LOS ANGELES — In a battle for playoff seeding, the Kings looked less like ready-for-prime time players than the Edmonton Oilers.

Connor McDavid set a career high with his 42nd goal and added an assist as the Oilers defeated the Kings, 3-2, on Thursday night at Crypto.com Arena. Evan Bouchard also had a goal and two assists for the Oilers, who have won six straight and 12 of their past 15 to take a three-point lead over the Kings for second place in the Pacific Division.

The Kings, who have lost two straight and four of their last six, have nine games remaining and Edmonton has 10. The Kings are still four points ahead of the fourth-place Vegas Golden Knights, keeping the Kings out of the wild-card discussion for now.

If the season were to end today, the Kings and Oilers would meet in a first-round playoff series, with Edmonton holding home ice for a potential Game 7. That might not be the worst news for the Kings, who own a modest .541 points percentage at home but have posted a robust .657 mark on the road.

The Kings played with some gusto in the middle stages of Thursday’s game, but they bookended it with a sluggish start and a fizzling finish.

“There are some preventable moments in tonight’s game. First of all, an awful line change on our behalf; we skated right by arguably the best player in the world when he was going 100 miles an hour,” Kings coach Todd McLellan said. “We had very poor execution after a faceoff win on the third [goal] … so those are fixable, repairable things, and that’s what’s encouraging about a potential matchup.”

Forward Trevor Moore scored his league-leading fifth short-handed goal and set up an even-strength goal for winger Viktor Arvidsson. Jonathan Quick had 27 saves.

McDavid, who leads the league with 109 points, became the seventh player in NHL history to record multiple point streaks of at least 15 games in a season. Winger Warren Foegele scored the other goal for Edmonton, and Mike Smith made 30 saves.

The Kings welcomed back defenseman Matt Roy, who drew in for Alex Edler, and winger Brendan Lemieux, who replaced Lias Andersson. Roy had not played since March 12 in San Jose and Lemieux’s most recent outing came March 4 at Columbus. McLellan described Edler as “banged up,” and said he should be considered day-to-day.

The Kings pulled within a goal seven minutes into the third period, though they seldom generated momentum afterward, including a hapless six-on-five stretch. On their second goal, Moore and Arvidsson provided some feisty forechecking. Moore recovered the puck below the goal line and turned it back for Arvidsson. He fired through a Gabe Vilardi screen to score from the top of the left faceoff circle.

Arvidsson, who scored 94 goals in his first three full NHL seasons, hit the 20-goal mark for the first time in three campaigns in his first year with the Kings.

“Obviously I had a tough couple of years with injuries and stuff like that, so it was nice to see that one go in. You kind of take that one off your plate and keep going,” Arvidsson said.

The Kings had nearly gotten that goal back more quickly, when winger Adrian Kempe strode in on goal with a partial breakaway that Smith narrowly stopped. Defenseman Darnell Nurse, who had slashed Kempe on the play, cleared the puck out of the blue paint. His touch sent the Kings to the power play where they came up empty for the third and final time on Thursday.

Four minutes and one second into the closing frame, Edmonton earned the first two-goal edge of the night. Bouchard launched a slapshot from the right point through traffic, off Quick’s glove and into the net.

With 4:34 showing on the second-period clock, Edmonton had pulled ahead once more. Bouchard’s pass ahead for center Derek Ryan set up a feed for Foegele’s redirection and 10th goal of the campaign.

A couple of minutes after Edmonton’s second goal, controversy ensued when former San Jose Sharks winger Evander Kane nailed defenseman Sean Durzi with an illegal knee-to-knee hit. He received only a two-minute minor penalty, much to the chagrin of the fans on hand.

At the 2:29 mark of the second period, the Kings’ forecheck knotted the score as they were killing a penalty. The oh-so-familiar duo of Moore and center Phillip Danault created a hasty decision with the puck and a turnover, which Moore collected. He spun off the wall and past forward Leon Draisaitl, then stickhandled his way into a backhanded, short-handed equalizer.

Soon after Edmonton took the game’s first lead, they nearly extended it with a cross-crease pass for Kane. Kane got limited force on his shot, which bounced off Quick’s pad as he pushed powerfully from post to post.

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McDavid got the scoring started. After the Kings struggled to get up ice and made a messy line change, McDavid gathered speed and skated into Bouchard’s pass. McDavid’s momentum and acceleration pushed him past two defenders before he let fly with a top-shelf, short-side snipe.

“He does it one way and Leon does it the other, that’s what makes it tough for the Kings and every other team in the league. You’ve got a guy that’s going 100 miles an hour and another guy that slows the game down,” said McLellan, who coached Edmonton from 2015 to 2018.

“I watched it for three-and-a-half years, it works. They are dynamic players, and when one’s off a little bit, the other one’s on. They’re game-breakers and they get it done. They didn’t have a ton of chances, but they don’t need very many.”