Kings Battle Back to Stun Edmonton, 7-6 : L.A. Scores Four Times in Final Period; Erickson Gets Winning Goal

The team that won Sunday’s hockey game in front of 8,795 fans at the Forum looked like the Edmonton Oilers. But in fact, it was the Kings that came from behind to beat the Oilers, 7-6.

This was the same Kings team that lost to Boston, 4-1, Saturday night.

“I was very disappointed last (Saturday) night because we got beaten so easily,” Quinn said after Sunday night’s game. “They really battled tonight and showed the grit they have. They battled all night long. I really like the way our guys faced the challenges.”

The challenge for the Kings in the third period was to find a way to overcome a 4-3 Edmonton lead. The answer was to score four goals. Why does scoring four goals seem to be the answer to almost any puzzle?

Edmonton scored first in the final period, extending their lead to 5-3 and giving the game the look of all those other ‘Where-do-they-get-all-these-guys?’ Edmonton victory.

But the Kings came back with three straight goals.

Little more than one minute after Larry Playfair’s goal, rookie Jimmy Carson drilled a shot from 30 feet to tie the game at 5-5.

Rookie Luc Robitaille scored the Kings’ next goal after taking a pass from the venerable Marcel Dionne, who carried the puck up the ice on the right side and fought off defenders with one hand while setting up to pass.

The Kings now had a 6-5 lead, but it didn’t hold up as Jari Kurri, who has scored more than 100 points for four straight years, scored the Oilers’ second short-handed goal at 15:13 to tie it. Again. The game had been tied at 2-2, 4-4 and 6-6.

“Even when they came back, we just needed one guy to get us back in the game,” Dave Taylor, the Kings’ captain, said.

The one guy was right winger Bryan Erickson. He hit a slap shot from the right side that gave the Kings the lead, this time for good, at 17:07.

“I was just trying to shoot as hard as I could,” Erickson said.

The Kings came out animated and alive in the first period and took a quick 2-0 lead.

After a faceoff, Dave Taylor scored at 3:41 of the first period. Carson won the draw for the Kings and Dean Kennedy got the puck off the boards. Kennedy fed the puck to Taylor, whose low drive got past Edmonton goaltender Andy Moog.

The Kings struck again 6:58 into the first period as Robitaille knocked in a rebound of a shot by Erickson.

But the Oilers came back with three goals within a three-minute span.

The first Oiler goal came on a power play and was set up by Gretzky from behind the King net. He passed to Esa Tikkanen, who scored.

Edmonton scored again when Paul Coffey took a hard shot and Marty McSorely knocked in the rebound to make it 2-2 at 11:41.

The third Oiler goal came on a mistake by King goaltender Bob Janecyk. After an Edmonton shot, Janecyk gathered the puck in his glove and waited for defenseman Jay Wells to come back for the puck.

Janecyk waited too long. Wells got back, but so did most of the Oiler team. When Janecyk put the puck on the ice, Tikkanen merely put his stick on it and pushed it in.

The first period ended with the scored tied at 3-3 after the Kings got a power play goal from Wells.

The Kings had numerous excellent shots in the second period but Moog was stopping everything. But the Oilers got the only goal of the period, a short handed goal by Kevin Lowe at 9:08.

King Notes

The Kings (3-3) are now tied with Edmonton for first place in the Smythe Division. . . . Luc Robitaille’s goal in the first period was the 5,000th in the history of the Kings. The Kings have allowed 5,527. . . . Wayne Gretzky had a streak of assisting on 10 straight goals before not figuring on Edmonton’s second goal Sunday night. . . . The Kings’ much-heralded new ice machine broke down after making one and a half laps during the first intermission. The team’s aging Zamboni was brought on to finish the job and push the new machine off the ice.