WEST Playoffs '23-'24 Round 1: (P3) Los Angeles Kings at (P2) Edmonton Oilers (EDM Wins 4-1)

[JR Ewing]

14 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

Up a bit late here....house is quiet.
Husband, kids, dogs....everyone down for the count.

And I am up seeing if the Oilers are gonna move on to Round 2!"

They are 20 minutes away from doing that.
Kings have a pretty good team, but they really are not set up to make miracle comebacks....especially if the Oilers decide they aren't done scoring.

We will see.
An Oilers at Canucks series looks like it is in the works, however, Edmonton still has to take care of things here, and Vancouver, well, they seem to be having a bit of trouble with the Predators now.

 

What would be best is another insurance goal or two so they can sit McDavid and Draisaitl. There are some cheap shot and low bridge artists on that team.

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

4 minutes ago, JR Ewing said:

 

What would be best is another insurance goal or two so they can sit McDavid and Draisaitl. There are some cheap shot and low bridge artists on that team.

 

 

Or at the very least, if score remains the same, get the game under 5 or 6 minutes....let the bottom six take the bulk of the shifts after that.

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

At least the Oilers, who seem to be playing rope a dope right now, are remaining calm in their own end and aren't 'panic swatting' the puck away which usually leads to tons of icings or egregious turnovers.

[JR Ewing]

1 minute ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

At least the Oilers, who seem to be playing rope a dope right now, are remaining calm in their own end and aren't 'panic swatting' the puck away which usually leads to tons of icings or egregious turnovers.

 

It was the same in the 1-0 shutout in game 4. The Kings didn't even get a shot on goal for the last 6 minutes, and that was with a PP and then an empty net.

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Since I haven't really been following this series as close as I would have liked, I wonder who has been the more effective player for the Oilers (if either) as the annoying, but powerful physical force on the ice... Corey Perry or Evander Kane.

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

There we are...commercial break and the magical under 6 to go.

Let's see how much bottom six Edmonton feeds LA.

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Madness in front of the Edmonton net!

Oilers survive that...

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Big boys for EDM still playing...now an empty net for the Kings.

And they come up with the goal. 4-3.
Still time with just over 2 to go.

Guess the Oilers better let their Ferraris keep running.

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Edmonton fan behind one of the benches clenching his hands in what looks like prayer.

I wonder if he bet his mortgage on this one...  

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Empty net again.

Oilers need control, and some calm skating up ice...

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Draisaitl broke free....Kings had no choice but to hook him...

But THAT will effectively end the season for LA....

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

And that's it....Oilers move on.
Wait for either Nashville or Vancouver.

[JR Ewing]

There's not much to say about this one... The Kings were never really in it, and when they tried to press, generated next to nothing. One thing remains obvious, considering the times these games start: Gary Bettman will gleefully lose hundreds of millions in the desert to try and secure a big TV audience...but then he'll have Connor McDavid playing at 10:20 est.

 

[RBGordie]

It's a bummer that the Kings lost with the help of the refs. Like Jack Edwards might say, when the Oilers had a power play it was 9 against 4, LOL!

[JR Ewing]

26 minutes ago, RBGordie said:

It's a bummer that the Kings lost with the help of the refs. Like Jack Edwards might say, when the Oilers had a power play it was 9 against 4, LOL!

 

I thought there were some iffy calls last night, but Kevin Fiala has dived before, and with Gord Dwyer reffing specifically. Dwyer has seen the tape and, I'm sure, was waiting for an opportunity to nail Fiala for embellishment call and got his chance last night:

 

https://streamin.me/v/f3df8673

 

Either way...

 

-The Kings lost because they only scored four goals in the last three games, and one of them was a fluke off the stanchion for an empty-netter.

-Didn't score a single power-play goal in the entire series while running a PK of about 50%.

-Nobody complained in the previous two years when the Kings got more power-plays and still lost those series, too.

 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

51 minutes ago, RBGordie said:

It's a bummer that the Kings lost with the help of the refs. Like Jack Edwards might say, when the Oilers had a power play it was 9 against 4, LOL!

 

Well...as always, ref calls or non calls will always play a part in the playoff proceedings....sometimes egregiously so, other times not so much.
And while I didn't follow this series super closely, I do believe the correct team won in the end. Whether on the ice or on paper, the Oilers simply had more advantages throughout and it has been that way between EDM and LA for quite a while now, evidenced by the fact that the Oilers always seem to KO the Kings when they meet in the post season.

Sorta like the Boston Kryptonite to the Toronto Super Duds...  

[Tomdog]

16 hours ago, JR Ewing said:

There's not much to say about this one... The Kings were never really in it, and when they tried to press, generated next to nothing. One thing remains obvious, considering the times these games start: Gary Bettman will gleefully lose hundreds of millions in the desert to try and secure a big TV audience...but then he'll have Connor McDavid playing at 10:20 est.

 

I think you’re right about this and I think half the of the NHL fans underestimate Mcdavid’s talent because they don’t stay up late enough to see him. 
I hope the Mn Wild watched that PP so they can emulate it. 
Just so scary good on the PP. 

[JR Ewing]

3 hours ago, Tomdog said:

I think you’re right about this and I think half the of the NHL fans underestimate Mcdavid’s talent because they don’t stay up late enough to see him. 
I hope the Mn Wild watched that PP so they can emulate it. 
Just so scary good on the PP. 

 

See; that's the thing. It's not as if the Oilers have big brain energy going, with a genius PP design. In the words of Guy Carbonneau, their primary tool is a "guy that’s out of this world. He’s by far the best player on the planet. He’s got all the tools." As the PP coordinator, Glen Gulutzan has just been smart enough to make everything flow through McDavid. Hockey Psychology did a good break-down of the way the team uses his skills:

 

 

So, other teams can emulate it, but nobody else has a guy with his unique combination of abilities. Even if they have a guy who's close, they probably don't also have a guy like Draisaitl who, apart from being a repeated 50 goal scorer who can regularly put them in from a ridiculously acute angle, has also been voted as the best passer by the NHLPA.

[Tomdog]

Watching the Oilers PP with all the rotation and movement was pretty impressive. 
Most teams PP has players scattered around and moving side to side or front to back but everyone moving really creates confusion for the defense.  I don’t think you really need the best player on the planet to make it work. 

 

 

 

[JR Ewing]

4 hours ago, Tomdog said:

Watching the Oilers PP with all the rotation and movement was pretty impressive. 
Most teams PP has players scattered around and moving side to side or front to back but everyone moving really creates confusion for the defense.  I don’t think you really need the best player on the planet to make it work. 

 

 

The NHL is a very unoriginal league, and coaches soon copy what they can reproduce. My guess is that if it was as simple as mimicking what the Oilers do, most of the other teams would be running a similar system, since they've been doing the exact same thing for five years.