in a similar fashion as they did the Bruins much earlier this season. Tyler Toffoli, who would end up with 4 points this evening, crashed the net and cleaned up a rebound from Brayden McNabb and Milan Lucic. Alas it only took 22 seconds for the Oilers to tie the game up, when Jake Muzzin let Jordan Eberle skate unabated to the front of the net and sneak one past Jonathan Quick. Then McNabb took a holing penalty 5:06 in and things could have gone badly, if not for Quick who did a whole lot of acrobatics tonight. That in itself was slightly strange – he’d make absolutely spectacular saves then let in something simple. Some of the Kings didn’t help him out – namely Vincent Lecavalier, who scored on his own goalie 9:53 into the first. Like I said – weird game. He was probably attempting to skate the puck around Quick and behind the net and was tripped by Patrick Maroon, accidentally getting a shot off that beat Quick just above his blocker. What it looked like though was that he took what was actually a pretty sweet shot against his own goalie. Of course as Quick wasn’t expecting his teammate to take a shot he was unprepared. The goal was credited to Connor McDavid, unassisted.

In the true essence of this game however, the Kings got the goal back quickly. 27 seconds later in fact. The goal was immediately challenged by the Oilers for goaltender interference, as their goalie had both one of their players and Milan Lucic were crashing the net and he was on his side on the ground. As it stood, he fell himself and was unable to scramble back to stop Jeff Carter from burying the puck on the other empty side of the net. He did his best, completely blocking the left side of the net where Lucic was parked, but got no help from his defense. Lucic picked up his second assist in a row on the play. The teams exchanged power plays, though neither scored on them. So the first period closed tied, and quickly.

Tyler Toffoli scored his second of the game 3:11 into the second period.

It was a beautiful and well placed wrist shot from the right of the net that just glided in top shelf. He made it look easy. It came right after a solid chance at the Oilers end that Quick managed to control well. The game became even more fast paced during the second. During one weird (sensing a trend here?) the Oilers possibly scored but the goal review didn’t happen until the Kings had almost 3 minutes of sustained zone time down the other end and did score, but it was waved off because the ref blew the puck dead too early. Once it was decided that Toffoli wasn’t to get his hat trick, they then reviewed the potential Oilers goal (which would have made the whole last 3 minutes a moot point anyways) and decided the puck never actually did pass over the goal line. It did however lead to a Lucic/Maroon fight that Lucic made count.

While they were in the box, a strikingly similar play to what had just been called off actually resulted in a goal; this time Toffoli assisted, keeping the puck alive at the front of the net and it was Andy Andreoff who cleaned up. So at 4-2 things could have gotten close when Rob Scuderi (after what was arguably a beautiful elongated shift in the defensive zone) found himself called for hooking. Instead, Tanner Pearson had an amazing breakaway (wow he can skate fast) which didn’t lead to something but Trevor Lewis’s did. He skated behind the net, back out and waited until he had the perfect shot, then made it count. The Kings closed the period up 5-2, and things seemed easy.

Of course things are never easy or simple for the Kings. The downhill turn started when Drew Doughty was called for hooking 7:24 into the 3rd. The penalty was so close to being killed, but with literally 2 seconds remaining Maroon got his first of the evening. He followed it up almost 7 minutes later with a second, bringing the Oilers to within 1 with 4:10 remaining in the 3rd. How, how did this happen? Sloppy defense, particularly bad turnovers in the defensive zone, and just silly, undisciplined mistakes. With a little over 2 minutes remaining the Oilers pulled their goalie. Quick lost his stick. It was madness at his end, but the Kings manned up when they really needed to. They cleared the puck enough for Quick to be able to get his stick back, and finally, with 33 seconds remaining Toffoli got the puck. It looked like he’d maybe make that hat trick after all, except the Oilers tagged him as a danger with the puck and doubled up on his defense – he got the puck to Carter though who scored the empty netter, and got his 4th point of the evening, securing his first star of the game.

The Kings play the Sharks next (who lost to Dallas 4-2 this evening) at the Shark tank. With the Ducks pulling off an overtime win they remain 3 points behind with 1 game in hand. The divisional race is still as tight as ever, with the Sharks game being an important 4 point game for the Kings. They’ll need to play better defense than tonight, but keep all those great offensive plays! (The Carter-Lucic-Toffoli line was just gold tonight.)