Can the L.A. Kings Finally Get Their Revenge on the Oilers?
With a 2-0 series lead, the Kings are close to ending their historic playoff losing streak against Edmonton... but they're not out of the woods quite yet.
This time last year, I wrote about how little company the Los Angeles Kings had in potentially losing a playoff series to the Edmonton Oilers for a third consecutive season. In researching modern NHL history,1 I could only find 12 cases of a team having its season ended by the same playoff opponent in three straight years — something that did eventually end up happening, when Edmonton beat L.A. 4-1 in a series that was mostly more competitive than the 5-game result would suggest.2
Losing again and again in Round 1 of the playoffs is never easy, but losing so early to the same team three times in a row? That’s especially rough.
But despite the losses of goalie Cam Talbot and D-man Matt Roy (among others) — as part of an eventful offseason that also saw the additions of G Darcy Kuemper, ex-Oiler LW Warren Foegele and D Joel Edmundson — Los Angeles in 2024-25 won more games (48 versus 44), had more points (105 versus 99), posted a better goal differential (+0.54 GPG versus +0.50), ranked higher on both offense (14th versus 16th) and defense (2nd versus 3rd), and finished the regular season with a much better Elo rating (1554 versus 1535) than they had in 2023-24.
By all measures, it was a highly successful season in L.A. … until it became clear that the Pacific division standings would shake out to set up yet another Kings-Oilers playoff matchup in Round 1. The NHL’s playoff format, in addition to being vaguely annoying, can have a cruel sense of humor sometimes.
Sure, the Oilers had fewer points and a worse goal differential than Los Angeles during the regular season. Did the Vegas oddsmakers care? No. (FanDuel listed Edmonton as a -138 favorite to win the series.) And it was understandable: L.A. had been led by a great season from Kuemper, the journeyman goalie — can’t trust ‘em in the playoffs! — who’d been below replacement level last season, plus an ensemble of solid players (Adrian Kempe; Kevin Fiala; Anže Kopitar) but not stars. The Oilers, meanwhile, had Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, among other bigger names.
So, barring something unexpected, the Kings were staring at making even more unfortunate playoff history. After refining my searches some from last year,3 here’s a list of every case in the “Big Four” North American men’s pro leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) where a team had a streak of 4+ postseasons facing the same team, and had lost each of the first three matchups:
As we can see, the Kings are only the 11th team to find themselves in this situation as it is, after tossing out our cases from last year where the three-year losing streaks were either preceded by a win against the same opponent, or a fourth straight installment of the rivalry never materialized.
Of the previous 10, six found redemption by ending the losing skid at three years, a group that includes such memorable teams as the Michael Jordan Bulls (who swept the Bad Boy Pistons en route to their first title), the Patrick Ewing Knicks (who outlasted the post-MJ Bulls to make the ‘94 Finals) and the Steve Young-to-Terrell Owens 49ers (who finally beat the Packers in the playoffs on the fourth try).
But a quartet of teams somehow let their streaks reach four straight losses to the same playoff opponent. And incredibly, two of those matchups involved the Boston Bruins losing in four straight years to the Montreal Canadiens, more than 30 years apart!
The 1952-1955 Bruins’ streak was only interrupted by missing the playoffs in 1955-56, and then they were back at with two more losses to Montreal in 1957 and 1958. (Mercifully, they lost to a different Canadian team, the Maple Leafs, in 1959.) Then, Boston faced Montreal in an unbelievable nine consecutive postseasons from 1984-1992, losing the first four of those series before finally winning one in 1988 en route to a Stanley Cup Final loss against — who else? — the Edmonton Oilers. Boston would then lose again to Montreal the following spring, but beat them each of the next three playoffs to round out the streak of matchups.
The Kings currently have a choice: Join Team Redemption or go out sad yet again versus McDavid and friends. And thus far, they seem to be picking the good ending rather than the bad one. After very nearly blowing a 4-0 second-period lead to the Oilers in Game 1 — which would have actually called back to the historic 5-0 lead Wayne Gretzky’s Oilers blew against these very Kings in Game 3 of their 1982 series4 — the Kings survived to take a 1-0 lead, then blitzed Edmonton 6-2 in Game 2 behind a pair of 4-point games from Kempe and Kopitar. In the series so far, Kempe has three times as many goals as McDavid and nearly twice as many points.
It ain’t over yet. McDavid, Draisaitl and D Evan Bouchard — who combined for an eye-popping 105 total points in 25 playoff games during last spring’s Stanley Cup Final run — will not go down without a fight. But as things shift to Edmonton for Game 3 tonight, the Kings are in control of the series if they want to change the fate of this rivalry. According to my NHL Elo forecast, L.A. has an 80 percent chance to put the Oilers away and end the streak at three straight postseason losses to the same opponent, not four.
If that happens, they would etch their names on our list above alongside those iconic Bulls, Knicks and 49ers. But if not, it will be the biggest gut-punch yet in a matchup that would begin to feel less like a recurring quirk of the NHL playoff system, and more like a curse.
Filed under: NHL
Since the end of the Original Six era in 1967.
Aside from lopsided Oiler wins in Games 1 and 3, the other three contests were decided by 1 goal apiece.
Specifically, I tossed out cases of 4+ straight losses to the same team if they were preceded by a win against the same team. So for instance, it’s somewhat against the spirit of the Kings’ situation to include cases like the 1998-2001 Edmonton Oilers versus the Dallas Stars, as the Oilers had actually beaten the Stars in a memorable upset the year before that losing streak began:
Which, remarkably, saw the heavily favored, high-flying Oilers — Gretzky scored an all-time record 92 goals that season — lose in 5 games to be eliminated from the playoffs.