EDMONTON – Drew Doughty was seething. For two consecutive days.
His team’s performance in the first match was completely unacceptable. The Los Angeles Kings’ number one defenseman has ruminated and ruminated about it.
They weren’t going to get chased off the ice again.
“It was huge,” Doughty said Athleticism after his team’s 5-4 overtime victory Wednesday night to even their series 1-1 with the favored Edmonton Oilers. “It was so good. It was a little, I don’t know if “embarrassing” is the right word, but disappointing in the first match, to get smoked like that and get dominated. It was hard.
“We all took it home with us. Many of us were still talking about it the next day and even this morning. We were determined to come out and play a better game. From the faceoff, we were a much better team. Everyone contributed tonight. It was a team victory.
Doughty led all skaters with 29:07 minutes of ice time in the game. No one else was even close. And it was, as always, tough minutes, mostly coming against Oilers superstar Connor McDavid, as well as big minutes on both special teams.
Doughty took a pretty hard hit from Evander Kane in the second period, but didn’t miss a beat. When he came to chat for our post-match interview, he admitted: “I need to sit down. »
He could finally breathe a little.
There’s a playoff warrior in Doughty who wasn’t going to allow his team to get motivated again. It was a good old fashioned kick in the ass in the first game. The score was 7-4, but it was really tilted when the game counted. And the Kings knew it.
They didn’t practice on off days between games. They watched the video. Talk about a horror movie. Rushed chance after rushed chance for the Oilers in Game 1.
And while Wednesday night wasn’t a low-scoring game, the Kings’ 1-3-1 system proved far more effective in slowing down the Oilers’ dangerous playmakers, limiting chances and keeping them in contention. match.
This is the recipe if the Kings want to upset the Oilers in this series. The big guns of the Oilers will find the back of the net. The Kings will have to limit the damage and frustrate the Oilers stars as much as possible.
At the heart of Wednesday night’s victory was Doughty, 34, who scored a goal late in the first period and seemingly on the ice every second shift of the game.
DREW SAID 🤫 pic.twitter.com/e3ZvzvZYrf
– x – Los Angeles Kings (@LAKings) April 25, 2024
The two-time Stanley Cup champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist was created for this time of year.
“He’s definitely an important player,” Kings head coach Jim Hiller said when I asked him to describe Doughty’s impact on a night like this. “You know his story. You know Stanley Cups. You know the gold medals.
“He’s just a guy you win with.” Anyone who’s ever played with him on all these teams knows Drew, if it’s a big game he’ll be there. The organization is lucky to have had him this long and still be able to play at the level he plays.
Darryl Sutter, Doughty’s coach for those two Cup teams, added via text message Thursday morning: “He loves the competition on the ice against the best forwards.” It’s hard to believe that in many ways he’s still underrated in terms of defensive quality. In the 1-3-1, he is usually the D in the rush/battle – first to get the puck too, which has detrimental consequences. But like last night, he loves it. His desire to excel and win is in the same category as Chris Chelios when we were together in Chicago.
What really gets Doughty out of bed after 16 seasons into what will surely be a Hockey Hall of Fame career is this time of year. He patiently waited for the Kings to rebuild. OK, maybe not always SO patiently. It drove him crazy when the team was in its most difficult years, changing the roster. But he stayed because he thought they could return to Cup competition.
What’s easy to forget is that the Kings got off to such a good start in the fall that some people considered them a Stanley Cup threat, including several on Athleticismthe staff. This was a team that could potentially compete with elite contenders.
But after a six-week slump, the firing of head coach Todd McLellan and, well, the final weeks of the season weren’t very consistent either, they entered the playoffs as a point of questioning. It was hard to say which version of the Kings we would see against the Oilers.
So you can forgive Oilers fans for feeling like they caught a break when the final night of the regular season saw the Kings win and the Vegas Golden Knights lose, meaning the defending champions of the Stanley Cup were off to face Dallas, the No. 1 seed. Stars while Los Angeles once again found Edmonton as their first-round dance partner.
Don’t think the Kings players didn’t feel that way. Well, to be honest, they made the story even worse by falling face down so badly in the first game.
But if there’s one statement in Wednesday night’s win, it’s that the Kings have no intention of becoming a minor speed bump for the favored Oilers.
“No, no, we never believed that,” Doughty said with conviction. “A lot of people got away with it that way. We’re going to lose in five. We’re going to get swept away. Whatever.
“But we have a good team here, man. We fight hard, we play both ways and we believe in ourselves. That’s the most important thing going into the playoffs, is believing in yourself and each other. You can say we’re the underdogs, but we don’t feel like underdogs.
file it under “gifs you can hear” pic.twitter.com/rcK7c9WfWG
– x – Los Angeles Kings (@LAKings) April 25, 2024
And it goes without saying that in Doughty and Game 2 overtime hero Anze Kopitar there is Cup-winning leadership that offers the experience and know-how that can calm a team down in an imposing atmosphere like that of Rogers Place in Edmonton. And the Kings showed resilience as the Oilers came back to tie the game twice Wednesday night to force overtime.
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But beyond that obvious championship experience from Doughty and Kopitar, this Kings team is now in its third straight playoff series with the Oilers. The younger players on their team developed their own playoff scars.
“Exactly,” Doughty said. “You always hear people say that you have to learn to lose before you can learn to win. We experienced this before winning our Cups. We lost to Vancouver in the first round (in 2010). This is how we learned.
“So these guys here are learning what it takes. I think that happened tonight. This is a massive victory. Coming home 1-1 against 2-0 is huge.
Huge because, for Doughty, while the Oilers are always a tough team to play against, they are particularly dangerous at home.
“I don’t want to say they’re a different team at home, but they’re buzzing a lot more at home than on the road,” Doughty said. “I think it’s a huge win.”
(Photo: Codie McLachlan/Getty Images)