With five saves in overtime and a perfect 3-for-3 effort in the shootout, goaltender Anton Forsberg helped lead the LA Kings (19-15-10) to a 4-3 win over the Edmonton Oilers (22-16-7) on Saturday night at Rogers Place in the first meeting of the two Pacific Division foes this season.

Kings goals came from Corey Perry, Andre Lee and Alex Laferriere, while Brandt Clarke posted two assists and Adrian Kempe was the lone skater to find the back of the net in the shootout to clinch the victory.

Leon Draisaitl got the home team on the board first, scoring his 22nd goal of the season at 9:12 of the opening period off a turnover that the Oilers caused with a heavy forecheck in the Kings zone.

With just over two minutes left in the first period, the Kings evened up the score with a power play strike by Perry. Moments after Kempe was caught in the face by a high stick from Darnell Nurse, he won the ensuing faceoff and set up a shot by Clarke. Perry jammed in the rebound past Edmonton netminder Connor Ingram for his 10th goal of the year to tie the game at 1-1.

Draisaitl put Edmonton back in front by a 2-1 score when he found the back of the net for a second time just 1:07 into the middle period off a faceoff that he won in the Kings zone. He then raced over to the slot and one-timed a pass by Evan Bouchard past Forsberg for his 23rd tally of the year.

Less than three minutes later, however, Lee netted his first of the year in his third NHL game of the season by redirecting a rebound off a shot by Quinton Byfield into the goal to make it a 2-2 game. Taylor Ward was credited with a second assist on the play, his second helper in as many nights.

LA took the lead for the first time at 6:21 of the third when Kempe won another faceoff to Brandt Clake, who played the puck toward the net. On its way, it took a deflection off the stick of Laferriere and made it into the goal. Laferriere’s 12th strike of the year put the Kings on top, 3-2.

But the Oilers wouldn’t go quietly, and evened the game once again on a power play goal by Connor McDavid which came during a 5-on-3 man-advantage at 9:20 of the final frame.

The game remained tied for the rest of regulation and a back-and-forth overtime, which included a chance for McDavid that saw the puck go into the net, but was called off for goaltender interference on the play. That set the stage for Kempe in the shootout, while Forsberg stopped McDavid, Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in the extra session.

Forsberg ended the game with 21 saves to earn the win, while Ingram stopped 28 shots in a losing effort for Edmonton. Both teams converted once on the power play, with LA going 1-for-2 and the Oilers ending at 1-for-4.

Postgame thoughts from Lee, Laferriere and head coach Jim Hiller are below.

Andre Lee

Alex Laferriere
On getting a win over Edmonton in a hard fought game
That was a huge character win for us, couple huge guys out of our lineup, tough game last night, and then come in here into a barn that’s pretty hard to win in and play like that. It was a great game, and I mean we don’t win that game without Forsberg too. I thought he played unbelievable, stood on his head for us there, and gave us a chance to win it in the end.

On Forsberg’s play throughout the game
He’s a gamer, and comes up huge in big moments. For us to have him back there and know that we can rely on him to bail us out sometimes is huge and gives the guys in front of him a lot of confidence as well.

On what he saw on his goal when Clarke shot the puck
We kind of like talked about a faceoff play right before, and I just wanted to bear down and win the faceoff, and then kind of anything that happened after that was positive for me. So, I won that faceoff, and just kind of tried to get my body to the net, and Clarke and [Kempe] made great play up there. Clarke just slung it towards the net and I got a tip on it and luckily went in.

On if there was any extra meaning to this game vs. Edmonton
I mean, I think anytime we play these guys, there’s a little bit of extra juice, they’ve ended our season in the past four years. So yeah, anytime we can come in this barn especially and play those guys, we’re all pretty juiced up for that and we want to take it to them. So I think no matter what, when we play these guys, we’re a little extra juiced up.

On why the team has done so well on the second night of back-to-backs this year
I think just the depth of our team. I mean, you see guys like Lee tonight, Ward, these guys come in, not playing many games at all for us this year, and they come in and they produce, and they played unbelievable. Were out there against top guys and shutting them down and when we have guys like that come in to our lineup and we know that we can rely on them, especially when it’s a back-to-back and we’re a little bit tired and we need those guys to step up even bigger. They’ve done it pretty much all year. So it’s huge to have those guys.

Jim Hiller
On the play of Anton Forsberg
He’s been playing well. I think particularly strong in the shootouts. We’ve seen that from him this year. But I thought he had a strong game start to finish.

On the way his team was prepared for the back-to-back situation
I think the back-to-backs, you want to test your character of your team, those are back-to-backs. And a lot of times, we got in really late last night, you can kind of build in an excuse a little bit, but we don’t do that. We haven’t done that, and I’m just really proud of the effort. It was a hard fought game last night despite the score, get in late, first time against Edmonton, and we came out right from the drop of the puck ready to play.

On the way his team played in the game overall
You’re going to bend against Edmonton at different times, especially when they go on the power play. But I thought, zero through 60, we were pretty consistent the whole way through. Our penalty killers, despite the five-on-three goal, I thought our penalty killers at five-on-four, that’s the best we’ve killed Edmonton, and so that was a real positive, really important part of the game. I also thought that Sam Helenius’ line, you can talk about Lee scoring the goal, but Sam Helenius’ line, I thought they gave us real minutes. They played in the o-zone, they forechecked, Sam got caught a couple times against Draisaitl, playing d-zone for a good 30 seconds and did a great job. So I thought that line was really important for us tonight.

