WHO: Los Angeles Kings vs. Edmonton Oilers (Kings Lead Series 1-0)
WHAT: 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs – Round 1, Game 2
WHEN: Wednesday, April 23 @ 7:00 PM Pacific
WHERE: Crypto.com Arena – Los Angeles, CA
HOW TO FOLLOW: VIDEO: FanDuel Sports Network SoCal & TBS – AUDIO – ESPN LA 710 & ESPN LA App – TWITTER: @dooleylak & @lakings
TODAY’S MATCHUP: With a Game 1 victory in the rear-view mirror, the Kings look to hold onto home-ice advantage, with Game 2 on tap this evening in Los Angeles.
HEAD-TO-HEAD: The Kings had five different goalscorers in Game 1, the first time they’ve done so in the postseason since the 2014 Stanley Cup Finals.
Forwards Adrian Kempe and Andrei Kuzmenko led the way with three points each (1-2-3), while forwards Phillip Danault (2-0-2), Kevin Fiala (1-1-2) and Quinton Byfield (1-1-2) also found the back of the net in Monday’s win. In total, 10 different players recorded at least one point in the Game 1 victory.
KINGS VITALS: After holding an optional practice yesterday, the Kings followed up with optional morning skate today. Would approximate around two thirds of the team hit the ice yesterday, while this morning was around half.
In goal, I’d expect that Darcy Kuemper will get the nod once again between the pipes, after he stopped 20 of the 25 shots he faced in the 6-5 win in Game 1, as he earned his 18th career playoff win. Kuemper has career save percentage in the postseason of .905, throughout his playoff career with Colorado, Arizona and Minnesota.
No formal line rushes today, with the optional skate, but here’s how the Kings lined up in Game 1 –
Tonight’s @LAKings Line Rushes –
Kuzmenko – Kopitar – KempeFoegele – Danault – MooreFiala – Byfield – Laferriere
Malott – Helenius – Turcotte
Anderson – DoughtyGavrikov – Spence
Edmundson – Clarke
Kuemper
Rittich
— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) April 22, 2025
No insight from this morning on any lineup changes, with Jim Hiller noting he “won’t discuss the lineup” this morning. So, to warmups we wait.
Should one be chosen, or required for one reason or another, forwards Trevor Lewis and Akil Thomas, as well as defensemen Kyle Burroughs and Jacob Moverare, would be available to check in for the Kings.
The Kings made one roster move, which will not impact the lineup tonight. Goaltender Carter George was recalled to be the third goaltender, while goaltender Pheonix Copley was reassigned to the AHL’s Ontario Reign, which potentially sets up Copley to start their playoff opener tomorrow evening, while giving George excellent experience around the NHL club.
OILERS VITALS: Edmonton practiced at Crypto.com Arena yesterday, where it also held a morning skate earlier on today.
Per Sportsnet’s Jack Michaels, here’s how the Oilers lined up during a full-team morning skate earlier today –
Game 2 lineup:
Draisaitl-McDavid-PerryKane-RNH-HymanFrederic-Henrique-Brown
Podkolzin-Janmark-Arvidsson
Nurse-BouchardWalman-Klingberg
Kulak-Emberson
Skinner @LouDeBrusk & @GenePrincipe join me on @Sportsnet tonight at 8pm MT. pic.twitter.com/Cobeovo6sG
— Jack Michaels (@EdmontonJack) April 23, 2025
Edmonton Head Coach Kris Knoblauch was undecided on his starting goaltender as of yesterday, but it looks as if goaltender Stuart Skinner will get the nod in Game 2, after he made 24 saves on 30 shots in the 6-5 Kings win.
Per Tony Brar of Oilers TV, defenseman John Klingberg and forward Evander Kane will play for Edmonton in tonight’s Game 2, with Klingberg entering on the blueline in place of Josh Brown and Kane checking in up front for Jeff Skinner, with other changes reflected above.
Storyline Of The Day – How Do You Take Your Coffee?
I’ve probably never seen a wider array of takes on a playoff win than the Kings in Game 1.
Ranging from full-blown excitement to anger in how the win was ultimately achieved, there was just about every range of emotion shown as the Kings won 6-5 to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
Here’s how I saw it unfold.
For most of Game 1, we saw the way the Kings can win this series. I thought the Kings controlled long stretches of Game 1 and looked very comfortable in the moment. We saw Game 1 dictated on their terms as opposed to Edmonton’s. We also saw what the best players in the world can do and that’s take a well-played game and turn it on its head. Connor McDavid had three primary assists and the game-tying goal. Despite the Kings as a team outplaying the Oilers as a team, McDavid showed why he can be a cheat code at times. In Game 1, the Kings overcame it.
If I look at the game from a Kings perspective, they certainly know they dodged one with that late rally, but in the biggest moment of the game, the shift after game became tied at five, the Kings didn’t look rattled. They went out and got the win. The focus in the Kings room between Games 1 and 2 has been substantially greater on how they played for the majority of the game, when they were the better team, than the final few minutes that went against them.
“We’re not making too big of a deal about what happened at the end, because we felt like, within inches, it could have been a much different ending, as far as the game could have been put away much earlier than that,” Hiller said this morning. “They made a couple good plays, we made a couple poor plays, it’s tight, we’ll deal with it, that’s hockey. There’s some things we thought we did really well and a couple things we think we can do better.”
