Prior to McDavid taking over the game, the Kings were in complete control. They took a 2-0 lead in the first period and were up 4-0 with time running out in the second.
McDavid set up Leon Draisaitl at 19:54 of the second period to make it 4-1, giving the Oilers a spark. McDavid and Draisaitl were playing in the same game for the first time since March 18. Both missed extended time with injuries in the last few weeks of the regular season.
Mattias Janmark then cut the lead to 4-2 at 2:19 of the third, but Kevin Fiala restored the three-goal lead on a 5-on-3 power play at 4:59.
At that point, it appeared the Kings were going to lock things down and cruise to a 1-0 lead in the best-of-7 series. But they were reminded just why McDavid is considered the most dynamic player in the NHL.
“Obviously, you always want to keep pushing,” Fiala said. “We can learn from today, so hopefully that doesn’t happen next time.”
Heading into the series, Los Angeles was confident it could get past the Oilers despite losing the previous three years. The Kings have home-ice advantage on this occasion, though, after finishing second the Pacific Division, four points ahead of the Oilers.
“It’s not ideal how it happened,” Kings forward Quinton Byfield said. “We let our guard down a little bit and it’s a great team over there and they have world-class players. They’re never going to stop going and it happened, and it was a big goal for us there.”
It was only the fourth time a team has come back to tie a game after trailing by four goals in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The five-goal comeback by Los Angeles on April 10, 1982, is among them.
On that night, Daryl Evans scored the winning goal in overtime to give Los Angeles the 6-5 win in Game 3 of the best-of-5 first round series. Evans is now a commentator for the Kings and was in the dressing room after the game.
“We made a couple of mistakes and they made a couple of good plays,” Los Angles coach Jim Hiller said. “We’re going to make some good plays and we’re going to make some mistakes, and we did in those moments and they took advantage.”
Lesson learned for the Kings, who will look to extend their series advantage in Game 2 on Wednesday (10 p.m. ET; FDSNW, MAX, TBS, SN, TVAS, CBC).
“When you’re up 4-0, we have to do a better job of closing that game off, but a win’s a win and we’ll take that,” Byfield said. “We’ll enjoy it and move on tomorrow. This happened before when we had [a three-goal lead in Game 4, 2023] and they came back on us and ended up winning that game. No lead is safe in the playoffs and they’re coming all the time, and we have to learn from that and learn to defend that a little better.”
