Oilers Work Overtime to Earn Series With Kings : Smythe Division: Edmonton beats Calgary, 5-4, on Tikkanen’s third goal of the game.

Once poised to end their series against the Calgary Flames early, Edmonton had to extend itself into overtime Tuesday night to gain the right to play the Kings for the Smythe Division playoff championship.

Esa Tikkanen scored his third goal of the game at 6:58 of overtime to lift the Oilers to a 5-4 victory, capping a dramatic NHL playoff series that Edmonton had led three-games-to-one and a game in which the Oilers had trailed 3-0 after 16 minutes.

“I just tried to shoot the puck at the goal, and it went in,” Tikkanen said of the wrist shot from the top of the faceoff circle that floated into the net.

The King-Oiler Smythe Division championship series begins Thursday at the Forum, where the Kings have a 3-0-1 advantage over the Oilers this season. After two games in the Forum, the series switches to Edmonton, where each won two games.

The defending Stanley Cup champion Oilers had fallen behind on Calgary goals by Robert Reichel, Joe Nieuwendyk and Theoren Fleury. The goals by Reichel and Nieuwendyk were on power plays.

Edmonton came back to tie the score on Tikkanen’s goal at 10:38 of the second period. The Oilers outshot Calgary, 13-6, in the second and went ahead in the third on a goal by seldom-used Soviet forward Anatoli Semenov.

But a goal by Calgary’s Ron Stern with two minutes to play in the third period sent the game into overtime.

It’s the second consecutive year the Flames have been eliminated from the first round of the playoffs by a team that finished below them in the regular-season standings. Last season they lost to the Kings.

It was the second overtime in the series. The first ended in a Calgary victory at Edmonton on Sunday and evened the series, 3-3.

Stern forced the overtime with 2:10 left in the third period when he stuffed an Al MacInnis rebound past Edmonton goaltender Grant Fuhr, who stopped 26 shots.

Semenov gave Edmonton a 4-3 lead at 4:38 of the third when he jammed Adam Graves’ wraparound shot past Calgary goaltender Mike Vernon, who had 35 saves.

The Oilers looked as if they had won the fifth playoff meeting between the Alberta rivals when Semenov scored, pushing Calgary back on its heels.

Fuhr preserved the slim lead with great saves off Nieuwendyk and Paul Ranheim.

The Edmonton-King playoff series will be a rematch of last year’s Smythe final, in which Edmonton swept the Kings en route to its fifth Stanley Cup in seven years.