VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The Kings saw their five-game win streak come to an end, but they still gained ground on third place in the Pacific Division despite losing to the Vancouver Canucks, 4-3 in overtime, on Tuesday night at Rogers Arena.
Jake DeBrusk scored his second goal of the game at 2:58 of overtime, collecting a pass from center Elias Pettersson and tapping a shot in to seal the victory.
The Kings are 13-20 in games that go past regulation this season.
“The good thing is we only got one more game where we’re going to deal with these three-on-three overtimes,” Kings interim coach D.J. Smith told NHL.com. “We get to overtime (in the playoffs), you’re going to play five-on-five, and we’re going to find out.”
The Kings (35-26-20, 90 points) did earn a point for the eighth straight game (6-0-2) and moved into a tie in points for third in the division with the Ducks, who lost to the Minnesota Wild, 3-2, on Tuesday.
The Ducks own the regulation wins tiebreaker with the Kings (25-22) as each team heads into its regular-season finale trying to avoid finishing in the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot, which means a first-round playoff matchup with the league-leading Colorado Avalanche. The Kings close the regular season at Calgary on Thursday, while the Ducks go to Nashville for their finale.
“We know how important all these games are,” Kings winger Alex Laferriere told NHL.com. “We know we can pass anybody in the standings on any given night. It was a sense of relief for us to know that we clinched, but we knew that we still wanted to push and get as high up in the standings as we could.
“In times like this, you got to kind of focus and lean on your leaders, and Drew (Doughty) and (Anze Kopitar) are those guys for us, and they’re telling us how it feels like 2012 in here, and how they were stringing together some games at the end of the season and crept in and then they went on to win the [Stanley] Cup. So, for us right now it’s about continuing to trend positively with our game and kind of stringing those along and just trying not to take any huge dips, and I think we’re going to be in a good spot going into Game 1.”
Quinton Byfield and Laferriere each had a goal and an assist for the Kings on Tuesday. Adrian Kempe scored his 36th goal of the season, and Darcy Kuemper made 21 saves.
Defenseman Elias Pettersson opened the scoring for the Canucks (25-48-8, 58 points), and DeBrusk and Zeev Buium added goals in the second period. Elias Pettersson had two assists. The Canucks won their third straight game for the first time since Dec. 14-20, when they took four straight road victories.
Kevin Lankinen stopped 31 of the 34 shots he faced as Vancouver improved to 9-27-5 on home ice this season.
DeBrusk scored for a third straight game. His three goals across the stretch came on the power play. The 29-year-old winger has scored 19 of his 23 goals with the man advantage this season.
The Canucks outshot the Kings 7-4 as the two teams were tied 1-1 after 20 minutes.
Pettersson scored at 9:21 of the first, putting his shot from the point under the blocker of a screened Kuemper for his third of the season.
The Kings tied it 1-1 when Byfield redirected a Laferriere feed past Lankinen for his 23rd of the season – matching his career best.
The Canucks took a 2-1 lead on a power play 52 seconds into the middle frame, banging home the loose puck off Brock Boeser’s shot past Kuemper for his 22nd.
Kempe responded 12 seconds later, chipping a Kopitar feed up and over the pad of Lankinen for his 36th of the season and his 10th in the past nine games.
“You got that line and then you got [Byfield’s] line that’s scoring every night, too,” Smith told NHL.com. “For a team that wasn’t scoring a ton, we’re scoring, and we’re going to need that to continue in the playoffs. Obviously, it’s going to get way tighter and chances are going to be hard to come by, but it’s going to be fun.”
The Kings took their first lead of the game at 2:17 of the second when Laferriere put home a rebound off Drew Doughty’s point shot for his 21st of the season. His initial redirection of Doughty’s shot was stopped by Lankinen, but Laferriere collected his own rebound and slid a backhand past the right pad of the goaltender.
Buium tied it 3-3 at 9:20 of the second, completing a give-and-go with Nils Hoglander for his sixth of the season.
Kopitar played his final game at Rogers Arena and registered an assist on Kempe’s second-period goal. He has 864 career assists, which ranks third among active players with a single franchise, trailing only the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Evgeni Malkin (874) and Sidney Crosby (1,107).
UP NEXT
The Kings play their regular-season finale at the Calgary Flames on Thursday at 6 p.m. PT.