Los Angeles Kings interim coach D.J. Smith vowed Thursday night that his team "will be ready to play" while on the verge of a first-round exit for the fifth straight postseason.
The Kings lost 4-2 to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday in Game 3 of the Western Conference quarterfinals, leaving the Avs with a 3-0 series lead and the chance to sweep the series in Sunday's Game 4 in Los Angeles.
Only four of the 213 teams that have gone down 3-0 in a best-of-seven series have come back to win, according to the NHL. The last team to do it was the Kings in 2014.
"There was a lot of good things to like," Smith told reporters after Game 3. "You don't like the result and it's tough to swallow. But I can tell you we'll be prepared and those guys will be ready to play."
Ending the regular season as one of the league's best teams in terms of allowing the fewest shots and high-danger chances while having the third-best team save percentage in 5-on-5 suggested the Kings would have the defensive reliability to stay in the series.
Their defensive structure coupled with goalie Anton Forsberg's performances were crucial to the Avs averaging only two goals per game through the first two contests after leading the NHL with 3.63 goals per game in the regular season.
Getting the goals to complement that reliability, however, was a major question, with the Kings scoring only two goals -- one in each game -- to fall into a 2-0 series hole.
On Thursday, Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog staked his team to a 1-0 lead in the first period before L.A.'s Trevor Moore scored the tying goal on a deflected shot in the second period.
The Avs then broke that tie later in the frame with Cale Makar firing a wrist shot through traffic to beat a shielded Forsberg for a 2-1 lead with 7:48 remaining.
Artturi Lehkonen pushed the lead to 3-1 less than eight minutes into the third period before Adrian Kempe trimmed the lead to a single goal with 4:03 left. Brock Nelson scored an empty-net goal with 2:18 left.
"I think both teams are really good defensively. That's what I think, they've been a little more opportunistic than us with their chances," Smith said. "Honestly, the first two periods tonight are our best two, probably, of the series."
Smith said the Kings would "probably make a few changes" for Game 4 with the intent that it could create a spark to keep their season alive.
He was asked about the need to keep going because of what it could mean for club captain Anze Kopitar, who is slated to retire at the end of the season.
"I think that's probably going to be in the back of some of the guys' minds," Smith said. "But ultimately, you got to play."
Kopitar and Drew Doughty are more than the Kings' two most experienced players. They also are the only holdovers from the last time the Kings advanced beyond the first round, in 2014, when they helped the franchise rally to take the opening-round series against the San Jose Sharks and win its second Stanley Cup in three years.
L.A. reached the playoffs twice in the four seasons following that Cup victory before undergoing what was once considered one of the NHL's more promising rebuilds.
The construction around a pair of proven, Cup-winning veterans in Kopitar and Doughty created the belief that the Kings could eventually be among those teams perennially challenging for the title.
Instead, the Kings have toiled in the first round, where they have been eliminated by the Edmonton Oilers for four straight seasons.
The Kings did not have to face the two-time defending Western Conference champion Oilers for a fifth consecutive postseason, but it has been far from a respite. They are facing an Avalanche team that ended the regular season with 55 wins, 121 points and the Presidents' Trophy for the best record in the NHL.
"I can tell you this, there's no quit in there and I think you'll see our best game," Smith said. "I thought for two periods, we played really well. If you gave that game on a lot of nights, you're up 3-0, 4-0. ... We're going to give 60 minutes of structure and we're going to give everything we have to win that game."
