Napoleon had Waterloo. George III had the American Revolution. Jim Hiller has the third period.
For the first two monarchs, those losses stained their reigns. For Hiller, who coaches Kings, the third period is beginning to stain his as well.
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Five times in his team’s NHL playoff series with the Edmonton Oilers, his Kings have taken a lead or a tie into the third period. Three times they wound up losing, the latest one coming Tuesday in Game 5 when Mattias Janmark scored off a rebound with less than 13 minutes to play to help give the Oilers a 3-1 win and a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.
The series resumes Thursday in Edmonton, where the Oilers can eliminate the Kings in the first round for the fourth time in as many seasons. The Kings haven’t reached the second round since 2014, when they won their last Stanley Cup.
Read more: Kings fall to Oilers in a Game 4 shutout, moving to the brink of elimination
“They executed way better than us tonight,” Hiller said. “They were stronger. They beat us in every area of the game except the specialty [teams]. We can’t look to one part of our game and think that it was acceptable.”
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Well, except for goaltender Darcy Kuemper, who was brilliant and deserved a far better fate after turning back 43 shots. He’s faced 93 in the last two games, but the Kings have scored just four times behind him.
“Darcy was stellar tonight, as he’s been the whole season,” captain Anze Kopitar said. “He gave us a chance.”
Kings left wing Andrei Kuzmenko gets tangled up with Oilers defenseman Brett Kulak in the first period. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Andrei Kuzmenko gave the Kings the lead on a power-play goal — the team’s eighth of the series — at 3:33 of the second period, but Evander Kane tied it for the Oilers less than three minutes later. And the score stayed that way entering the third period, which has been a problem for the Kings all season.
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Hiller’s team gave up 86 goals in the final 20 minutes and overtime, nearly double what it gave up in the first period. The Kings have been even worse in the playoffs, with 14 of the Oilers’ league-high 21 goals coming in the third period or overtime.
Six other teams entered Wednesday having given up fewer than 14 goals in the entire postseason. So it was only a matter of time before Edmonton struck again Tuesday, and this time the goal came at 7:12 from Janmark, who scored off the rebound of a shot by Viktor…