EDMONTON — The Los Angeles Kings did not lead Game 1 for even a single second. But they’ll lead their Round 1 series with the Edmonton Oilers for at least two days — and maybe more — after a 4-3 overtime win that left a Canadian hockey city in a province of shock.
Hang around? Oh boy, did these Kings hang around.
The Oilers took a 2-0 first period lead into Period 3, and still had their two-goal lead with just eight minutes to play in what — to that point — was a near perfect playoff performance by the home side.
Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.
“Got to be more mature than that,” said two-goal man Leon Draisaitl. “It’s a 3-1 game with eight minutes left or whatever. We’ve got to lock that down.
“We have to be more mature.”
An Oilers team that rode a nine-game winning streak — and a 14-0-1 skein — into the playoffs was in complete control of Game 1, needing only the third goal to put it to bed. But their power plays didn’t come, and in the end they gave Los Angeles six power plays.
The Kings scored on the final two — at 19:43 of the third period with the goalie pulled to send the game to overtime, and then Alex Iafallo in OT with big Vincent Desharnais in the box.
“We had the game in our hands. We just let it slip away,” Desharnais said. “We took too many penalties, and they just bury you at some point.”
This is likely not the last game these Kings will win in this series, a rematch of last year’s seven-game opening round between these two Pacific foes. But it will be hard to recreate a victory like this one, where the Kings were so close to falling irretrievably behind, before pulling Game 1 out of the fire.
The key for L.A. was their refusal to panic and open up the game when trailing by two.
“We’ve played them enough to know that we can’t do that,” said Kings head coach Todd McLellan. “Even when we were down by two, we couldn’t let it get to three. We had to check for our chances. Be patient. Use the clock as much as we could. And it worked out in our favor.”
L.A. counted on goalie Joonas Korpisalo to hold them in the game, and on veteran centre Anze Kopitar to bring them back to life. He had a goal and three secondary assists in a 4-3 win, shining brighter at age 35 than either of Draisaitl or Connor McDavid, the latter of whom went pointless.
“Expected and delivered,” McLellan said, when asked about his captain. “Two words that probably describe Kopie pretty well for the past, what, 16 years? Seventeen years? I don’t even know how long he’s played, and he’s got a lot left.”
This Oilers core had lost seven of eight playoff games that went into overtime, dating back to 2017. The only one that went their way was Game 5 at Calgary last season, when McDavid scored.
Despite having his wheels — and drawing two consecutive penalties that resulted in a power play goal in Period 1 — the offence just wasn’t there for McDavid in this one. Still, his team had this one in the bag and let it get away — something that hasn’t happened to this Oilers team since about February.
“You’re absolutely right,” said Mattias Ekholm. “And that’s gonna happen. We’ll have to make sure it’s a one off and nothing that keeps happening.
“The third, we’ve got to lock it down,” echoed Ekholm. “That’s the playoffs. That stuff’s going to happen. It’s one game out of seven, so we’ll have to learn from it and move on. A new game on Wednesday.”
These are the games that mature, Stanley Cup-ready teams finish off, a reminder that despite being labelled as that team, the Oilers still haven’t done it yet.
They’ll love the first 50 minutes of Game 1 when the video machine gets fired up early Tuesday morning. But the final eight minutes was pure immaturity.
They looked like a team that hoped it would win, rather than one that expected to. That’s the negative side.
The positives are, when you control a game like the Oilers did, on most nights they’ll either notch the third goal that puts it away, or play 10 more minutes of structured, defensive hockey and win it that way.
The Oilers were the better team Monday, but that and 14 bucks will get you a cold beer at Rogers Place.
There’s no room at this time of year for moral victories, and no one in the Oilers locker room would disagree with that.
This was a slap in the face that they can recover from, and learn from. But it had better start in Game 2 Wednesday, with the series shifting back to L.A. for Games 3 and 4.
“We have a mature group. We’ve been through some battles here,” head coach Jay Woodcroft said. “There are things that we did well, but in order to find a way to win, it’s got to be for the full 60 minutes.”
