Kings pick up long-awaited first win of season with their best offensive output so far

“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 L.A. a two-goal advantage with his second of the game.

Los Angeles lost centre 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.”

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See AP’s full NHL coverage here

Andrew Gillis, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

Kings pick up long-awaited first win of season with their best offensive output so far

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