The first 38 minutes of last night’s game were the most uneventful playoff matches I’ve seen the Edmonton Oilers play.

They had eight shots on goal, but none inside 10 feet and only two inside 29 feet. They didn’t match Los Angeles’s passion and intensity. The Oilers went 16:53 without a shot on goal, starting with 6:07 remaining in the first period until 10:46 into the second frame.

It’s very difficult to win if you go 28 percent of the game without a shot on goal.

The score reflected this fact.  After Phil Danault made it 4-0 with 2:17 remaining in the third period, it seemed the Oilers had finally had enough. The camera caught Leon Draisaitl voicing his displeasure on the bench. It was clear you could see him saying “It is 4-0,” along with some other colourful language.

That seemed to wake the Oilers up.

On the next shift, they had five consecutive hits in the span of 43 seconds. None were massive, but Draisaitl’s message seemed to grab their attention. Twenty seconds later, Darnell Nurse took a shot that Kuemper stopped and held onto for a whistle.

That led to a TV timeout and Kris Knoblauch put Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Corey Perry, Evan Bouchard, and Darnell Nurse out for the offensive zone faceoff. Draisaitl won the draw against Anze Kopitar with 37 seconds remaining in the period, the Oilers maintained possession for a bit before LA dumped the puck out. With 18 seconds left, Draisaitl entered the offensive zone. His drop pass missed McDavid, deflected off his skate and Bouchard picked it up just inside the blue line. He skated towards the left side, did a button hook at the top of the circle, just inside the boards, skated high in the zone and then dumped it to McDavid, who had floated over to the left boards. McDavid shielded Kopitar with his left hand, spun inside him and found space inside the circle, and when he reached the left face-off dot, he slid a pass through the seam, and Draisaitl ripped home a one-timer with six seconds remaining in the period.

The Oilers found life and that set the stage for a wild third period.

Only 2:19 into the third, Mattias Janmark made it 4-2. It was Janmark’s first goal all season in which he shot the puck into the net with a goalie trying to stop him. He scored an empty-net goal in November, and in January, Connor Brown took a shot, and it deflected off Janmark into the net. So Janmark scored his first “real” goal of the season, and Trent Frederic picked up his first assist as an Oiler in his second game, and Jeff Skinner had his first playoff point. It was Skinner’s 1,079th NHL game, but his first playoff game. A wild combination of goals and assists.

The Kings made it 5-2 as Kevin Fiala scored four seconds into a five-on-three. Kopitar won the draw cleanly, Andrei Kuzmenko touched it back to Adrian Kempe, who fired it across to Fiala, who ripped the one timer from the top of the circle. But the Oilers didn’t fold.

Corey Perry scored just under three minutes later, after he created space in front by cross-checking Joel Edmundson out of the way.

One minute after Perry’s goal, Jake Walman was penalized for delay of game, shooting the puck over the glass. The Oilers challenged. Walman was adamant the puck had hit the glass before going into the crowd. A lengthy review wasn’t conclusive. One TV angle made it seem like the puck changed direction at the top of the glass, but nothing was concrete, so the penalty stood, and the Oilers were assessed another delay of game. The Kings’ PP was 2-for-3 already and had looked very dangerous. I’d bet most Oilers fans thought another goal was coming. I thought they’d score as well.

But Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Josh Brown, Darnell Nurse and Stuart Skinner didn’t allow a goal. Brown blocked a shot with his skate. Nurse had two huge blocks on Fiala as he ripped one-timers off of two cross-seam passes. Skinner stopped Fiala twice and Kuzmenko once. Fiala hit the outside of the post on another shot. But the Oilers killed it off and were still in the game.

The Oilers pulled their goalie with over three minutes remaining. Three times, the Kings shot from their own end at the empty net and missed all three, each resulting in an icing. Then Zach Hyman made it 5-4 with just over two minutes remaining. McDavid had his third assist of the night.

The Oilers had all the momentum. They kept pressing as RNH had a shot, and then Viktor Arvidsson’s backhand from in close was blocked by Vladislav Gavrikov and ricocheted into the netting. With 1:28 remaining, McDavid burst into the offensive zone, banked the puck off the boards, danced around Mickey Anderson, cut to the net and slid it far side to beat Kuemper and tie the game.

