Kings Phillip Danault striker has played more than 760 NHL games, including the playoffs during his 11 -year career. But he is not sure that he has ever played a match such as the opening of the Monday qualifiers with the EDMONTON Oilers.
“It was a bit shocking,” he said. “Big Ups and Big Downs and again. It’s emotional. And it’s hard to play a game mentally.”
The Kings and the Oilers could still play if Danault had not struck a bad shot in front of the goalkeeper of Edmonton Stuart Skinner in the last minute to give the Kings a wild 6-5 and 1-0 victory in advance in the series of seven best, which resumes Wednesday at Crypto.com Arena.
“I’m still in shock,” added his teammate Quinton Byfield.
And it is only game 1 – Although it was a game that had a little bit of everything, except, perhaps, logical.
The Kings had two goals of power game. Edmonton scored twice after shooting his goalkeeper. The Kings had two advantages of five against three by less than four minutes apart in the third period while the oilers dragged by four goals at the end of the second period and three goals with 15 minutes to play, to equalize the scoring in the last minute and a half on two goals 36 seconds.
If you have blinked in the last period, there was a chance that you have missed something that you had never seen before.
“This is why we all like it,” said Kings coach Jim Hiller. “You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when you come to the hockey match. This is why it is so exciting.
“The guys there played with passion and different things can happen. Tonight was one of those nights when, from the point of view of entertainment, you just have to sit down and see how it ended. We played well.”
But have they played well enough to win?
Kings striker Adrian Kempe puts the washer in front of the goalkeeper of Edmonton’s Oilers, Stuart Skinner, in the second period of match 1 on Monday evening.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“No matter how, at this stage,” said Hiller.
Indeed, this is not the case. Because after adding all the objectives, all the penalties, the missed chances and the blown advantages, the only figures that count are the number of victories of each team. And kings have the advantage.
“We are up 1-0,” said Byfield. “A victory is a victory and we will take that.”
However, the kings were in this position before. They play the oilers in the first round of the playoffs for a fourth consecutive year and in two of the three previous series, the Kings won the first match to lose the series. But each of these qualifiers opened its doors in Edmonton; This year, the Kings have the advantage of ice ice at home – and this is really an advantage because the Kings had the best home record of the NHL.
The place may not be the only difference. During the last three playoff series, the Oilers dominated the special teams, holding the Kings aimless out of 47 of the 57 power game opportunities while marking almost half of the time, they had the advantage of man. This script shot early Monday with Andrei Kuzmenko, making his playoff debuts, giving the Kings an advance of 1-0 41 seconds after their first power game. Kevin Fiala then added a second goal in power in the third period, four seconds after the Kings took an advantage of five against three.
The two goals – two more than the Kings had on the power game during the qualifiers last spring – gave them what seemed to be a comfortable advance of 5-2. But this look turned out to deceive with Corey Perry Marquant to start the return of Edmonton with just over 12 minutes. Above all, this objective also gave the oilers enough hope that coach Kris Knoblauch fired Skinner with about three minutes to play – and the strategy worked, with Zach Hyman marking with 2:04 to play before Connor McDavid equaled the score with 88 seconds.
The first time the Kings beat the Oilers in a series of playoffs in 1982, they gathered a deficit of 5-0 to win match 3 at the Forum in extension, a game which has become the “Miracle on Manchester”. McDavid’s goal Monday seemed to set up another extension and a “fiasco on Figueroa” potential before Danault saved the Kings with his second goal of the match on the strange game of a strange night.
It started with the oilers winning a deep confrontation in the end of the Kings and sending the washer to McDavid, which turned to the blue line. When he tried to return the washer to the ice, the defender of the Kings Vladislav Gavrikov moved him away, then put a pass of the boards and around Evan Bouchard from Edmonton to his teammate Trevor Moore by loading the center of the ice rink.
With a defender approaching, Moore stopped at the top of the left circle, slipped the washer to Danault, then looked at the Danault shooting at the end – barely avoided a jumping Warren, which protected Skinner in the fold – at the back of the net.
“I understood everything,” joked Danault.
“It’s a home league. Like a little rainbow,” said Byfield.
“No advance is safe in the playoffs,” continued byfield. “They come all the time. We will learn. “
The Oilers too, who left the ice at the short end of the score, but surfing on a massive wave of momentum just like. Not only did they withdraw from a deficit of 4-0, but they also did it behind two goals and four assists by Leon Draisaitl and McDavid, who played together for the first time in more than a month. Draisaitl, who led the NHL with 52 goals, and McDavid, who finished fourth with 74 assists, has missed most of the last five weeks of the regular season due to an injury, leaving their ability to the qualifiers in doubt.
More more.
“Now, each quarter of work, each game is important,” said Edmonton attacker Adam Henrique. “Even when you are broken and something happens, you know that everything counts because you push until the end, and we have shown that coming back and staying with it and tie it late. We gave ourselves a chance.”
Their next arrives on Wednesday.
