Evan Bouchard, Oilers beat Kings in another high-scoring affair: Game 3 takeaways

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EDMONTON — What a turn of events.

The Edmonton Oilers were less than seven minutes away from being down 3-0 and on the brink of elimination in their series against the Los Angeles Kings. Then, there was a seismic shift.

Evander Kane scored on a goal-mouth scramble, a goal that was initially deemed no good because it was thought Kane kicked the puck in. A review determined that though Kane did kick the puck, he got his stick on it before it crossed the goal line.

That tied the game. The Kings then opted to challenge for goaltender interference, and the goal was upheld. That put the Oilers on the power play. They scored their second goal on as many man advantages on Friday after starting the series 0-for-5 when Evan Bouchard finished off a beautiful orchestrated give-and-go with Leon Draisaitl.

Those two goals came just 10 seconds apart and turned a deficit into a lead that they wouldn’t relinquish.

A 7-4 victory out of seemingly nowhere has made this a series when it looked like the Oilers were about on the verge of spinning out.

Oilers’ goalie change pays off — barely

In search of “big saves at key times,” the Oilers swapped out Stuart Skinner for Calvin Pickard in net for the pivotal contest. The move just panned out.

Pickard’s performance on Friday was similar to Skinner’s over the first two games. You can’t argue he didn’t let in a bad goal, yet one or two of them perhaps could have been stopped. He let four pucks by him, but it never got to five or six.

Pickard was the victim of another Adrian Kempe rocket in the first period. Kempe, who scored on Pickard in his relief appearance in Game 2, ripped a shot high glove side at four-on-four.

Kevin Fiala’s power-play goal maybe could have been stopped, but he was allowed to walk right in and the puck appeared to hit Mattias Janmark’s stick as the shot was being released.

Drew Doughty’s blast from the point, also on the power play, came through a maze of bodies.

Moore powered around Oilers defenseman Jake Walman and tucked a puck through Pickard’s legs.

Overall, Pickard allowed four goals on 28 shots. His biggest stop came six minutes into the third when he blockered away a shot from Quinton Byfield to keep it a one-goal game.

Line trickery works early

The Oilers had Connor McDavid, Draisaitl and Zach Hyman together in the morning skate and in warmups followed by a second line of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins centering Vasily Podkolzin and Viktor Arvidsson.

That wasn’t the case after the puck dropped. Good thing, too.

Nugent-Hopkins and Draisaitl traded places, and Nugent-Hopkins scored 2:49 into the contest when he deposited a pass from Hyman by Darcy Kuemper.

That gave the Oilers their first lead of the series, and finally a good start to a game.

Doughty still making presence felt on power play

The Kings have been wildly successful going with a five-forward option for the first unit on the power play. That also means Doughty no longer has a place on it.

After quarterbacking their power play throughout his long career, Doughty has been relegated to the second unit given how Andrei Kuzmenko injected life into the top group since the trade deadline. But in Game 3, Doughty fired a wrist shot through a screen in front of Pickard to cash in a Walman interference penalty.

Kings coach Jim Hiller said it was difficult to tell Doughty to take a back seat when it came to an assignment he had long been accustomed to manning.

“Drew’s a good soldier,” Hiller said. “He’s a team-first guy, so for now, he’s just grabbed the reins of that second group.”

“Drew is probably one of the most competitive people I know, and he loves winning more than anything,” Kings forward Trevor Moore said. “He’ll play wherever they need him to as long as our team is successful. He’s been fine.

“He just wants to win. He wants a third Cup. That’s where the focus is.”

The Kings have gone 7-for-12 on the power play in the series. It is a 180-degree turn from a year ago when they went 0-for-12 in a five-game loss to the Oilers.

Byfield is squarely in the sights of the Oilers

At the start of the series, Byfield needed to have his fingerprints all over it for the Kings. Especially now that he’s playing center full-time and driving his own line while occasionally spelling Phillip Danault for matchup duties against McDavid.

Byfield scored goals in each of the first two games, and he’s become noticeable to the point that the Oilers made him a target in the third period of Game 2. Adam Henrique roughed him up, while Janmark and Podkolzin both dealt out slashes that were penalized. Podkolzin was booted for the rest of the game after drawing a 10-minute misconduct.

Before Game 3, Byfield downplayed the nature of being targeted. It was he who was cross-checked in the head and neck area by the Oilers’ Darnell Nurse in the last week of the regular season, which got the defenseman suspended for one game.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just trying to play my game. It’s playoff hockey. Everybody is just trying to play hard. Trying to get under guys’ skins.”

But the Oilers taking some liberties against the young center does reflect the greater level of respect that he’s earning. Which is something the 22-year-old sees. “If they feel they’ve got to come out to me, that definitely is a sign of respect,” he said.

So far, Byfield hasn’t retaliated and neither have the Kings.

“You just try not to take a dumb penalty either,” he said. “You just try to let it go right now. Right now, you got to kind of turn the cold shoulder and kind of just let everything go. It’s just hockey. Sometimes you gotta just do that.”

Kings don’t handle the opening minutes

With a loud Rogers Place crowd determined to give the Oilers energy from puck drop, it figured that the Kings needed to withstand the first 10 minutes and settle into their game.

That wasn’t the case. Trent Frederic got a grade-A chance right away that Kings goalie Darcy Kuemper needed to make a glove save on. Kuemper also made a glove stop on a good opportunity by Arvidsson following a turnover in their zone.

Between those, Nugent-Hopkins was left alone for a moment in the low slot after a coverage mix-up and buried a pass from Hyman to give the Oilers their first lead of the series at the 2:49 mark. McDavid kept the play alive by pushing the puck to Hyman as Kings defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov checked him behind the L.A. net.

At 8:40, Kuzmenko got nabbed for interfering with an on-rushing McDavid. The Kings had killed off all five shorthanded situations they faced in Games 1 and 2 but it took only three seconds for Draisaitl to win a faceoff and Bouchard to rip a slap shot through a screen past Kuemper for a 2-0 lead.

Before it could worsen, the Kings did find their footing and Kempe cut Edmonton’s lead in half with a wrist shot that beat Pickard cleanly. It was Kempe’s fourth goal of the series and 15th in 21 playoff contests with the Oilers.

(Photo: Perry Nelson / Imagn Images)

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