The Daily Faceoff Show: The Los Angeles Kings’ struggles have made things interesting in the Pacific

The Los Angeles Kings are struggling at the worst possible time, losing five of their last seven games while trying to hold on to a playoff spot. But with the Vegas Golden Knights catching fire and winning six of their last seven, just two points separate the clubs, and Vegas has a game in hand.

All of a sudden, Vegas seems to have a realistic shot at making the playoffs again after it seemed like its season was over, all thanks to the Kings’ struggles. Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk spoke on The Daily Faceoff Show about how the race between these two teams might turn out.

Seravalli: The Los Angeles Kings have really opened up the door for Vegas to sneak in. Part of it’s been injuries for the Los Angeles Kings, certainly missing Drew Doughty hurts, among other players that have been out of their lineup.

But it felt like two weeks ago this was all locked up, but now it’s basically a dead heat. If you look at some of the models that are out there, I always use HockeyViz.com, and Micah Blake McCurdy, who does a fantastic job, he says the playoff odds at this point, basically 63% chance for the Los Angeles Kings, 56% for the Vegas Golden Knights. I don’t know how that works with both those teams being above 50%, maybe a little wildcard help from the other side in the Central, but still, it’s way more interesting than we thought it might be.

And I just happened to take a look at the schedule that’s remaining for the L.A. Kings, It’s certainly a bit tougher for the Vegas Golden Knights down the stretch. You’ve got one game against the Colorado Avalanche left if you’re the Kings, but you’ve got Chicago twice, you’ve got Seattle, you’ve got the Anaheim Ducks twice, the Vancouver Canucks by the last game of the season should be out of the playoff picture, the Columbus Blue Jackets who are out of it in the East.

I don’t know, it still seems to me like the Kings are the team that’s in the driver’s seat here, and still some work to do for the Vegas Golden Knights, but they’ve made it way more interesting than I thought.

Yaremchuk: Vegas has nine games remaining, four against non-playoff teams, and the rest of their schedule is Calgary, Edmonton, Washington, Dallas, and St. Louis. And you mentioned the L.A. Kings, eight games to go, seven of those are coming against non-playoff teams, so it’s interesting because the injuries are starting to catch up to the Kings a little bit. You look at the fact that for a time they were missing five of their D-men that they started the year with in their top six. It’s crazy to think that they were able to battle through that for as long as they did.

And from Vegas’ perspective, they’re one of those teams that, obviously with me up here in Edmonton, a lot of people who follow the Oilers are going, “Hey, make sure L.A. gets in, because we don’t want to touch a healthy Vegas team in Round 1 of the playoffs.”

You can watch the full episode here…