WASHINGTON (AP) — Through their first six games, the Los Angeles Kings had scored a league-worst 12 goals. As a result, they were the NHL's sole winless team entering Tuesday night.
But the Kings' offense made a late push at the end of the first period against Washington, and that propelled Los Angeles to a 5-2 win over the Capitals.
“Obviously it was a tough start, and the longer it goes, the more you feel that pressure to get one,” said goalie Darcy Kuemper, who made 30 saves. “But I think going into the third in the tie game, we just talked amongst ourselves and said, ‘Everyone’s going to dig down, we’re going to get this job done.’ So it was a big win for us.”
Los Angeles (1-6-2) was down 2-0 in the first period but tied it in a span of 31 seconds with goals by Adrian Kempe and Artemi Panarin.
“Obviously it’s hard to play with a lot of confidence when you haven’t won a game,” Kempe said. “Seeing the pucks go in, I think helped everybody a lot.”
The Kings had scored just four goals over their past four games. They exceeded that total against Washington and had their highest-scoring game of the season thanks to Scott Laughton's late empty-netter.
Erik Gustafsson made it 3-2 in the third period, and Kempe gave LA a two-goal advantage with his second of the game.
Los Angeles lost center Quinton Byfield in the first to an upper-body injury that coach Peter Laviolette said would be evaluated Wednesday.
“To be down 2-0, it would’ve been easy for us to kind of put our heads down and say, ‘Here we go again. Another one getting away from us,’” Kuemper said. “But instead we got huge response by those guys. What a shift to get two goals to finish the period. And then you feel like you’re right back in the game and feel like you have a chance. And like I said, we wanted to get that monkey off our back and you could see everyone bear down and get the job done.”
It was Laviolette's first win of his seventh stint as an NHL head coach.
“Everybody’s happy,” he said. “I mean the guys have been working hard.”
Now that the pressure is off, the Kings hope they can settle into the season.
“I don’t think it’s unusual for teams to go on losing streaks throughout the year, but when it’s at the start of the year, it gets magnified and it feels a lot worse for us,” Kuemper said. “It looks a lot worse. So nice to get a win and now we just got to get rolling.”
