LOS ANGELES -- After two games, the Los Angeles Kings held a commanding lead over the Edmonton Oilers in Round One and went to Edmonton looking like they could finally slay the dragon.
Three games later, the Kings are on the ropes and look like they're running on empty heading into a do-or-die game on Thursday.
Tuesday's 3-1 loss was one of the worst performances the Kings have posted at home this season, and had Darcy Kuemper not played an outstanding game, it could have been a much heavier loss in LA. The Kings were outshot 46-22, were out-chanced 35-12, and lost the high-danger chances battle 20-4.
It was utter domination from the Oilers, and gives the Kings a bleak outlook heading into Thursday's Game Six.
"They executed way better than us tonight," said Jim Hiller after the loss. "They were stronger; they beat us in every area of the game, except special teams, oddly enough. Goaltender was great for us, gave us a chance, they were just better, in every way. We can't look at one part of our game and think, 'that was acceptable,' it wasn't good enough."
It was a brutal, but accurate evaluation of the game from Hiller. The Kings lost this game in every zone and in every area of the game. The Kings have feasted on the rush in this series, but generated very little, and outside of a few looks, generated almost no chances.
Hiller has relied heavily on the top of his lineup in this series, making fatigue an obvious factor to point out, but as Hiller said, it's hard to blame fatigue when you start the game so poorly.
"If you think about right from the start, I could see if the game wore on, we could talk about that, but they had us from the start of the game, that's the bigger concern," said Hiller. "It didn't take us to get fatigued, right out of the gate, you're not fatigued, you shouldn't be anyway. So, maybe later in the game, we didn't generate enough; you can point to that. They were just better."
One area the Oilers have continued to take advantage of is net front battles. Outside of their top line with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, Edmonton has a very simple plan: get pucks into Kuemper's pads and win battles in front of the net and they've executed that plan well.
A big factor in Edmonton heavily outshooting the Kings is their willingness to throw pucks to the net, even if it isn't a Grade-A look, just to create chaos in front of Kuemper.
The Kings made it a point to get bigger and stronger last summer, but are still losing battles in key areas of the ice.
"They got to the inside, so we can't let them get inside," said Hiller when asked about dealing with Edmonton's play around the net. "So much of it was disorganization from us, we were overwhelmed, outnumbered at our net, when you're outnumbered and they're hungry, they're going to get banging on your pads. There's just so much, I can't explain it here. You can say it was a bad offensive game from us, but we're a solid checking team, that's where our game starts, and you can see it, if we just want to play a pure offensive game, it doesn't work."
The Kings will now head to Edmonton, facing elimination for the fourth-straight season against the Oilers, coming off their worst performance in months.
If nothing else, the Kings need to play harder in Game Six, win or lose, they can't go out and get dominated like they did in Game Five. The Kings can't go out with a whimper this season and a repeat performance on Thursday would be exactly that.
It's gut-check time for the Kings and we're going to find out if they have the mental toughness to survive.