EDMONTON, Alberta -- It was June 19, 2006. Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. The Carolina Hurricanes beat the Edmonton Oilers 3-1.

The Oilers got so close to winning their sixth Stanley Cup in franchise history but fell two goals short. But surely there would be more for Oilers fans to cheer about. Their team was set to be dominant for years to come, right?

It didn't work out that way. Playoff miss after playoff miss was the rule, as the Oilers plummeted to the bottom of the league.

Now little more than a decade and seven head coaches later, the Oilers have a chance to return to the playoffs for the first time since that Stanley Cup Final appearance. If they beat the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday, they will clinch a spot in the postseason and long-suffering fans can begin exorcising the memories of last-place finishes and first-round draft-pick busts.

With only one win needed to sew up the spot and seven games left on the schedule, the Oilers are seen as a shoo-in for the playoffs at this point. But to finally get that clinching "x" next to the team's name in the standings, the psychological effect of that will be massive.

"It's very big," Oilers defenseman Oscar Klefbom said. "I think the whole city has been waiting for this for a lot of years, especially the guys in this room."

For veteran Jordan Eberle, who made his Oilers debut in 2010 and has yet to skate in the postseason, moving out of Rexall Place and into the new Rogers Place helped the team turn the page.

"It's a thing where maybe having a new building maybe helped a little bit too," he said. "We kinda just built a new team around it and I think from day one our goal was to get off to a good start. We did that.

"And understand that we have a good team and get confident enough that we can beat these teams."

But the Oilers are also in a battle for first place in the Pacific Division. They enter the game tied with San Jose, just two points back of Anaheim for top spot in the division. All seven games the Oilers have left on their schedule are against divisional rivals.

"You talk about first place, it's really in our hands to get that," Eberle said. "That's the way the schedule's designed, you play your divisional games at the end, so things like this happen. We've had success against all those teams before and we're a confident enough team in here to know we can beat those guys."

"We're going for first place, we cannot just be happy now," Klefbom said. "We want to play a very hard game, especially here at home at Rogers. That's going to be a big key for us going into the playoffs, hopefully."

While the Oilers are getting ready to seal a playoff spot, the Kings trail the St. Louis Blues by 11 points for the final wild-card spot in the West. The Kings have just eight games left.

"You've got to win every game," said Kings center Jeff Carter, who leads the team with 31 goals. "I mean, we're not out. We're still alive. You go into it one game at a time and we've got to run the table."

But the Kings have to rebound from a tough 3-0 loss at home Saturday to the New York Rangers.

"I mean, focus on the next game," Jonathan Quick told LA Kings Insider. "Try to win the next game. Go from there. That's it. It doesn't matter what time of the year it is, that's your mindset, so that's what we'll do."

The Kings are expected to bring center Nick Shore on the road trip that will take them to Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. Shore has been out with an upper-body injury since March 2.

Oilers defenseman Matthew Benning, who left Saturday's win over the Avalanche after taking a Rene Bourque shot off a foot, did not skate Monday. But coach Todd McLellan said Benning has no broken bones and his status won't be known until Tuesday.

Oilers goalie Cam Talbot, who leads the NHL with 67 starts, has given up four goals in each of his last two games and was pulled in both of them. He didn't play in Saturday's 4-1 win over Colorado.

The Kings announced Monday that they signed Michigan Tech product Matt Roy to a two-year entry-level deal. Roy had 26 points in 42 games for the Huskies.