The LA Kings Are the Only NHL Team to Come Back From 3-0 — Now They Need to Do It Again

There's a cruel kind of irony at work in the Colorado Avalanche vs. LA Kings first-round series right now. Of the 213 NHL teams that have fallen into a 3-0 series deficit, only four have ever come back to win. One of those four teams? The 2014 LA Kings, who clawed back from 3-0 down against the San Jose Sharks on their way to a Stanley Cup championship.

Now the Kings are down 3-0 again. Game 4 is Sunday in LA. And the question nobody wanted to ask is suddenly unavoidable: can they do it twice?

The Kings are the only franchise in NHL history that knows exactly what it takes to come back from 3-0 — and that history is either their greatest asset or the cruelest possible reminder of how far they've fallen.

The Numbers Are Brutal

According to ESPN, the Avalanche beat the Kings 4-2 in Game 3 to take a commanding 3-0 series lead. And if you dig into the numbers, Colorado hasn't even been playing their best hockey.

The Avs averaged 3.63 goals per game during the regular season — good enough to win the Presidents' Trophy. In this series, they've averaged just 2 goals per game. They're winning without their A-game, which tells you everything about where the Kings are right now.

LA has scored a total of 2 goals across three playoff games. Two. That's not a slump — that's a wall. You can't win a playoff series scoring less than a goal a game, and the Kings haven't come close to solving that problem through three games.

The historical math is equally grim. Going from 3-0 down to winning a series has happened exactly four times in 213 attempts in NHL history. That's less than a 2% success rate. The Kings already used their miracle comeback once.

The One Reason for Hope

Here's the thing though: that 2% includes the Kings themselves. And that's not a small thing.

The 2014 Kings didn't just come back from 3-0 against San Jose — they did it on the road, in a hostile building, and then went on to beat four teams and win the Cup. They know what this looks like from the inside. The organizational memory of how to stay alive when everyone's written you off exists in that locker room.

Interim coach D.J. Smith kept it measured after Game 3, telling ESPN: "We will be ready to play." That's not a rallying speech, but it's also not a concession. And right now, not panicking might be exactly the right approach.

Game 4 is in LA, which matters. Home crowds matter in the playoffs. A Kings win on Sunday doesn't save the season — it just gets them to a Game 5 in Denver — but it changes the psychological math of the series. Sometimes momentum is the only thing standing between elimination and an improbable run.

If I'm being honest with myself, the odds here are genuinely terrible. But I've watched enough sports to know that the moment you rule something out completely is usually the moment it happens.

Kopitar and Doughty's Legacy

This is where the series gets heavier than just wins and losses.

Anze Kopitar and Drew Doughty are the only two players still on the Kings roster who were part of the 2014 championship core. According to ESPN, this would be the Kings' fifth straight first-round exit — and the previous four all came against Edmonton. Now, in a series against a different opponent, they're staring down the same outcome.

For Kopitar and Doughty, Sunday's game might not be just another playoff contest. These are guys who know what it feels like to hoist the Cup. They've been through the deepest kind of team sports success, and they've been watching the team rebuild around them for years.

At some point, every player in that position has to confront the question of how many more legitimate chances they'll get. I don't know where Kopitar and Doughty are in their thinking on that, but I do know that legacies don't close on a 3-0 deficit — they close when the final buzzer sounds on Game 4, or whenever this series ends.

If the Kings can win Sunday, they buy those two veterans one more game. And in playoff hockey, one more game is all it ever takes to change a story.

The Bottom Line

The LA Kings are down 3-0 to Colorado in a series where they've scored two total goals and the Avs are winning despite not even playing their best hockey. The numbers are not in LA's favor — at all.

But the Kings are literally the only franchise in NHL history that has done this before. That fact doesn't make a comeback likely. It just means they're not starting from zero when it comes to believing it's possible.

Game 4 is Sunday in LA. Kopitar and Doughty will be on the ice. The crowd will be loud. And somewhere in that building, the memory of 2014 will be in the room.

Whether that's enough — we'll find out.