EL SEGUNDO –– Heavy is the head that wears the crown, but heavier still are those hung in disappointment, so the Kings are able to look to the sky as they prepare for their first postseason appearance in four years.

They’ll take on the Edmonton Oilers in a first-round series set to begin Monday in Canada, with the Kings seeking their first playoff victory since 2016 and their first series win since they hoisted the Stanley Cup in 2014.

“It’s a blank page right now, and you’ve got to start writing your story right from the very first puck drop,” team captain Anze Kopitar said.

For Edmonton’s part, they’ll be looking to advance to the second round for the first time since 2017 and just the second time during the careers of their two Hart Trophy winners, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. For all McDavid’s speed, he has yet to out-skate the long shadow of Edmonton’s dynasty that captured five Stanley cups in seven seasons between 1984 and 1990.

Both clubs plummeted from peaks and rebounded out of valleys this season. Edmonton won nine of its first 10 games, but later lost 13 of 15 during a stretch that saw them fire Coach Dave Tippett and bring in Jay Woodcroft. Woodcroft twice worked under Kings coach Todd McLellan as an assistant, in San Jose and then Edmonton. He steadied Edmonton’s ship, and the Oilers finished the year with seven wins in their last eight games.

The Kings’ longest surge of the season was seven straight victories, but it was wedged between winless skids of six and five games. Where Edmonton fell out of playoff position only to catapult its way back in, the Kings managed to hang on by a thread –– fitting for a team that had nearly half its games decided by a single goal –– and then sealed the deal with their own stretch of six wins in seven games ahead of the season finale. They received contributions from veterans, like soon-to-retire franchise icon Dustin Brown and goalie Jonathan Quick, as well as newcomers, principally call-ups on the back end such as Sean Durzi and Jordan Spence.

“We’ve been in every situation this year. We’ve won seven in a row, we’ve lost (six) in a row. We’ve bounced back after a loss, we’ve won some tight games,” center Phillip Danault said. “It’s a big learning year for all of us, especially the young guys and it’s still a lot of learning in the playoffs. It’s going to be a nice challenge for all of us and I can’t wait to see how we react.”

The Kings also surmounted injuries. At the lowest point during the stretch run, they were missing all six defensemen from their opening night lineup. They lost Sean Walker early on and three separate maladies sidelined the typically durable Drew Doughty for most of the season. He and Walker will not play in the playoffs, but the Kings are otherwise relatively healthy.

“I think we were tested a lot with injuries over the year. Injuries happen, but we had a few more than normal this year,” Quick said. “We went through some adversity that I thought we, as a group, handled well, and that speaks to our maturity as a team. We’ve got most of our guys back and we’re looking forward to Game 1.”

Head to head, Edmonton captured three of four regular-season meetings. That doesn’t bode well for the Kings statistically, as over the past 10 campaigns the regular-season series winners have gone 59-34 in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

However, starting on the road won’t provide any significant historical disadvantage. Over the past decade, series have nearly split between teams with and without home ice, and last year 10 of 15 series were won by teams that played Game 1 as the away team.

Furthermore, the Kings were road warriors this season, winning fewer away games in the West than only the two division winners, Colorado and Calgary. It will be strength-versus-strength in the series as Edmonton earned the third most home victories in the conference.

Going further back in time, traveling for Game 1 foreshadowed success for the Kings on their paths to two championships. They had the two most road-heavy runs to the Cup in NHL history, starting all four series on the road in 2012 and three of four in 2014, when they had to win three Game 7s in opposing barns before reaching the Final.

The Kings and Oilers have met seven times previously in the playoffs, with each series unfolding between 1982 and 1992. For the Kings, the first matchup remained the sweetest thanks to a rally from five goals down in Game 3 that became known as “The Miracle on Manchester.” They’d win a decisive Game 5 to secure their only series victory against Edmonton during Wayne Gretzky’s time with the Oilers, who would comfortably claim their next two series against the Kings.

But Gretzky’s history-shaping trade to the Kings placed him on the other side of the rivalry. In black and silver, Gretzky led a successful comeback from a 3-1 series deficit in 1989, only to see his former team eliminate the Kings in each of the next three postseasons. Defenseman Charlie Huddy was also a part of all seven series, playing six out of seven with Edmonton and one with the Kings.

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Though the Oilers dynasty outlasted Gretzky’s tenure in Edmonton, the franchise soon fell on leaner times. An unexpected run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2006 would be the first taste of the biggest stage for two future two-time Cup winners with the Kings, center Jarret Stoll and defenseman Matt Greene. But it ended in a Game 7 defeat at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes and “Mr. Game 7,” Justin Williams, who went on to win two more Cups with the Kings and the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2014.

Kings coach Todd McLellan talks to his team during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Seattle Kraken Monday, March 28, 2022, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

The Oilers have seen McDavid and Draisaitl dominate the scoring race, award voting and headlines, but not the playoffs. Their only run of note came in McDavid’s first full NHL season, 2016-17, when the Oilers reached Game 7 of the second round before being eliminated by the Ducks. That team was coached by McLellan, who just completed his third campaign behind the Kings’ bench. About a dozen players remain from McLellan’s final year in Edmonton, but there will be no sentimentality from him.

“I still care about a lot of people there, a lot, and they’re great people and great fans, it’s an unreal community,” McLellan said. “But this is family. The story that doesn’t exist is me going back there, it has nothing to do with that, it’s the guys that are going to play.”