Oilersnation went ballistic. Edmonton had come all the way back to tie the game 5-5. Edmonton kept pressuring. Thirty seconds later, Draisaitl won the offensive zone faceoff, McDavid circled back with the puck just inside the blue line, and fired a backhand pass midair, but Gavrikov deflected it down. He then hammered it off the boards and Evan Bouchard couldn’t knock it down midair. It bounced out to centre and Trevor Moore raced into the offensive zone, but Jake Walman got back and forced Moore to spin and stop at the top of the left circle. He passed the puck back to Danault and he one-timed the puck, but he fanned on it. It spun up in the air towards the net and Warren Foegele jumped, thinking the puck was going low. He was right in Skinner’s face so the Oilers goalie couldn’t see the puck, and it fluttered slowly into the net with 42 seconds remaining.

The amazing comeback wasn’t completed. The Kings won 6-5.

It was a wild ending and a thrilling third period, but the Oilers have no chance to win the series if they play like they did for the first 38 minutes.

They will focus on the third period. Now is not the time for players to focus on negatives. At the same time, they can’t overlook what led to them trailing 4-0. They generated nothing offensively, the power play only mustered two shots in four minutes of PP time, and Bouchard had two bad giveaways that led to the third and fourth goals. On the third one, he was on his forehand and could have just skated behind the net, instead, he flipped it softly with his backhand up the boards, and Adrian Kempe knocked it down. Skinner made a solid save on Kempe’s shot, but then the puck went behind the net and later bounced to Kempe in front, and he scored.

The fourth goal, Bouchard had the puck behind the net, and tried a backhand pass to McDavid, but he missed him, and it went right to Danault in the slot. He made it 4-0. Outside of those two plays, Bouchard had a solid game, but in the playoffs, you need better split-second decisions. The second one looked worse because it went right in the slot, but I understood his intention on the play. I disliked his decision on the third goal more. Either keep it on your forehand and eat the puck in the corner, or rip it around the boards, as the Kings had no one forechecking on the far side. Either way, making one error is fine, but two that lead directly to goals aren’t ideal. He made many good plays, and we can’t overlook those, but the big errors that led directly to goals are tough.

The playoffs are about making the fewest mistakes. Mistakes will happen. The Kings made some that led to Oilers goals as well, and Bouchard, who handles the puck a lot and plays a lot, will make more mistakes, but they can’t be ones that lead directly to goals. Giving the opposition easy goals makes life much harder. The Kings made mistakes, but the Oilers had to make some great plays or work hard to score their goals. They weren’t gifted a wide-open look in the slot.

For the third time in four years, the Oilers lost Game 1 of the series. They lost 4-3 in 2022 and 2023 before rallying to win the series. They will believe they can come back, meanwhile, the Kings will focus more on how they played in the first 38 minutes. They got caved in the third, and probably say they sat back too much. It might be true.

Today, both teams will focus on the long stretches where they controlled much of the play. LA ended up having a longer stretch, and ultimately, that was the difference in the game.

— Edmonton is now 3-11 in Game 1 of a series in the McDavid/Draisaitl era. If you include 2006, the Oilers are 4-14 in the salary cap era. The positive news is that in the previous 17 series, they won 10 of them. Last year, they lost Game 1 in Vancouver and came back to win the series. In 2022, in a wild 9-6 loss in Calgary, they rebounded and won the next four games. They’ve shown they can rebound, but eventually, at some point, they need to start winning more frequently in the opening game of a series.

— Paul Coffey relied heavily on his top-four defenders. Bouchard played 28:20, Nurse logged 25:17 and Brett Kulak skated 24:58. Jake Walman played 19:35 while also sitting four minutes in the penalty box. In the last 13:31 of the game, Bouchard played 9:04. He was on for the three goals that got them to tie the game. He does a lot of good things as well, and we can’t just focus on the turnovers. Those four will play a lot in this series.

In 2015, the Blackhawks’ top-four defenders played huge minutes. Duncan Keith averaged 31:07/game, Brent Seabrook (26:17), Niklas Hjalmarsson (26:02) and Johnny Oduya (24:45). The Hawks had a total of 129 minutes of OT time (totalled over four games), so that adds to the TOI. In 2013, those four all averaged between 22:45 and 27:37.

Since 2010, here are other teams that had their top four play at least 22+ minutes.

It isn’t ideal, but due to Mattias Ekholm’s injury, they will ride those four quite a bit. Troy Stecher likely isn’t ready until Game 4 or 5 at the earliest.

— Via Kevin Woodley on scoring chances last night… The Kings had 14 high-danger chances, four mid and 12 low. All six of their goals were on high-danger chances. The Oilers had nine high danger chances, two mid and 13 low. Four of their goals were on high danger chances and one was mid