Oilers Game 5 Notebook: Doughty dazzled by Edmonton's depth

EDMONTON — Over the years, there has been no more qualified voice than Drew Doughty’s when it comes to evaluating Connor McDavid.

A Stanley Cup winner and an Olympic gold medalist, Doughty has had the McDavid matchup ever since the kid arrived in L.A.’s division back in 2015.

Today, McDavid and his Edmonton Oilers are one win away from eliminating Doughty’s Kings for the third consecutive spring. If it looks like the gap between Edmonton and L.A. is getting larger, not smaller, it might have a lot to do with the fact that McDavid has a lot more to work with in Edmonton than he has in the past.

“They have a lot of good players on this team. It's not a two-man show with [Leon] Draisaitl and McDavid, as good as they are,” Doughty said Wednesday morning. “They have depth — they're a better team this year than they were last year. And now (McDavid) has got guys around him that are making plays to him, not him making all the plays for everyone else. So, I guess that's the biggest difference.”

McDavid opened the series with a five-assist night in Game 1, and leads the playoff scoring race with one goal and nine assists for 10 points. The Kings are led in scoring by a pair of four-point players in Quinton Byfield and Adrian Kempe, but as a team they’re minus-8 in goal differential. Only Winnipeg (minus-13) is worse.

Head coach Jim Hiller has only two players with more than one goal in this series: Adrian Kempe (three) and Doughty (two). Kevin Fiala scored his lone goal on a fluke shot from the side boards, Pierre-Luc Dubois’s lone goal was kicked in by Darnell Nurse, Anze Kopitar has one goal (in OT), while Blake Lizotte, Phil Danault and Viktor Arvidsson have all been shut out.

Hiller needs someone to have a game Wednesday night.

“We'd like that, for sure — and it can be anyone,” he said. “We were close the last game to some of those players breaking out, and we're going out with the attitude that that's going to happen tonight.”

Urgent Message

It’s an enduring storyline for an elimination game, but only because it’s true. The team facing golf season is always more desperate than the team that isn’t, and it’s been that way for as long as we can recall.

So, Mattias Ekholm sat down to watch his old team, the Nashville Predators, on Tuesday, as they eked out a Game 5 win in Vancouver and brought their series back home to Nashville.

“I've got kids who’ve got to go to bed, so I can't just sit and binge-watch it. But I did watch a little,” Ekholm said. “I thought they earned that win, and that's something that we can learn in here. Knowing that tonight is going to be a really hard match for us.”

Lose Game 5, and you surrender all the momentum in the series.

“Now, you look at Nashville,” Ekholm points out. “They’ve got all the momentum, they’ve got all the life in the world going home, and they’re going to have a really buzzing crowd coming back home.

“We're trying to focus on us here, but at the same time you can look at those games and see what kind of team we're going to face tonight.”

Doughty has been on both sides of that fence. He knows that it can be advantage for the visitor in many ways.

“We're fighting for our lives, essentially, over here,” he said. “Edmonton has a decently comfortable lead at 3-1, and they're playing at home tonight. So, I'm not expecting them to lay down by any means … but when you're fighting for your life, usually that team is going to be more desperate. That’s just life.”

Lines and Goalies

Neither team held a full morning skate, but here’s our best idea of who will play with whom Wednesday night.

For the Oilers, a change made at practice Tuesday dropped Warren Foegele down to the fourth line, while Dylan Holloway moved up to left wing alongside Ryan McLeod and Corey Perry, who plays playoff game No. 201 tonight.

Henrique-McDavid-Hyman

RNH-Draisaitl-Kane

Holloway-McLeod-Perry

Foegele-Ryan-Janmark

Ekholm-Bouchard

Nurse-Ceci

Kulak-Desharnais

Skinner

As for L.A., the trailing team is always more likely to change things up. The Kings do not have, however, any obvious players to add who could make a difference in this so-far lopsided Round 1 series.

We think the Kings will line up like this, with David Rittich getting his second start in goal.

Byfield-Kopitar-Kempe

Moore-Danault-Arvidsson

Fiala-Lizotte-Lewis

Grundstrom-Dubois-Laferriere

Anderson-Doughty

Gavrikov-Roy

Englund-Spence

Rittich

Death By Power Play

Edmonton’s power play is 8-for-15 in this series, while the Kings' power play is 0-for-11.

That’s an advantage of two goals per game for the Oilers this spring, while Edmonton’s power play has gone 24-for-50 against L.A. over the last three playoffs. That’s plus-14 on power-play goals for the Oilers in three series, an area that is crippling the Kings.

“We're aware of all the things they do,” Doughty said, “they just have some really good players that … come up with something different in the middle of the power play. It's hard to adjust to those things.

“On a lot of their power-play goals, our goalies had no chance on them. So, we need to take away those passing lanes, those backdoor tap-ins and let the goalie make the saves.”

Credit Hiller for not making excuses. The Kings have had years to figure this Oilers power play out, and he knows it because he’s been the guy watching the video since he joined L.A. at the beginning of last season.

“You can say, when you start the season, that may be the first time you see each other. Somebody might throw something different at you,” Hiller said. “But everybody's had a long runway of 82 games to get ready to play against each other enough. You go back to last year's playoffs — we played against each other enough, so there are no secrets. It's just a matter of execution.”

Right now, it’s execution by firing squad for L.A., something that has to change if this series is to be extended.