LOS ANGELES — The Kings trailed 2-0 and 4-3, respectively, at the intermissions, but came away with a 7-6 overtime victory against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Crypto.com Arena on Saturday afternoon to keep their playoff push moving forward.
It was just their third win across 28 scenarios in which they’ve been down through two periods. That got them two points clear of Nashville and San Jose, who were squaring off later on Saturday in their bids for the final playoff spot out West.
Saturday also marked the Kings’ NHL record 31st overtime game this season and only their 12th home win. Kings interim coach, D.J. Smith, called the affair “a very weird game,” wherein both teams blew multi-goal leads and committed costly errors.
Adrian Kempe racked up two goals and two assists. Linemate Artemi Panarin notched a goal and two assists, with both he and Kempe setting up the game-winner by Quinton Byfield, his second goal on Saturday. Samuel Helenius and Alex Laferriere also lit the lamp. Trevor Moore had two assists. Darcy Kuemper made 14 of 20 saves.
Matthew Knies matched the output of Kempe while John Tavares paralleled Panarin’s contribution. Arcadia native Nicholas Robertson, Easton Cowan and Steven Lorentz also tallied. Joseph Woll stopped 33 of 40 shots.
“For forwards, it was a perfect game, actually. I don’t know about goalies,” Panarin said. “I wish we’d win every game, what was it, 6-5? 7-6? I stopped counting after three.”
In overtime, leading Leafs scorer William Nylander had a breakaway but flubbed it, sending the Kings the other way for an odd-man rush. That allowed Kempe, Panarin and Byfield to connect on a tic-tac-toe play to secure a gigantic second point. Byfield has three straight 20-goal seasons and both overtime winners against his hometown Maple Leafs this year.
“Kuemper made a very good pass to me. (Kempe) always makes a great pass. I’d just shot before, probably 10 times, and I couldn’t score, so I decided to pass it,” Panarin said.
Robertson brought the Leafs to within a goal just before the midway mark of the final frame and Knies made it a new game with 6:31 remaining in regulation. Brian Dumoulin’s clearing attempt was devoured by Dakota Joshua, who slipped the puck to an open Robertson before Knies punished Kuemper for his own failed clearing attempt with a bullet from the right dot.
“We created a ton and just shot ourselves in the foot, with a 6-4 lead, we just made some poor decisions with the puck,” Smith said.
The Kings had scored three times in 96 seconds — 5:46, 6:14 and 7:22 into the third period — to assume control of a match they’d chased for two-thirds of the action.
Laferriere made it 6-4 after Byfield disrupted Morgan Rielly’s pass out of the corner, forcing the puck to Moore. He hit Laferriere on the left dot for his 19th goal of the season.
Helenius glided into a pass and scored from high in the left circle to give the Kings their first lead of their night with 13:46 to play. It was goal No. 5 for Helenius, this one off some sound forechecking.
Kempe had already scored from the high slot, turning a smooth backhand feed from Panarin into his 32nd goal, the most of any King.
“We said going into the third, that if we stick with it, we’re going to get scoring chances,” Kempe said. “The most important thing tonight was to get the two points; it doesn’t matter what the score was or how we played.”
The Kings went into the break down 4-3, with five of those seven goals coming off turnovers and the other two being Toronto power-play tallies.
The Leafs twice broke a tie in the second period with the extra man, including with 12.5 seconds left in the stanza.
A Knies dish became a between-the-legs, behind-the-skate touch-pass by Tavares, which created Cowan’s tap-in tally.
The Kings had equalized with Panarin’s 27th goal of 2025-26. Kempe got the puck off Brandon Carlo in the corner and later got it back and moved it to Brandt Clarke. Panarin had gotten lost behind the net, reappearing to deflect Clarke’s pass home with 5:07 remaining.
At 9:18, Knies zipped the puck to Nylander, whose sharp-angle bid created a rebound that Tavares could have blown into the net for a man-advantage marker. Tavares has now recorded 30 or more goals in eight different seasons and became the third Maple Leaf 35 or older to notch 30 goals.
The Leafs also had two go-ahead goals disallowed, an own-goal off Joel Edmundson that was nullified for an offside entry and a strike from Robertson because Toronto had too many men on the ice.
Before that, a colossal puckhandling gaffe by Woll got the Kings on the board. As a Toronto power play expired, he played a long clearing attempt and swept it far into the neutral zone. Mikey Anderson picked off the pass easily and slid the puck to an open Kempe at 3:55.
Just 71 seconds into the period, the Kings scored seconds after their power play expired. A confused sort-out at the blue line saw Knies neglect his mark and create a three-on-two rush for the Kings. Moore and Jared Wright each made precise passes to set up a redirection goal by Byfield.
Despite taking four penalties in the first period, Toronto scored its only two goals, cashing in four-on-four at 4:19 and then shorthanded at 13:42.
Lorentz picked Anže Kopitar’s pocket at the defensive blue line, jumping to daylight and beating Kuemper with a snap shot to the glove side.
Knies opened the scoring after Edmundson hand-delivered the puck to Max Domi, who zoomed ahead and floated a saucer pass to Knies for a snipe from between the circles.
Next up, the Kings host Nashville in a potential four-point game on Monday.