Kings forward Warren Foegele leaps in front of Edmonton Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner to avoid making contact with Phillip Danault’s winning shot in the third period of the Kings’ 6-5 win in Game 1 of the Western Conference playoffs Monday at Crypto.com Arena. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Kings ran out to a four-goal lead then had to hold off a frantic Edmonton comeback to beat the Oilers 6-5 in a wild opener of a best-of-seven first-round playoff series at Crypto.com Arena on Monday night.
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Phillip Danault scored the winner, his second goal of the game, with 41 seconds to play after the Kings led 4-0 late in the second period.
Andrei Kuzmenko, Quinton Byfield, Adrian Kempe and Kevin Fiala also scored for the Kings. The goals from Kuzmenko in the first period and from Fiala in the third came on power plays. The Oilers did not allow a power-play goal in 12 chances in last year’s playoff win over the Kings.
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Leon Draisaitl, Mattias Janmark, Corey Perry, Zach Hyman and Connor McDavid scored for Edmonton, with Hyman and McDavid scoring 36 seconds apart late in the third period after the Oilers pulled their goalie. McDavid’s goal, which tied it 5-5, came with 88 seconds to play.
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But Danault erased that less than a minute later on a weak shot that knuckled past Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner.
“I got all of it,” Danault joked afterward.
The Kings were able to laugh because after giving away a big lead, they managed to salvage the win.
“It’s obviously not ideal, how it happened,” Byfield said. “But it’s just a sign of good teams. We let our guard down for a little bit and it’s a great team over there. They’ve got world-class players. They’re never going to stop.”
Kings forward Adrian Kempe puts the puck past Edmonton Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner in the second period of Game 1 on Monday night. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Kings, who are trying to end a three-year playoff losing streak to Edmonton, won the opening game in two of those meetings but went on to lose each series. All of those series started in Edmonton; this time the Kings drew first blood at home, where they won a franchise-record 31 times during the regular season.
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Goals from Kuzmenko and Byfield in the first period and Kempe and Danault in the second gave the Kings a 4-0 lead late in the second period, setting up what looked to be a rout.
Especially since the Oilers, who took the Florida Panthers to a seventh game before falling in last year’s Stanley Cup final, limped into the playoffs wounded but mounted a comeback just the same. Draisaitl, who led the NHL with 52 goals despite missing the final seven games of the regular season with a lower-body injury, got Edmonton on the board with less than six seconds to play in the second period. Janmark then scored 2:19 into the third to half the Kings’ lead.
Fiala appeared to restore order, scoring just seconds into a five-on-three power play, but goals from Perry, Hyman and McDavid tied the game.
But then Danault scored to save the Kings, even if Edmonton left the building with some momentum.
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“We’ve got to do a better job of closing that game out,” Byfield said. “No lead safe in playoffs. They’re coming all the time. We’ll learn from that.”
“Obviously, we should win it, you know, close it out,” Fiala added. “But it’s playoff hockey. And they don’t give up either. So I’m very proud of our group, that we responded again and we didn’t back down.
“It’s 1-0 right now and we enjoy it, but move on. That’s a heck of a way to win it.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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