Raise your hand if you expected to see this series before the season began! To all of you who raised them, please do not turn my column into a house of lies.

The Los Angeles Kings are the only playoff team who was not projected to make the playoffs by a single pre-season standings model despite being in the division everybody assumed would be the NHL's weakest. It was assumed that if the team did take a leap this season, it would be due to the earlier-than-expected progress of their prospects like Quinton Byfield or Alex Turcotte. But that's not what happened. Instead, the kinda-win-now-but-not-like-right-now acquisitions they made at the deadline restructured their lineup significantly and a sudden systems change launched them back to respectability.

Meanwhile, the Oilers were expected to be a decent but flawed team, then played like a very flawed team and got their coach turfed. Despite playing things pretty low-key in terms of roster changes (hello Evander Kane and Brett Kulak, goodbye... William Lagesson?), a well-timed coaching change gave this group a shot in the arm that bumped their performance up a notch.

So who's got the advantage here? It's a tricky story.

My playoff previews are stats-based, going off of both macro- and micro-level statistics gathered by TopDownHockey and AllThreeZones respectively. This allows us to look not only at high-level results (like goals, shots, and expected goals) but also the stylistic process that creates them (like passes, shot types, and transition play) to get a better sense of how the teams match up. Instead of comparing offence to offence and defence to defence, I'll be breaking down the offence vs. defence matchups.