
Indeed, of all the potential first round match-ups, Todd McLellan’s Los Angeles Kings and Jay Woodcroft’s Edmonton Oilers is now the most secure of potential match-ups
Content item
If the Stanley Cup playoffs were to begin April 1 instead of May 1, the two teams that play Wednesday at Rogers Place would meet in the first round.
Advertisement 2
Content item
Indeed, of all the potential first round match-ups, Todd McLellan’s Los Angeles Kings and Jay Woodcroft’s Edmonton Oilers is now the most secure of potential match-ups.
More secure than Toronto-Tampa.
More secure than Pittsburgh-NY Rangers.
More secure than Minnesota-Nashville.
More secure than any division leader-wildcard match-up.
To Edmonton fans that probably doesn’t seem quite right considering the turbulent trip the Oilers have had through the 82-game regular season so far and the debacle Saturday night down in Calgary.
But after the Oilers put the major mess they made in losing 9-5 in Calgary behind them with their seventh straight win at home, a 6-1 win over the Arizona Coyotes Monday it was fast forward to the to Wednesday’s playoff preview. And considering what happened to the Kings at home Monday, it even faster forward for them.
Advertisement 3
Content item
The coaching angle of Woodcroft versus his mentor Todd McLellan, who hired him as an assistant to take him from Detroit to San Jose to Edmonton was dealt with when the two went against each other in Woodcroft’s third game as an NHL head coach, a 5- 2 win in Los Angeles on Feb. 15.
But the angle was back midway through Woodcroft’s post-game media conference Monday while the Kings were still on the ice in the third period of what also turned out to be a 6-1 result against the expansion Seattle Kraken.
It was McLellan’s 1,000th game as a head coach in the NHL that was soiled and spoiled by the lopsided loss that will have to challenge his team to deal with the same sort of self-examination and evaluation as the Oilers did coming out of Calgary.
Advertisement 4
Content item
The Kings produced a scoreboard video featuring comment from Connor McDavid and Woodcroft on the former Oilers coach fired by Peter Chiarelli becoming only the 31st NHL coach to accomplish the feat.
“I definitely learned a lot from you my first couple of years in Edmonton and I’m so grateful for that,” said McDavid in the pre-game video in LA
“Todd is somebody that has had a profound impact on me, not just as a young coach but as a young person. He taught me a lot of things by the simple eloquence of his example,” Woodcroft said in Edmonton post game.
“I think there’s only 31 people who have achieved that and there’s a reason he got to coach that many games.”
In LA after the defeat McLellan was succinct.
“We have a tough task at hand,” he said.
Advertisement 5
Content item
“It’s not about my memories or what I liked or didn’t like there. It’s about fixing what we did wrong today and about playing better there because we’re going to have to.”
Woodcroft’s Oilers had a day off and a return to practice in Edmonton and a game against the team sitting 32nd overall in the standings to deal with the humbling, humiliating defeat in Calgary.
McLellan had to fly to Canada for back-to-back games against Edmonton and Calgary.
Woodcroft was eloquent in discussing the Oilers bounce back performance.
“Nobody was happy with the result the other night. We had a day off to think about it and stew about it and this morning we had some hard meetings.
“The players were challenged and they responded. Full credit to our players for honestly looking at their own games personally, our team game and come up with a recipe that is going to serve us well down the stretch here. We charged ourselves with seeing things clearly, not sweeping anything under the rug and being direct. At the end of the day they were the ones who responded and who should be feeling good about themselves.”
Advertisement 6
Content item
The Oilers win and Kings defeat left Los Angeles with 81 points and Edmonton with 79 with a game in hand.
The go-to computerized website Sports Club Stats that statistically projects playoff chances at the end of the evening had Calgary listed at 100 percent, Edmonton at 82.3 and Los Angeles at 82.3 with a big drop off to Vegas to 40.8 and Vancouver to 12.4.
With 14-games to go, the Kings after the two in Alberta, have away games in Winnipeg, Minnesota, Chicago, Colorado, Anaheim, Seattle and Vancouver. Remaining on their home schedule are Edmonton, Calgary, Columbus, Chicago and Anaheim.
Edmonton heads into April with home games remaining against St. Louis, Vegas, Anaheim, San Jose, Vancouver and two against Colorado with away games remaining in Anaheim, San Jose, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Nashville, Columbus and Pittsburgh.
You may not wish to dismiss Vegas because of Sports Club Stats percentages. Edmonton had a three-point lead on Vegas with a game in hand going into Wednesday night’s late game.
But after Monday’s games, to those who have followed the computerized Sports Club Stats performance down the stretch in baseball, basketball and football over the years, Edmonton and LA are playing to decide home ice advantage in that first round playoff series.