The Los Angeles Kings will have plenty of time to dissect this series with the Edmonton Oilers and what went right and what went wrong. There was certainly more that went right compared to prior series, but it still wasn't enough to get past the Oilers and for the fourth straight season, Edmonton is advancing and the Kings are going home.
One of the things that will be questioned is Jim Hiller's management of the lineup, both before games and during the games. Over the course of the series, Hiller seemed to lean too much on the veterans and older players, which would cost them later in the game as these players looked to run out of gas.
Jordan Spence was one of those players that seemed to be on the wrong side of these decisions as was a healthy scratch in Game 4 in place of Jacob Moverare. When he was active, he didn't really see much ice time as he had 10 minutes or fewer of ice time in the first four games he played.
Brandt Clarke also saw significantly less ice time going from an average of 16:17 during the regular season to only 12:47 in this series.
It wasn't only the defense as the fourth line among the forwards were almost non-factors as Samuel Helenius, Jeff Malott, Alex Turcotte and Trevor Lewis all were under an average of six minutes. The fact that Lewis would replace Turcotte in two of these games also speaks to a problem of Hiller leaning too much on the veterans.
Jim Hiller's response to questions about lineup decisions is telling and a problem for the LA Kings
After the Kings Game 6 loss, Jim Hiller was asked if he had any regrets to how he was deploying certain players and he had a simple one word answer of "No", according to Zach Dooley of LA Kings Insider.
The response itself is surprising but not necessarily when looking back at the season as a whole. There is no question that at times some of these younger players had much shorter leases and Hiller was quick to cut their time or remove them from the lineup entirely.
A perfect example of this was when Drew Doughty returned from his injury at the end of January and Brandt Clarke was a healthy scratch for a number of games. Unfortunately, these decisions were only magnified in this series.
In the end, there is no guarantee that playing Jordan Spence, Brandt Clarke, or Alex Turcotte more would have changed the outcome of this series. However, with how the Kings finished almost every game in this series and looking slower in the third period, it certainly could have helped to play the younger players more.