Evander Kane and Evan Bouchard scored in a 10-second span in the third period and the Edmonton Oilers beat Los Angeles 7-4 on Friday night to cut the Kings’ series lead to 2-1.
Kane tied at 4 with 6:42 left on a wild scramble in front of the goal. It was ruled a goal after a review, and Los Angeles then challenged for goalie interference. The challenge failed, giving Edmonton a power play, and Bouchard put the Oilers ahead with 6:32 to go off a nifty feed from Leon Draisaitl.
“We’ve got a lot of character. We’re going to go down swinging, if we go down,” Draisaitl said. “We’ve created that approach here and that attitude within this organization and we’re not going to back down until we’re out.”
Game 4 is Sunday night in Edmonton.
“We’ll take a rest just like we did after we won the games,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said. “Take a look at it, regroup just like they did. It might sound a little boring, but I think this is how these things go. It’s emotional, the crowd is emotional, we’re emotional, so we’ve just got to cool our heads out and get ready to play another hockey game.”
Bouchard and Connor Brown each had two goals and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Connor McDavid also scored. Calvin Pickard made 25 saves after Stuart Skinner started the first two games in Los Angeles.
Kane played just his second game after losing the entire regular season to injury.
“I thought the first two games we were kind of still in regular-season mode and tonight, especially in the first period we looked like we were ready to go and we had a big push in the third,” he said.
Adrian Kempe, Kevin Fiala, Drew Doughty and Trevor Moore scored Los Angeles. Darcy Kuemper stopped 29 shots.
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