Kings' overtime coaching overhaul leads to dramatic win over Senators

The Los Angeles Kings found a way to win a game they shouldn’t have needed to find a way to win on Thursday night. They might have a change in coaching strategy to thank for that.

After blowing a 5-1 third-period lead, the Kings defeated the Ottawa Senators 6-5 in overtime behind Quinton Byfield’s game-winner. But almost as interesting as the wild swings of the game was something Drew Doughty revealed after it ended.

“It’s the first year in my whole career that we’ve ever actually worked on three-on-three,” the Kings’ captain said. “A lot of credit to the coaches in that area. We worked on it in camp. We worked on it before the season started, and they had a bit of a game plan, which we didn’t really have before either. So a lot of credit to them for making us work on it.”

If the Kings ever had an offseason where they needed to improve that aspect of their game, it was this past one. They lost an NHL-record 20 overtime and shootout games in 2025-26, a huge part of the reason they finished with the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot and were swept out of the playoffs in the first round. First-year head coach Peter Laviolette came in and wanted to make sure the Kings didn’t post those numbers again.

“There’s definitely a method to the madness, and there’s got to be a buy-in to that, and I think the players bought in,” Laviolette said. “There’s a lot of review that went through it, and there’s things that we talk about prior to games and then after games — the overtime games — and reviewing that. And I think the players have done a really good job of executing them.”

Byfield, who scored with a burst of energy straight off the bench, went into more detail about what specifically the Kings focused on in their three-on-three practices.

“Just trying to handle the puck as much as we can,” he said. “Obviously taking the right shots. [We] kind of went over it during training camp, some practices as well. You want to possess the puck, kind of tire them out, and let the next guy up come off [the bench]. So they did a great job with that, and I just got lucky there.”

“[Last year] we were just taking some shots and missing the net, creating the other way. So we can just maintain it, take the right shots and possess a little more and have it for good opportunities.”

The Kings are now 2-2 in overtime this season, an early improvement on last year’s 13-20 mark, and have generally played better in those extra periods.

“I actually think that we should be better than 2-2 in overtime, just based on the fact that we controlled a lot — if we played 12 minutes, we thought we controlled 10 of it, but we’re 2-2,” Laviolette said. “So we go back and we look at the ones that we didn’t win, and maybe things we could have done better on the side of those.”

Although the overtime results haven’t quite arrived the way the Kings want yet, they were certainly needed tonight after their third-period collapse and the exit of Brandt Clarke due to an upper-body injury. Following a strong shift to close regulation, overtime saved the game — something the team couldn’t say very often last season.

“I think there’s things that we can do better,” Laviolette said. “We’ll take care of that tomorrow. We’ll go through some stuff and talk with the players and meet with them and go through it. At the end of the day, it went to overtime. I thought we did good things, and we got the win and the two points.”

The Kings now have 10 points, with a 4-6-2 record. Tonight was the first game of a seven-game homestand, which continues on Saturday afternoon against the Buffalo Sabres.