The Kings can clinch home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs tonight with a win of any kind against the team that they’ll face in that series — the arch rival Edmonton Oilers.

Following their brief sojourn in Edmonton, they will finish their road schedule in the penultimate game of their campaign, a duel with the Kraken in Seattle.

With Vegas winning Saturday, when the Kings also squeaked by Colorado, any focus on winning the division blurred, but now they could seize the opportunity to start the playoffs rested at home.

The Kings have taken two of three meetings from Edmonton already this year and appear likely to host them for the first time in what’s shaping up to be four straight first-round meetings (the prior three were all won by Edmonton).

“That’s what we want. We’re confident, just as a team, however it may go, but we want to play here, we want to play in front of our fans. They’ve been great to us all season and obviously we’ve done well here,” said Kings defenseman Brandt Clarke, referring to the Kings’ franchise record of home wins. “It’s our time to flip the script.”

Clarke said the Kings were trying to “win out, stay on this high and roll right into the playoffs,” but coach Jim Hiller was more measured in his comments about the potential approach in Edmonton, Seattle and, later, the season finale at home against the Calgary Flames.

“It’s a fair question, I just don’t know, you know what I mean? We’re looking at (the Edmonton game) like it’s going to be a really big hockey game, and we’re going to have to have our best lineup, and it’s going to be a good game,” Hiller said “That’s the way we can look at it right now, but I don’t know if things will change.”

Hiller also recently told reporters that he felt he would have his full array of players for Game 1 of the playoffs, though it was unclear how literally that statement should be interpreted. As far as the final road trip of the campaign, he said he was “not sure” if defensemen Drew Doughty (lower-body) and Joel Edmundson (upper-body) would travel with the team.

As was the case early in the season, the absence of Doughty opened up some opportunity for Clarke, and with new partners sans Edmundson. Clarke, who was scratched multiple times and used as a seventh defenseman in other instances, made a stellar play of an offensive-zone faceoff win to set up Alex Laferriere’s goal Saturday and was involved in the buildup to Anže Kopitar’s tally. Hiller said that since the scratches, Clarke had “built his game back up” and that his “attention to detail had improved.”

Clarke said he was satisfied with how he’d refined his decision-making, striving for an increasingly level risk/reward balance, adding that there were situations where he had the “green light to activate or seal the wall.”

Clarke was asked if his confidence had wavered through any part of the process and offered as much vehemence as one can in a monosyllabic answer when he said “no.”

“Nothing is going to take his confidence away, I can tell you that for sure,” Hiller said. “That’s a compliment. You have to have that, if you want to really climb where he wants to get to.”

Awaiting them in their next game and all but certainly in the first round will be the Oilers, but what version of them remains to be seen. Connor McDavid came back and continued the scoring streak he left hanging before his injury. He extended it to 16 games (28 points) by way of performances with three, four and two assists, respectively. He had a hand in each goal during a 4-2 win over San Jose on Friday.

The Oilers, however, saw stalwart defenseman Mattias Ekholm aggravate his injury in that contest and Zach Hyman, a 54-goal scorer last season, exit the match and not return. Leading scorer Leon Draisaitl sounded unlikely to play before the playoffs begin. The Oilers missed at least half a dozen other regulars against San Jose, though goalie Stuart Skinner returned for a 4-1 win over Winnipeg on Sunday.