Oilers unable to get past Forsberg, Kings despite ‘a solid effort everywhere’

You don’t always get rewarded, no matter how well you play. And sometimes, when Los Angeles is playing peak Kings hockey, you don’t get rewarded with even a single goal, despite nine high danger chances (at least) around the Kings net.

The Edmonton Oilers didn’t play their best game of the season Saturday in Los Angeles, but they’ve darned sure played worse and won games this season. Regardless, the Kings scored 7:34 into the game and defended their way to the finish line in a 1-0 win.

It was vintage Kings hockey: as low event as they could keep it; get an early lead and counter-punch the rest of the way. It’s the style of game that has made the Kings successful in recent regular seasons, but the style that Edmonton consistently finds a way to overcome when the chips are down in a playoff series.

“I thought we played hard,” said Adam Henrique, who had a team-high four shots on net. “It was a solid game throughout — top to bottom. Everybody was in there, contributing, getting chances… We just couldn’t find a way to get one.”

A Kings team that’s in a desperate fight for the final playoff berth out West did what they do best, and no one has had a front row seat to Kings hockey at important times of the year than these Oilers. They’ve proven to have the secret sauce, dispatching the Kings in the opening round of the playoffs for four consecutive springs, but in regular-season game No. 80 for Edmonton, they never found a way to get one over the line on goalie Anton Forsberg, who was excellent.

In Anze Kopitar’s final regular-season game at home, the same heavy defensive style that produced two Stanley Cups in Kopitar’s heyday eked out one more win for the great Slovenian, who addressed the home crowd post-game.

“From the bottom of my heart. This has been my home for 20 years. Thank you for being here for us,” the Kings captain said, his voice cracking.

“I don’t really remember the last time we had a three-game winning streak,” he told the media after the game. “More importantly, the belief in this locker room has spiked, which is a very good thing.”

The final scrum of the game had not even ended when Connor McDavid — perhaps playing his last-ever game against Kopitar — was patting him on the shoulder and voicing his respects. The two had an epic faceoff battle late in the game, with McDavid winning a couple, then Kopitar digging in and winning the next two key defensive draws against Edmonton’s captain, with goalie Connor Ingram on the bench.

When it was done, the Kings put themselves into an excellent position to hold on to a wild-card spot, or perhaps even jump into the top three in the Pacific. L.A. has three games left, all on the road at Seattle, Vancouver and Calgary — six possible points that could very well leave them matched up with Edmonton for the fifth straight season, should the hockey gods see fit.

The Oilers needed a single point to clinch a playoff spot, and failed on that count Saturday. But they’re playing excellent hockey, both defensively and offensively, and did so Saturday minus injured forwards Leon Draisaitl, Zach Hyman and Jason Dickinson.

The Oilers scored 10 goals in the opening two games of this 1-1-1 road trip, and allowed just three goals and 35 shots on goal over their last 120 minutes of hockey. They gave up just 21 Kings shots, but on a night where the Oilers were missing their top two goal scorers and third-line centre, they just couldn’t muster any offence.

“It’s just that next game. We go home, we prepare,” said Henrique, whose Oilers close out the season with home games against Colorado and Vancouver. “We’ve got two (games) left. Got to find a way to put both those in the bank.

“An effort like that throughout is needed, and we’ll find a way to score. I thought it was a solid effort everywhere.”

If you’re searching for positives, with the playoffs on the horizon, coming into the building of a team that absolutely had to have this game and limiting them to 21 shots on goal bodes well. Play this game with Draisaitl and Hyman in your lineup, and at worst, it gets into overtime.

“We did a lot of good things,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “We did make some mistakes, and (Connor) Ingram played really well. I thought we had enough scoring chances to certainly get more than one goal tonight. Their goalie played well, and we missed some really good opportunities.”

Having Ingram between the pipes was a sigh of relief for Oilers fans after he left Wednesday’s game in San Jose with an apparent injury. He made a couple of circus stops near the end of Period 2 to hold his team in the game, and was beaten only on an Artemi Panarin breakaway that came off an Evan Bouchard giveaway at the offensive blue line.

Another Oiler went down; however, when Max Jones left the game after an early body check he threw at a King. He did not return, and Knoblauch had no update post-game.