The inches Hiller is talking about are the several empty nets the Kings missed. That close to being 6-3 and all of a sudden, it was 5-5. But don’t let that deviate away from why the Kings had a multi-goal lead in the first place. It felt like the Kings played Kings hockey, especially in the second period, and leading 4-0 was not by accident.
That’s why the focus is there heading into Game 2, as opposed to the ending.
“It’s just a simple game,” defenseman Joel Edmundson said of the second period specifically. “The forwards did a good job of taking away their speed, which made it easy on us defensemen. I thought we broke the puck out really well and everyone was on the same page. In the o-zone, we weren’t really turning pucks over, we were working them down low and trying to tire them out. That was a good, solid 20 minutes of hockey.”
Now, the ending did happen. It didn’t hurt the Kings, but it happened.
After the game, forward Kevin Fiala and Quinton Byfield spoke about a team like Edmonton never being out of a game, about the importance of clamping down.
Perhaps not as drastic as it was in Game 1, but things will get on the ropes for the Kings again, whether that’s tonight in Game 2 or moving forward in the series. That much is obvious in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s how the Kings respond to moments like that going forward that will define them. In Game 1, that time in the game happened and while the Kings certainly bent they did not break and they won the game. When tested again, it’s a group that feels like it has the right leaders and veterans to look at to get the job done.
“It’s kind of a cliche, but you look at the guys around you, you look at Kopi, you look at Drew, Phil and those guys that have been through it a lot, you look over at them and they’re not panicking at all,” forward Alex Laferriere added. “For me on the bench, you can feel like the world’s crashing down around you, but being able to look at those guys and see how confident they still are is pretty moving and it helps a lot.
3 To Watch For –
– Wrote yesterday HERE about the Kings power play, which scored twice in the Game 1 victory, exceeding last season’s total by……two.
Also important to note, though, that the Kings got the job in Game 1 on the penalty kill as well.
Step 1 there is not taking unnecessary penalties and on Monday, the Kings were only shorthanded twice. Even twice, though, is a challenge against an Edmonton power play that often makes two minutes feel like it’s actually four minutes.
“There’s no secret their power play is lethal, so we’re trying to stay out of the box,” Edmundson said. “I think last game, we were moving our feet and when you’re moving your feet, you’re not going to take those dumb stick penalties, you’re going through the body instead of using your stick. So, we’ve just got to keep doing that.”
When the two minor penalties did come, however, the Kings did a solid job on the kill of getting timely clears and getting through both Oilers PP’s unscathed.
“If it’s going to be zero goals against them, that’s would be great, but it’s not going to be perfect every time,” defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov said. “We try to be focus and dialed in. Obviously they have players who make good plays and we’ve got to try to eliminate that. So far, we did a good job.”
Gavrikov played three minutes and 20 seconds of the four total shorthanded minutes, leading the way for the Kings a man down. After allowing nearly two power-play goals per game last year in the postseason, the Kings were much better in that department on Monday.
As Gavrikov put it, though, it’s not going to be perfect every night. Between penalty totals rising in certain games to elite players making elite plays, Edmonton is likely going to score at some point on the man advantage. They are that good and they’ll get theirs. It’s just a matter of containing those totals better than the Kings have done over the last three series.
“Everyone knows that they’ve got a very good power play,” defenseman Mikey Anderson added. “They’ve got different plays, different guys that can burn you at different times. It’s no secret that we want to keep them off the ice if we can and when we do take them, just try and keep them out of the net.”
So far so good. But in the playoffs, it’s back to zero tonight and the Kings will have to meet the challenge once again.
– Sharing this quote here from Jim Hiller on how he approached the five players who played their first-ever playoff game on Monday. Perhaps Andrei Kuzmenko should be excluded from that group, because he’s an older player with lots of NHL and KHL experience and he certainly didn’t look like a playoff rookie, as he scored the series-opening goal and had three points in total. But looking at those players as a whole, here’s what Hiller said.
“I left them alone because I didn’t want to make it bigger than it was. They’ve done a really good job for us. It’s going to be another game, it’s going to be amped up, it’s going to be faster, maybe their teammates told them that. They didn’t play that much but they did get the experience, so now they know what it’s like. We all know the speed of the game is faster, the intensity, sometimes you make more of it in your own mind and you tighten yourself up, so it’s more mental than physical anyways. I would think that you all players will be maybe just a little bit more relaxed going into Game 2.”
Beyond Kuzmenko, that group also included less-experienced players like the fourth line of Alex Turcotte, Samuel Helenius and Jeff Malott, as well as defenseman Brandt Clarke. Clarke played more than the rest, but I liked Hiller’s approach.
Don’t get them overly thinking about something they don’t need to be. If the Kings keep that fourth line together, if they don’t make changes elsewhere in the lineup, then he’s expecting players even more prepared for the moment tonight.
– Lastly, another broadcast note here.
Important note tonight.
Game 2 locally will be on @FanDuelSN SoCal NOT West.
Game is also on TBS but if you want to listen to the Kings broadcast crew, make sure you have the right channel!! https://t.co/Oq7fjyQR8l
— Zach Dooley (@DooleyLAK) April 23, 2025
For those watching locally, tonight’s game will be broadcast on FanDuel Sports Network SoCal, NOT FanDuel Sports Network West. The game will also be shown on TBS with a national broadcast crew, but if you’d like to watch the Kings broadcast team, the game will be on the SoCal station, not the West station, so plan accordingly!
Kings and Oilers, Game 2. What an opportunity for the Kings to continue to show that things are a bit different. Puck drops at 7 PM in DTLA!
