Direct, dominant Oilers storm Kings' crease to set up closeout Game 6

LOS ANGELES–There was only one way forward for the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday night: straight ahead, to the net, no brakes.

Time after time, the Oilers drove the Los Angeles Kings’ crease in wave after wave, shot after shot, rebound after rebound, crowding Darcy Kuemper and jamming at the LA netminder’s pads.

Kuemper was stellar from puck drop to final buzzer, but the Oilers’ remained relentless to drill through the Kings in Game 5, 3-1, and take a 3-2 series back to Canada with a chance to close it out at home on Thursday.

“We wanted to play pedal-on-the-gas type hockey. We did that from the get-go,” Oilers forward Evander Kane said. “You look at their record here at home, tough the team they are at home. Knowing we have to eventually win a game here, if we want to win this series, I thought we had a nice simple mindset, we got pucks and people to the net.

“We stayed in the fight, we didn't get frustrated, even though they scored first and we're outplaying them, we keep doing what we're supposed to be doing. Eventually you get rewarded.”

Edmonton recorded the first 10 shots of the game and dominated the shot clock throughout the game–19-4 after one period, 33-12 after two periods and 46-22 for the game. The Oilers earned a staggering 85% of the five-on-five expected goals through two periods and only slid back to 79% for the game after holding onto the lead late.

“They were just better in every way,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “We can’t look to one part of our game and think that that was acceptable or that was good enough.”

When the Oilers stepped on the ice for Game 5, it was almost as if they never came off the ice for Game 4, where Edmonton flooded the Kings zone over the third period and overtime with a 33-13 shot advantage in those two periods for a multi-goal comeback overtime win.

“Right from the puck drop, we wanted to be desperate like the third period and overtime last game, and we did for 60 minutes,” Oilers goalie Calvin Pickard said. “It was one of those games where you could get away from it because it wasn't going in the net. Credit to their goalie. He played fantastic, but we didn’t stray away from the game plan and got rewarded for it.”

Even when the Kings scored on the power play–hardly a surprise in this series–to grab the one-goal lead against the lopsided run of play, the Oilers remained undeterred and continued to charge the puck into the blue paint.

The chaos around the net led to a chance for Kane to rifle in the game-tying score from the high slot. Kane has scored the game-tying marker in two of the last three games after missing 10 months due to various surgeries stemming from last season’s Stanley Cup Final run.

“He was making a home in the crease tonight,” Pickard said, “and a couple of big goals–obviously, the (tying) goal in Game 3, who knows what would’ve happened if that doesn’t go in, and then obviously tonight after they score to get that one back, he’s been fantastic and a huge addition.”

LA was never able to gain a foothold in the game, as the Oilers continued to beat the Kings to every puck and to the net front.

“They got on the inside,” Hiller said. “We can’t let them get on the inside. So much of it was disorganized from us that we were overwhelmed. We were outnumbered at our net–that doesn’t usually happen.”

The Kings have gone from completely dictating the tone of the series with four consecutive third period leads in the first four games, to handing the Oilers momentum by sitting back late in Games 3 and 4, and now, Los Angeles sits on the brink of elimination, threatened to be sent home by Edmonton for a fourth consecutive season.

“I think everyone was just ready for the challenge,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said, “coming into this building, playing against a good team, but also that we kind of challenged every line to bring something tonight. And there's no line that we're hiding, we can have our fourth line fight against the other team’s top line. We feel very confident with that. Doing that, we don’t have to worry about match-ups. We can just roll our lines.”

Edmonton has been good about eliminating the Kings, and most teams in the Western Conference, at every available opportunity.

Heading into a potential series-ending Game 6, the Oilers are 3-0 in closeout games against Los Angeles in the last three seasons, and have won six straight closeout games against Western Conference opponents. Edmonton’s only closeout-game loss in the last three seasons was Game 7 of last season’s Stanley Cup Final.

“Obviously, when you have a team down, you want to put them away,” Kane said. “You don't want to give them life, and that's going to be our mindset going into Game 6.”