After winning the first two games of the series, the Los Angeles Kings saw the Edmonton Oilers take control to win the next three that had the Kings facing an elimination game on Thursday night. Even with the Oilers winning the last three games, the Kings were really in all of those games and if one or two things went their way it could have been Los Angeles knocking out Edmonton.
This game felt similar in that the Kings would jump out to an early lead with Quinton Byfield scoring the first goal of the game just over a minute into the first period. However, early in the game the Oilers would be able to answer shortly after with Adam Henrique scoring less than two minutes after.
Brandt Clarke would get the lead back shortly after that goal but the Oilers capitalized on a power play to tie before Zach Hyman gave the Oilers the lead for good before the end of the first period. In fact starting with the power play goal the Oilers would score four straight goals to take a commanding lead.
Los Angeles Kings left searching for answers after Game 6
After the game, the Kings seemed to struggle with answering why they couldn't get past Edmonton. Adrian Kempe had this to say if this was the hardest of the four series to take for him:
"Yeah, I think so. I mean, most recently too, for sure, but I think this year……previous two seasons, two playoff series, I feel like we weren’t maybe close enough to be as good as they were. This series felt like, besides the last home game we had, it felt like we were the better team. "
Meanwhile Jim Hiller had this to say if he felt this was a missed opportunity:
"100 percent. It’s a missed opportunity. It’s very clear. Yeah, it’s a missed opportunity for us. Especially we had a great buy in from our players. We believe we could have won the series. We believe we should have won the series. We didn’t."
For any fans watching, they would agree that the Kings looked like the better team a majority of the time. However, they struggled in the third period which is critical and the Oilers to their credit capitalized to take this series.
It will be a long offseason for the Los Angeles Kings with no clear direction on how they should move forward to set this team up in a position to advance in the playoffs.