THE Kings the season ended again Wednesday with a whimper and not a bang.
It ended again in the first round of the NHL playoffs and once again in a loss to the Edmonton Oilers, who became to the Kings what kryptonite was to Superman.
The final score of last match was 4-3but that was just an accounting detail because the series was over long before the final horn sounded. The Oilers outscored the Kings 22-13 in the five games, including nine of those goals on 19 power play opportunities. They didn’t give up a goal on the Kings’ 12 power play opportunities.
Four Oilers — Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Evan Bouchard and Zach Hyman — finished the series with at least eight points, twice as many as Kings co-leaders Quinton Byfield and Adrian Kempe. As beatings go, this one was about as one-sided as Kings-Oilers playoff history was in general.
Yet for Kings defenseman Drew Doughty, the color of the other uniform didn’t really matter. What matters is that the Kings are eliminated from the playoffs after one round.
Again.
“The problem, I think, is that we lost three years in a row in the first round,” he said. “Yes, it was against Edmonton. But no matter who we lost to, it would have been the same disappointment, the same desire to win the series.
And a third straight loss in the first round of the playoffs will undoubtedly lead to some off-season soul-searching for the Kings. Did interim coach Jim Hiller Did he do enough to get the team to the playoffs for general manager Rob Blake to remove the interim label and give Hiller the permanent job? Will this be Blake’s decision to make?
During Blake’s seven seasons at the helm of the Kings, they reached the playoffs four times, but never made it past the first round. When Blake coach Todd McLellan was fired in February, he said a new voice was needed in the locker room. Could the same is now true at reception?
Additionally, the Kings have seven players who became unrestricted free agents after Wednesday’s loss, including defenseman Matt Roy, forward Trevor Lewis and goalies Cam Talbot and David Rittich. They will all need to be re-signed or replaced.
And ultimately, the team will have to decide what to do with center Pierre-Luc Dubois, who signed an eight-year, $68 million contract with the team in June, becoming the team’s second player. For that, the Kings only had 16 goals and 24 assists; Dubois was skating on the fourth line Wednesday, taking a questionable penalty that led to Edmonton’s third goal.
When asked if he wanted the job permanently, a clearly deflated Hiller perked up.
“It goes without saying,” he said. “You know, it’s a great group of players with a lot of character. They made it easier for me in circumstances that may have been difficult for them. So I owe them a lot. I appreciated it.
But a change must come if the Kings are ever to advance to the second round again.
When asked in the quiet Kings locker room if the Kings roster was good enough to win the playoffs, Doughty was blunt.
“We haven’t proven it yet. I’m not going to say no. But it’s a difficult question,” he said. “We haven’t proven it. That’s the main thing.
When asked if there was a next step in the team’s evolution, he continued on the same theme.
“Obviously, winning a playoff round. That was our goal this year,” he said. “To work hard in the offseason and come back stronger and you know, use that experience, those past experiences as motivation and try to win a series.”
“I’m not going to tell you what I think is missing,” he continued. “At the end of the day, we all have to be in a playoff series and we had some guys some nights, some guys off other nights. And we all need to be part of it. Nothing great. We all have to be very strong and consistent to win a playoff series and I think that’s where we lost.
The Kings haven’t beaten anyone in a first-round playoff series since 2014, when they won the second of their two Stanley Cups. But it’s the Oilers who have become the biggest obstacle to the playoffs, beating the Kings in the first round each of the last three seasons.
The teams have met in the playoffs 10 times since 1982 and Edmonton has won eight of those series. Only two other NHL teams have beaten the same opponent in the playoffs more often during that span.
And while we can attribute some of the Kings’ struggles to bad luck and others to chance, dominance to this degree seems inexplicable without a curse. So maybe it’s all Wayne Gretzky’s fault.
Hey, it’s a theory. (And it’s no worse than some of those offered by Kings players on Wednesday.)
Gretzky was more than a Canadian icon, he was a national treasure who led the Oilers to four Stanley Cups in five seasons when it was distributed to kings in the summer of 1988. In the hockey-loving city of Edmonton, the trade wasn’t so much a trade as a betrayal.
But Oilers owner Peter Pocklington, whose other businesses were struggling, needed money and the Kings offered him $15 million in the Gretzky deal. In this way, the trade was reminiscent of the sale of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees in 1920, a Boston owner, Harry Frazee, made to prop up his failing theatrical interests.
After the trade, the Red Sox would go 83 seasons without a World Series title while the Yankees would win a record 26 championships.
If the Gretzky curse does indeed exist, it hasn’t been as harsh as the Bambino curse, but it has haunted both teams. Plus, it took a few seasons to take effect.
In Gretzky’s first season in Los Angeles, the Kings beat the Oilers in the playoffs en route to the division final; a year later, the Oilers, without Gretzky, would win their fifth Stanley Cup in seven seasons.
None of these things happened again.
The Kings lost six straight playoff series to the Oilers, while Edmonton went 33 years without an NHL championship. In fact, Canada as a whole has only won two Stanley Cups since Gretzky left for Hollywood.
And although the Kings won NHL titles in 2012 and 2014, their path was made easier because the Oilers missed the playoffs twice, part of a 10-season playoff drought that the fans still call it “The Decade of Darkness”.
The Oilers might finally be ready to return to the light, curses be damned. With McDavid and Draisaitl, Edmonton has three of the last four Hart Trophy winners, and this year the supporting cast around them is better than ever. The team appears poised for a deep playoff run.
The Kings, meanwhile, face another long offseason in search of answers. Could they be cursed?
“I don’t know what to think. It’s too fresh,” said forward Phillip Danault. “But it really hurts.”