On Corey Perry returning to the lineup and being a big part of the win
To me, he’s going through a tough time, and this is a hockey player just through and through. He comes, he shows up here, he wants to play hockey, he wants to help his team in difficult circumstances, and then he goes out and scores a goal. He plays 15-16 minutes, a lot of times against McDavid’s line, it’s pretty incredible. I just have so much respect for him and I always have, but this is- I just have a lot of respect for him.

On the play of Alex Laferriere and his goal
Really nice play. Faceoff, first of all you’ve got to win the faceoff. Clarke comes down the wall, throws it in. It’s a really good tip. It’s a difficult tip. He was a guy who played a heck of a game tonight, too. A winger who’s converted to center, and then he’s winning big faceoffs at the end against some of the top face off guys. There’s so many elements that go into a game like this, and just up and down the lineup we got some really, really big efforts.

On this being another example of responding well to losses
Last night was a funny game. In the end, we have 80 shot attempts, we got all kinds of chances, they get two off the skates, one kind of a funny one. So it was demoralizing the score, but we played through it, and I thought what was important is to finish that game hard and well, we did in the third period. I thought that carried over into tonight too. It’s just a really good win for us.

Notes –
-Forward Corey Perry (1-0=1) scored his 10th goal of the season, the fourth power play strike (PPG) of his Kings career. He is now tied with Kevin Fiala (4 PPG) for second most power play goals by a Kings skater this season behind Andrei Kuzmenko (5 PPG).
-The 40-year-old becomes the fourth Kings skater to reach double-digits in the goal column this year with his 28th career goal against the Edmonton Oilers, the most by any active skater League-wide. Perry also ties teammate Drew Doughty (8 PPG) and Oliver Ekman-Larsson (8 PPG) for the most power play goals against Edmonton by an active skater.
-Additionally, the native of Peterborough, Ontario, joins Alex Ovechkin (19 G) as the second 40-year-old with at least 10 goals in 2025-26. The last season to feature multiple 40-year-olds accomplish the feat was 2016-17 (Jaromir Jagr: 16 G and Matt Cullen: 10 G), per NHL PR.
-Forward Andre Lee (1-0=1) scored his second career NHL goal, his first of the season. Lee has a team-leading 15 goals in 32 games played this season for the Ontario Reign, the Kings’ American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate.
-Forward Alex Laferriere (1-0=1) scored his 12th goal of the season, his fourth point (2-2=4) in his last five games played, dating back to Jan. 3 versus Minnesota.
-Defenseman Brandt Clarke (0-2=2) recorded his 15th and 16th assists of the season tonight, leapfrogging Kevin Fiala (15 A) and Anze Kopitar (15 A) for third most among all team skaters, trailing only Quinton Byfield (19 A) and Adrian Kempe (20 A). Tonight’s performance marked Clarke’s sixth multi-point game of the campaign, the third most among all team skaters behind Byfield (8 GP) and Kempe (8 GP).
-Clarke is the seventh defenseman in Kings history to record six or more multi-point games within the first 44 games of a season at age 22 or younger. He joins Rob Blake (6 GP in 1990-91), Craig Redmond (7 GP in 1984-85), Drew Doughty (2x: 7 GP in 2009-10 and 8 GP in 2010-11), Gary Sargent (8 GP in 1976-77), Alexei Zhitnik (9 GP in 1993-94), and Larry Murphy (12 GP in 1980-81).
-Forward Andrei Kuzmenko (0-1=1) notched his eighth assist of the campaign, his ninth power play point (5-4=9) of the season, ranking third most on the team behind Perry (4-6=10) and Fiala (5-8=12).
-Forward Quinton Byfield (0-1=1) provided his 19th assist of the campaign on Lee’s goal, his sixth assist and 12th point (6-6=12) in 15 games played against the Pacific Division rival Oilers.
-Forward Taylor Ward (0-1=1) picked up the second assist of his NHL career on Lee’s goal just over 24 hours after registering his first helper last night, Jan. 9, in Winnipeg. Byfield, Lee, and Ward were all teammates on the Ontario Reign during the 2022-23 season; Brandt Clarke, Samuel Helenius, Alex Laferriere, Jacob Moverare and Alex Turcotte join the trio on the list of eight alumni from that Reign team on the Kings’ current roster.
-Forward Adrian Kempe (0-1=1) extended his lead in assists amongst Kings skaters this season by recording his 20th helper of the season on Laferriere’s tally. The 29-year-old soon-to-be Olympian then scored his fourth career shootout game-deciding goal, tying Justin Williams, Jeff Carter, and Patrick O’Sullivan for the fifth most such tallies in LA Kings franchise history.
-Goaltender Anton Forsberg made 21 saves on 24 shots faced through 65:00 minutes of action before stopping all three of Edmonton’s shootout attempts to earn his seventh win of the season.

After a day off on Sunday, the Kings return home to face the Dallas Stars on Monday night at Crypto.com Arena beginning at 7 p.m.