Amid an electric atmosphere at Rogers Place on Thursday (May 1), the Edmonton Oilers advanced to Round 2 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs by defeating the Los Angeles Kings 6-4 in Game 6 of their Western Conference first round series.
After dropping Games 1 and 2 at Crypto.com Arena, the Oilers reeled off four consecutive wins to eliminate Los Angeles from the postseason for the fourth time in the last four years.
Related: 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 1 Hub
Connor Brown, Trent Federic, Adam Henrique, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Darnell Nurse scored for the Oilers. Los Angeles got goals from Quinton Byfield, Brandt Clarke, Anze Kopitar, and Jordan Spence. Edmonton’s Calvin Pickard and Darcy Kuemper of the Kings each made 23 saves between the pipes.
The game got off to a wild start, with each team scoring twice before the first period was six minutes old. After trailing 1-0 and 2-1 early, Edmonton scored four straight goals to go ahead to stay.
Edmonton moves on to face the Vegas Golden Knights in the second round. Dates and times for the best-of-seven series are yet to be announced.
Pickard’s Play Picks Up
Taking over as Edmonton’s starting goalie after Stuart Skinner got lit up for 11 goals on 58 shots combined in the first two games, Pickard has backstopped the Oilers to four victories in a row.
Pickard has a goals-against average (GAA) of 2.93 and save percentage (SV%) of .893 in the 2025 Postseason, which aren’t exactly stats to write home about. But he’s made the timely saves while playing with remarkable resilience, which was especially the case in Edmonton’s series-clinching win.
After giving up two goals on the first three shots he faced Thursday, Pickard regrouped to make 11 consecutive saves. He didn’t allow a goal from 3:37 of the first period until 18:11 of the second period, over which time the Oilers turned a 2-1 deficit into a 5-2 advantage.
Pickard stopped 11 of 12 shots in the third period, and while he did give up a goal to Kopitar that cut Edmonton’s lead to 5-4 with 55 seconds remaining, the 33-year-old wouldn’t allow L.A. to draw even, stopping a shot from Byfield in the final moments before Brown scored into an empty net.
Over the four Edmonton wins, Pickard allowed 11 goals in the first two periods, but Kopitar’s tally was the only goal he conceded in the third period and overtime.
No one is about to compare Pickard to Grant Fuhr, but the way the Oilers are winning now is certainly reminiscent of their 80s heyday with the Hall-of-Fame goaltender: if Fuhr gave up four goals, he could count on his teammates to score five. And if they scored five goals, his teammates could count on Fuhr to not allow a fifth.
Scoring Coming From Everywhere
Fittingly, the Oilers totalled their most goals in a postseason series since 1987, scoring 27 times over the six games against Los Angeles. It would be one thing if superstars Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid were doing the bulk of the scoring, but what’s been most impressive about Edmonton’s offensive eruption this offseason is its depth of contributors.
On Thursday, the Oilers scored six goals, and Draisaitl and McDavid combined for just one point between them. Meanwhile, Brown recorded three points, while Frederic, Nugent-Hopkins, and Nurse all had two points apiece.
Whether it was Evan Bouchard’s historic back-to-back two-goal performances in Games 3 and 4, Mattias Janmark scoring as many times in this series as he has all season, or Frederic notching his first-ever goal as an Oiler in what would turn out to be the game-winner on Thursday, almost every one is stepping up, and stepping up in big moments.
Over the six games against Los Angeles, no less than a dozen players scored for Edmonton, including eight with two or more goals. Eighteen Oilers registered at least one point in the series.
Oilers Defy the Numbers
Edmonton took every stat suggesting it should lose this series and made a mockery of them. The exclamation mark came on Thursday, when the Oilers became just the second team in Stanley Cup Playoff history to record four straight comeback wins after trailing 2-0 in a best-of-seven series. But that was only the tip of the iceberg.
During the 2024-25 season, Los Angeles was 41-0-2 when scoring at least three goals. In this series alone, Edmonton beat the Kings three times when they scored at least three goals.
Coming into this postseason, NHL teams that fall behind 2-0 in a best-of-seven series managed to rally for victory just 13.7% of the time, and the Oilers had only done it once in 10 tries. Now they’re 2/11.
Edmonton won each of the last three games of the series despite Los Angeles scoring first. In their first 45 NHL seasons, the Oilers had never won three consecutive playoff games in which they gave up the first goal.
Los Angeles had a record of 35-1-2 when leading after two periods during the 2024-25 season. Edmonton came from behind to beat the Kings after trailing to start the third period in both Games 3 and 4.
In their four regular season meetings with Los Angeles, the Oilers scored just four goals total. Edmonton scored at least four goals in a single game four times in the series, capped off with Thursday’s six-goal output.
We could go on and on, but you get the picture. What Edmonton managed to pull off over the last week was nearly unprecedented and virtually inconceivable. And to have eliminated the same team in the same playoff round for the fourth year in a row makes it all the more improbable.
The Oilers likely won’t be able to get away with as much against Vegas. The Pacific Division’s first-place team lost just twice over its final 15 regular season games before eliminating the Minnesota Wild 4-2 in the first round. This will be the second time in three years that Edmonton and the Golden Knights meet in Round 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs: Vegas knocked off the Oilers in six games in 2023.
