O Kings needed a change in fortunes on Sunday so they made a change in goal.
And while that changed the way the team played, it didn’t change the momentum of their best-of-seven Western Conference playoff series, with defenseman Evan BouchardThe second period power-play goal gave the Edmonton Oilers a 1-0 victory to send the series back to Canada for Game 5 on Wednesday, with the Oilers holding a 3-1 lead.
The loss was just the sixth in the Kings’ 20 home games since the All-Star break. Two of those came in the last four days against the Oilers, and Sunday’s loss could end up being the last game at Crypto.com Arena this season, with the Kings needing to win in Edmonton to avoid elimination.
See more information: Frustrated Kings have no answer for high-scoring Oilers in Game 3 loss
“It’s frustrating. Probably disappointing is too good a word.” interim coach Jim Hiller said afterward that the Kings played their best game of the series but had nothing to show for it. “We didn’t play that kind of game. This is the game we have to take with us to Edmonton now. It’s the only choice we have.
“We couldn’t do it, even though we had a good chance of doing it.”
Given the stakes, Hiller really had no choice but to start David Rittich in goal. The overworked Oilers regular goalkeeper Cam Talbot in the first three games of the series, scoring 17 goals.
It wasn’t all Talbot’s fault; seven of the goals he gave up were against the Kings’ once-vaunted penalty kill, which ranked second in the NHL during the regular season. Still, Hiller had to do something to change the direction of the series, so he gave Rittich his second playoff start of his career.
Rittich has had previous success against Edmonton, going 5-5-1 with a 2.73 goals-against average in 13 games. And in February he shut out the Oilers, giving the Kings their only win over Edmonton of the regular season.
Rittich played well again on Sunday, holding the explosive Oilers scoreless before Bouchard’s goal, his first of the playoffs, pushed the Kings to the wall.
“We have two days off and we have no excuse. We have to come out exactly the same way we did tonight and we are going to win,” said center Phillip Danault. “This is the only way.”
The Kings didn’t make Rittich available to reporters afterward, but his play — and several teammates — spoke for him.
“[He] It was incredible,” he says. Trevor Moore he said. “And he’s been like that with us all year. He gave us a really good chance tonight.”
Edmonton, which has had exceptional success on the power play, scored in every full period of the series until Sunday’s first period, when the Kings outscored them 10-4 and stayed out of the box. And the start was a marked improvement over Game 3, when the Kings fell behind 3-0 in the first and was never in the game.
This all ended midway through the second period when Andreas Englund lost his stick and was called for a penalty. The Oilers needed just 63 seconds to make the Kings pay, with Bouchard scoring a single from just above the circle at 11:49 off a pass from Leon Draisaitl. Connor McDavid also had an assist, giving him a league-best nine in the postseason.
The goal was the Oilers’ eighth in 15 attempts on the power play and was a bad omen for the Kings, as the team that scored first had won each of the first three games of the series. That trend continued Sunday, in part because the Kings rarely tested Edmonton goaltender Stuart Skinner.
Although they outscored the Oilers 33-13, Skinner was forced into just a few uncomfortable saves – none of which came on the Kings’ only power play, midway through the third period. The Kings have failed to score on 11 power play opportunities in the series and have scored just once in consecutive home playoff games.
Sunday’s shutout, Skinner’s first of the postseason, was also his first in the playoffs against the Kings since Game 2 of their first-round series with the Oilers in 2022. Edmonton won that game 6-0 and won the series in seven games.
The Oilers eliminated the Kings in last year’s first round in six games. On Wednesday, Edmonton will have a chance to win this series in five games. The Kings, it seems, are in danger of going backwards.
“We put everything we had into that game,” Moore said of Sunday’s Game 4. “But this is the playoffs. It is what it is. It’s just a question of how you can recover and how you can replicate it.
“You’re not out of this. You have to win the next game and then go home. So that’s our focus.”
This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.
