EDMONTON - Edmonton Oilers winger Taylor Hall could have blasted one off the linesmen for getting an assist on Jeff Carter’s winning goal in the last minute at Rexall Place on Tuesday, but one of the NHL’s stars wasn’t going to blame the stripes for the Los Angeles Kings last-gasp win.

While either Thor Nelson or Brian Mach — nobody was sure which referee was the culprit — got in the way of a Hall rush along the boards, and it was quickly turned up ice and Carter redirected Trevor Lewis’s 40-footer past Nikolai Khabibulin with 50 seconds left in the Kings’ 3-1 victory, Hall chose to take the high road and not blame the officials for the loss.

“I’ve never been a linesmen in my life ... I’m trying to make a play and I’m sure he didn’t mean to get in the way,” said Hall, who earlier had assisted on Sam Gagner’s second-period power-play goal. “Just one of those things you have to deal with. There’s two linesmen and two referees on the ice and you have to manoeuvre around them.”

The Oilers really lost the game because they couldn’t handle the Kings. Their size beat Edmonton’s skill.

“They played better than us, they were a heavier team, harder on the pucks,” Hall said. “Got pucks deep on us and made us play in our end ... exactly what we want to do to other teams.

“But we didn’t do it,” said Hall.

The Oilers beat the Kings 2-1 in overtime at Rexall Place on Jan. 24 when Nail Yakupov batted one past Jonathan Quick with five ticks left on the clock to tie it, then slid up the ice on his knees in jubilation.

Gagner sent the frustrated Kings to the dressing room a few minutes later with his overtime winner.

This time, it was a different script, with Khabibulin facing 37 shots and making six excellent stops in his second start of the season. He gave up a rebound goal to Colin Fraser in the game’s 24th minute, then robbed Lewis twice in the third—once with a pad, then other with his shoulder.

Fittingly, Lewis, one of the Kings’ best forwards on the night, set it up.

“Someone put the shot on goal and Carter was driving the net and got the shaft of his stick on it in the air and it snuck in five-hole,” Khabibulin said.

“You never want to lose in the last minute. We could have had a point at least. Now we have none.”

Jarret Stoll added an insurance marker, his third of the season.

The Oilers are now 1-2 on this five-game homestand, losing 4-1 to the Dallas Stars and Tuesday to the Kings, sandwiched around a 6-4 rally over the Colorado Avalanche. That’s not nearly good enough, with the nine-game, 17-day trek starting Monday in Chicago.

“We played two good games, but we had a stinker in this one,” said Hall.

The Oilers had 56 shots against the Avalanche on Saturday night, but had fewer than half as many shots against the Kings on Tuesday, underscoring a team that can’t get on a roll. They’ve only won two games in a row once this season (Colorado and Phoenix) at the end of last month. They’re now 6-6-3 on the season.

Gagner wasn’t railing about the referees’ mistake in the last minute, either.

“Unfortunate. It’ll happen for our benefit, too, but we take that (late play) out of it, if we’re playing the right way,” said Gagner, who whipped a 30-foot shot past Quick, on a play that Carter appeared to tip past his goalie.

“If we’re playing hard, getting the pucks to the net and aren’t turning them over, we’re fine. If we took the Colorado game as the template, the play at the end isn’t an issue,” Gagner said.

Hall didn’t sugar-coat the loss. No stickhandling around this one.

“They got the pucks in on us, and wore our (defence) down and eventually got the goal,” he said.

“We knew they’d be a heavy team and we wanted to limit that by playing in their end, so their big forwards would be standing around. Once they got comfortable playing their cycle game, though, they did a lot of things better than us,” he said.

ON THE BENCH: Oilers centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins got rocked several times, including once in the open ice by Kings captain Dustin Brown ... Yakupov appeared to have hurt his right hand along the glass in the third period.

He was seen on the bench, getting treatment for a possible cut ... The Oilers didn’t dress Lennart Petrell, who took a puck to the head in Saturday’s warm-up to the Avalanche, and Corey Potter ... Veteran winger Ales Hemsky also took a puck to the helmet in the early going off a Gagner shot, but shook it off.

jmatheson@edmontonjournal.com