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Napoleon had Waterloo. George III had the American Revolution. Jim Hiller has the third period.
For the first two kings, those losses stained their reigns. For Hiller, who coaches Kings, the third period is beginning to stain his as well.
Five times in his team’s NHL playoff with the Edmonton Oilers, his Kings have taken a lead or a tie into the third period. Three times they wound up losing, the last one coming Tuesday in Game 5 when Mattias Janmark scored off a rebound with less than 13 minutes to play to give the Oilers a 3-1 win in the game and a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.
The first-round playoff resumes Thursday in Edmonton where the Oilers can eliminate the Kings from the postseason for the fourth time in as many seasons. The Kings haven’t gone beyond the first round since 2014, when they won their last Stanley Cup.
Evan Bouchard scores on a power play and goaltender Stuart Skinner makes 33 saves to help give the Oilers to a 3-1 playoff series lead over the Kings.
“They executed way better than us tonight,” Hiller said. “They were stronger. They beat us in every area of the game except the specialty [teams]. We can’t look to one part of our game and think that it was acceptable.”
Well, except for goaltender Darcy Kuemper, who was brilliant and deserved a far better fate after turning back 43 shots. He’s faced 93 in the last two games but the Kings have scored just four times behind him.
“Darcy was stellar tonight, as he’s been the whole season,” captain Anze Kopitar said. “He gave us a chance.”
Andrei Kuzmenko gave the Kings the lead on a power-play goal — the team’s eighth of the series — at 3:33 of the second period but Evander Kane tied it for the Oilers less than three minutes later. And the score stayed that way entering the third period, which has been a problem for the Kings all season.
Hiller’s team allowed 86 goals in the final 20 minutes and overtime, nearly double what it gave up in the first period. The Kings have been even worse in the playoffs, with 14 of the Oilers’ league-high 21 goals coming in the third period or overtime.
Six other teams entered Wednesday have given up fewer than 14 goals in the entire postseason. So it was only a matter of time before Edmonton struck again Tuesday and this time the goal came at 7:12 from Janmark, who scored off the rebound of a shot by Viktor Arvidsson that Kuemper had pushed out to his stick side, not knowing Janmark was perched just inside the circle.
The Kings have either led or been tied in the final 13 minutes of all five games of the series only to lose the last three, marking the first time in Edmonton’s playoff history that the Oilers have come from behind to win three straight games.
Hiller pulled Kuemper with just more than three minutes remaining but it did him no good with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins scoring into the empty net to account for the final score.
That left the Kings to lament on a game in which they couldn’t make plays, couldn’t string passes together and couldn’t hang on to the puck.
“We were not connected defensively and I don’t think we gave ourselves a great chance,” Hiller said. “We turned the puck over. We were disorganized and they came racing at us. You’re not going to win that way.”
And they didn’t.
Joel Edmundson denied fatigue was an issue but with Hiller going primarily with four defensemen in the series, Drew Doughty, Mikey Anderson and Edmundson all ranked in the top six in the playoffs in even-strength ice time after five games.
“We played a lot, trying to get the matchups,” Edmundson said. “But we’ve been playing a lot of hockey all year. So I think we feel good.”
“We’re getting rest days and all that. It’s not a factor,” Kopitar agreed.
But there has to be some explanation because until Tuesday the Kings were clearly the best team. If not for two poor third-period decisions in Edmonton, in fact, the Kings might have swept the series.
In Game 3, Hiller challenged a goal by Edmonton’s Evander Kane, arguing there had been goalie interference. The league ruled against him and the Oilers scored the winning goal on the subsequent power play. And in Game 4, with the Kings protecting a one-goal lead in the final minute, Quinton Byfield misplayed an easy clearance from his own end, setting up Evan Bouchard’s game-tying goal. Edmonton would win in overtime.
That made Tuesday’s game arguably the most significant one for the Kings in a decade. They tied franchise records for wins (48) and points (105) during a regular season in which they had the league’s best record at home. They seemed primed for a long playoff run.
With the Kings looking to take a 3-0 lead in the playoff series, the Oilers seized the momentum with four unanswered goals at raucous Rogers Place.
But after going 0 for Edmonton, they needed a win in Game 5 to keep the home-ice advantage in the series.
They didn’t get it. If they don’t get one in Edmonton on Thursday, their season will be over.
A victory, however, would bring them back home for a winner-take-all seventh game Saturday on home ice, where the Kings had the best regular-season record in the NHL this season.
“We’ve got to push through it,” Kopitar said, sitting in the Kings locker room at Crypto.com Arena for what may be the last time this season. “It is what it is. We knew we’re going to have to win a game on the road eventually. There’s no better time to do that.”
