They just had to make it exciting. That’s what you can say about the LA Kings and their 6-5 late-third-period win over Edmonton in Los Angeles Monday night. Heck, they took a 4-0 lead and turned it into a 5-5 tie within a couple of periods, and if momentum has anything to do with things, they should probably have lost the game after Connor McDavid tied it at cinqo-cinqo with but little time left.

Things started out so well for the Kings. Andrei Kuzmenko, soft-spoken Russian deadline pickup, scored on a power play less than three minutes in. Right before the end of the first, Quinton Byfield added a second goal. Kempe and Danault scored in the second, and it looked like period two would end 4-0, but for a late rest/commercial break period that gave Edmonton a chance to recharge and end up scoring with six seconds in the frame to end it, 4-1.

That would have meant less had the goal and main assist not been put up by a now-awakened Draisaitl and McDavid. I’m not sure what other eyes saw from McDavid to that point, but I noticed a distinct lack of purpose in his attack. There was more than one time when he took a puck across the slot but didn’t shoot. Twice, he made backwards drops of pucks to nobody, when he could have taken the shot himself. “Trying to be too fine,” the commentators would say.

But by the end of the evening, McDavid would have registered a goal and three assists. Included in that number was a lovely goal to tie the game with 18:32 gone in the third. He cruised in on the right wall, cut to the net, and shot low to the far side, finding the only four inches of space available for a puck to squeeze into.

In the press box, I heard someone say, “There’s Kuemper’s bad one for the game.” No, friend, you’re wrong. You did just prove to listeners that you’ve never played in an actual hockey game yourself, however.

So that was it. Most onlookers, and that meant an extremely full building of both Oilers and Kings fans, probably figured what I did: that the jig was up. The Oilers had had a bad start, but they had awakened. Just in time for overtime.

So what if I had to get up at 4am to take my Toronto-based nephew to LAX? This OT is going to be fun, I’m thinking.

Only there was to be no OT, as the Kings turned a relatively late and harmless-looking rush into a winning goal with 42 seconds left. No OT, but an important win, though afterwards, none of the players, nor the coach, was willing to talk about the near-collapsse.

Does this win predict good things? Most people would agree with what one person in hockey media said to me in the arena the other night: “I’m not sure if the Kings can beat the Oilers, but if there was ever a year they could do it, this would be it.”

That might be mitigated by the fact that Evander Kane is due to come back for game two, adding a nastiness and ferocity that’s just a bit lacking when he’s not playing. Though to that point note that the Oilers out-hit the Kings on the night, 42-30, a stat that usually has some hometown bias built in. (Kings fans will remember the generous numbers Dustin Brown used to put up. Not that he didn’t deserve many of them.)

The question of whether McDavid and Draisaitl were awakened by this game or discouraged by it remains to be proved over the next week of action, starting Wednesday night at 7pm local time.

Onlookers are predicting a more sedate context, perhaps a 2-1 game, but the Kings have, against all odds, been scoring of late. And the one thing you can almost certainly count on is that if they get five goals, the Oilers are good for at least that many, or, their fans would hope, one more than that.