Kings’ Todd McLellan knows Connor McDavid, Oilers face ‘completely different’ level of pressure

LOS ANGELES — The longer their first-round playoff series has gone, the lower the sword of Damocles has dangled above the heads of the Edmonton Oilers, who faced elimination against the Kings on Thursday night at Staples Center.

Few prognosticators picked the Kings to make the playoffs entering the season. Even after a successful campaign, the Kings were given less than a one-in-three chance of winning this best-of-seven series by prominent prediction models.

Conversely, Edmonton has had something of an embarrassment of riches with arguably the two best players in the world on its roster. The Oilers also play in a hockey-frenzied region with mementos of perhaps the most magnificent dynasty of the expansion era stalking them on their path.

Oh, and a Canadian franchise hasn’t lifted the Stanley Cup since 1993.

Kings coach Todd McLellan, who guided the Oilers from 2015 to 2018, has eschewed notions of the Kings “playing with house money” and reiterated that there is “internal pressure” on the Kings. He acknowledged, however, that Edmonton was dealing with a completely different and much more intense set of exigencies.

“Maybe I’m the only one who can speak to this, because I’ve lived their bench and now I’m living our bench. It’s completely different,” McLellan said. “Our pressure is what we put on ourselves. Their pressure is enormous: throughout Oil Country, throughout Canada, the superstars, the media pressure, where they’ve been and what they want to do.”

McDavid answered the bell early in Game 6 – in which a victory would only create an even more demanding Game 7 situation at home – with the first period’s lone goal. But he was even more prolific in the third period of Game 5, scoring a goal and setting up a late equalizer, only to see his team falter early in overtime.

That was apropos, as much of the discourse around Edmonton has centered on how to toughen, deepen and otherwise strengthen the supporting cast around the Oilers’ two stars. They added free-agent winger Zach Hyman and traded for defenseman Duncan Keith, a three-time Stanley Cup winner with Chicago, last summer. Hyman had a three-point Game 3 and an assist in Game 5. Keith surrendered an own goal in Game 4 and was scorched by Adrian Kempe for the clinching overtime goal in Game 5.

The Oilers have also had three different general managers and four different head coaches across the seven seasons of McDavid’s career. All that upheaval has occurred while he has managed to overshadow Draisaitl, an MVP in his own right and the face of German hockey, in addition to drawing the loftiest of comparisons.

McDavid has elicited comparisons to some of the greatest hockey players and athletes of all-time. They include Oilers and Kings great Wayne Gretzky, who captained the Oilers to four of the five Stanley Cups they won between 1984 and 1990; Bobby Orr, McDavid’s mentor and perhaps the greatest defenseman ever; Sidney Crosby, who was the previous generation’s wunderkind and an example for McDavid; and even luminaries of other sports such as baseball’s Mike Trout and basketball’s LeBron James.

McDavid posted a staggering 105 points in last year’s truncated 56-game season. But that fell short of the pace of Gretzky’s single-season records of 92 goals and 215 points, achieved in two different full campaigns during his career in Edmonton. His collection of individual achievements – two Hart trophies, three Lindsay awards, four Art Ross trophies and counting – rivals that of any player in any sport, especially at just 25 years old. But he has yet to capture the most coveted piece of metal in the game, the Stanley Cup.

“If you’re going to make the comparison of LeBron James to me, I think we’re obviously a little bit different,” McDavid told The New York Times earlier this season. “He’s won countless titles and been to the Finals a bunch of years and I haven’t done any of that.”

NO MORE MYSTERY

After five games and several adjustments, McLellan and Edmonton coach Jay Woodcroft, whom McLellan mentored earlier in their careers, were probably out of tweaks and twists.

“It’s a bit of a chess match earlier in the series, but then you use up all of your chess moves and there aren’t a lot of surprises,” McLellan said.

Another enigma that has come into clearer focus has been the status of winger Viktor Arvidsson. Prior to Game 1, McLellan suggested he had no injury at all. Over the course of the series, his prognosis grew increasingly grim. On Thursday, he was ruled out of Game 6 and a potential Game 7, officially.

While the series had seen the Kings win three of five games but lose two others by a 14-2 margin, distorting statistical measures of play, there have been some clear, common threads. The Kings have had fast starts in almost every game and the Oilers have dominated the special-teams battle, scoring nine goals to the Kings’ two between power-play and short-handed situations.

Alex Edler, the Kings’ most experienced defenseman and third-oldest player, said the Kings’ fate came down to preparedness and commitment.

“We’ve just got to be ready to execute our game,” he said. “Be sharp, be alert every time we step on the ice, always know who is out there against you. We have to make sure that we play our game and that our intensity level is up.”

NURSE OUT, RUSSELL IN

Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse comes from a very athletic family, to say the least.

His father Richard played professional football in Canada, his mother Cathy was a college basketball player, his uncle, Donovan McNabb, was a Pro Bowl quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles, his sister Kia plies her trade for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and his cousin Sarah won an Olympic gold medal in ice hockey earlier this year.

Nurse competed in many different sports growing up but one that might have eluded his grasp was professional wrestling. Not in Game 5 though, when his head-butt of Phillip Danault earned the Oilers’ No. 1 defenseman a one-game suspension.

Skating in his stead on Thursday was Kris Russell. McLellan coached both players in Edmonton and has called Russell the best shot-blocker he ever saw. The numbers support McLellan’s take: Russell is the leading shot-blocker in NHL history, though the stat has only been tabulated officially since 2005-06.