The L.A. Kings’ Potential Misery Has Some Company — But Not Much
The Kings are trying desperately not to join an exclusive club of teams who lost to the same opponent in three straight postseasons.
The Los Angeles Kings must have had mixed emotions when the 2024 NHL playoff seedings shook out to pair them up with the Edmonton Oilers in Round 1.
On the one hand, it was a chance for redemption — and revenge — against an opponent who’d beaten them in each of the previous two postseasons. On other hand, it feels like a Sisyphean task: Try to beat Connor McDavid, fail, regroup, try and fail again.
That sense became even greater in Monday night’s 7-4 loss to fall behind 1-0 in this year’s series. The Oilers scored twice in the first period, then started the second with two more to take a 4-0 lead (with McDavid setting up three of the four goals). Then, after the Kings sliced that lead in half heading into the second intermission, McDavid set up two more quick goals to cement a 6-2 lead that ended up being insurmountable. After ranking third on defense during the regular season, L.A. had just allowed seven goals in a playoff game for only the fifth time this century.
If the Kings do end up falling to the Oilers for a third consecutive year — and right now, there’s about a 70 percent chance they do, according to my Hockey-Reference style SRS simulator I rigged up1 — they’d have what is perhaps a surprising amount of company in NHL history among teams who lost to the same opponent in three straight playoffs. Since the Original Six era ended in 1967-68, there have been 12 teams whose season ended against the same team for at least three consecutive years:
2013-15 Minnesota Wild (lost to Chicago Blackhawks)
2000-02 Ottawa Senators (lost to Toronto Maple Leafs)2
1998-2001 Edmonton Oilers (lost to Dallas Stars)*
1996-98 St. Louis Blues (lost to Detroit Red Wings)
1990-92 Los Angeles Kings (lost to Edmonton Oilers)
1990-92 Montreal Canadiens (lost to Boston Bruins)
1984-87 Boston Bruins (lost to Montreal Canadiens)*
1983-85 Winnipeg Jets (lost to Edmonton Oilers)
1983-85 Washington Capitals (lost to New York Islanders)
1981-84 New York Rangers (lost to New York Islanders)*
1977-79 Boston Bruins (lost to Montreal Canadiens)
1975-77 Toronto Maple Leafs (lost to Philadelphia Flyers)
(* Lost four straight years.)
Incredibly, this wouldn’t even mark the first time the Kings lost to the Oilers three straight years, as it happened before to Wayne Gretzky and the Kings against his former club in 1990, ‘91 and ‘92.
This phenomenon is quite a bit rarer in MLB and the NFL — those leagues have only seen four total cases of a team losing to the same opponent three straight seasons in their entire histories!
NFL: 1995-97 San Francisco 49ers (lost to Green Bay Packers)
NFL: 1993-95 Green Bay Packers (lost to Dallas Cowboys)
NFL: 1970-72 San Francisco 49ers (lost to Dallas Cowboys)
MLB: 1976-78 Kansas City Royals (lost to New York Yankees)
There were some near misses. For instance, the current Buffalo Bills have lost to the Kansas City Chiefs three times in four seasons, while the Texas Rangers lost to the Yankees three times in four seasons from 1996-99.
But the leagues where a larger share of teams make the playoffs seem to make it easier for these types of situations to emerge. Just like the NHL, the NBA has produced a number of these lopsided playoff rivalries over the years since the ABA merger:
2016-18 Toronto Raptors (lost to Cleveland Cavaliers)
2012-14 Indiana Pacers (lost to Miami Heat)
2008-10 Utah Jazz (lost to L.A. Lakers)
2006-08 Washington Wizards (lost to Cleveland Cavaliers)
2000-02 Portland Trail Blazers (lost to L.A. Lakers)
2000-02 Sacramento Kings (lost to L.A. Lakers)
1998-2000 Miami Heat (lost to New York Knicks)
1992-94 Cleveland Cavaliers (lost to Chicago Bulls)
1991-93 New York Knicks (lost to Chicago Bulls)
1988-90 Chicago Bulls (lost to Detroit Pistons)
1981-83 Milwaukee Bucks (lost to Philadelphia 76ers)
The NBA also lends itself especially to these kinds of “graveyards” in the wake of a singular star, whether it’s LeBron James or Michael Jordan — when the championship usually goes through that guy each year, there are going to be teams littered along the side of the road who just can’t make it past him, year in and year out.
It’s still early in this Kings-Oilers series, but McDavid may be that guy for L.A. Try as they might, the Kings haven’t been able to solve him or the Oilers in the playoffs — and that just might be the fate they’ve been assigned to by the hockey gods.
Filed under: NHL
Which I had to create as part of my composite odds tracker, since for some reason H-R (whom I love dearly, don’t get me wrong) won’t keep its SRS-based playoff odds updating throughout the playoffs.
It’s amazing to think of a situation where the Leafs had someone else’s number in the playoffs!