Kings Are the NHL's Only Winless Team After Bruins Score Four Unanswered in a 4-1 Win in Los Angeles

October 18, 2026

LOS ANGELES

For 31 seconds on Saturday night, the Los Angeles Kings looked like a team about to end the conversation. Then the Boston Bruins scored four unanswered goals, Jeremy Swayman closed the door, and the Kings walked out of Crypto.com Arena as the NHL's only winless team. Boston's 4-1 victory was its fifth straight win, lifted the Bruins to 7-2-0, and finished a clean sweep of their California slate. Los Angeles fell to 0-4-2 — the franchise's longest winless start since the 1984-85 Kings opened 0-6-3, more than four decades ago.

The shape of the loss has become familiar, and that is the problem. The Kings have now scored exactly one goal in each of their past four games. One goal can win a hockey game on the right night. It cannot be the plan, and right now, for a team six games into its season without a single win, it is the pattern. Compare the scene across the conference, where the Vegas Golden Knights are scoring six at a time, and the Kings' offensive drought reads even starker.

Thirty-one seconds of hope

Alex Laferriere gave the home crowd the start it came for, scoring just 31 seconds into the game off a touch pass from Adrian Kempe to put Los Angeles up 1-0. It was the fastest possible answer to a week of questions about where the goals would come from — and, as it turned out, the only answer the Kings produced all night. Boston absorbed the early punch, settled into its structure, and spent the rest of the evening looking like the team on a winning streak rather than the team being hunted by history.

The equalizer arrived 2:43 into the second period, and it came from the Bruin most likely to produce it. David Pastrnak took a breakaway and finished with a wrist shot for his fourth goal of the season, tying the game 1-1. The goal carried a line in the Bruins' record book with it: it was Pastrnak's 289th even-strength goal, tying Phil Esposito for third in franchise history, and it extended his point streak. When a game turns, it usually turns on a play like that — the best player on the ice making the building go quiet.

Six minutes that ended it

The third period is where the streaks separated. With the game still tied 1-1 deep into the final frame, Marat Khusnutdinov put Boston ahead at 13:36 of the third — 6:24 left on the clock — converting off a Morgan Geekie rebound that Kings goaltender Anton Forsberg could not cover. It was the kind of goal winless teams concede and winning teams manufacture: a rebound loose in front, a forward arriving on time, and a goaltender left to fish the puck out of his net while the bench in front of him sagged.

Los Angeles chased the game from there and paid the standard price. Elias Lindholm scored into the empty net with 1:58 remaining to make it 3-1, and JJ Peterka added a second empty-net goal just 18 seconds later for the 4-1 final. Pastrnak and Khusnutdinov each finished with a goal and an assist. Swayman made 25 saves to improve to 6-1-0 on the season, while Forsberg stopped 24 shots in the loss — another night on which the Kings' goaltender played well enough to win a game his team scored once in.

The Bruins are rolling; the Kings are searching

Boston's win was its fifth in a row and completed a sweep of the California portion of its trip, the kind of road stretch that tells a team something good about itself in October. The Bruins did it without Pavel Zacha, who missed the game with an upper-body injury and is day to day, according to head coach Marco Sturm. Their road trip closes Tuesday in Dallas, and they will arrive there as one of the hottest teams in the league.

The Kings' road, meanwhile, runs straight into another difficult building: Los Angeles travels to Washington on Tuesday, still looking for its first win, still carrying the league's only winless record, and now dragging a piece of franchise history it never wanted. The 1984-85 comparison is not a trivia note — that team's 0-6-3 start is the standard this group is now chasing from the wrong side, with two more winless games needed to match it and every incentive to make sure the conversation ends in Washington instead.

There is time, of course. Six games is six games, and the Kings have taken two of their four losses beyond regulation, which is another way of saying they have been close. But close has a shelf life in October. The Kings have been held to one goal four straight times, their best early lead of the season lasted less than a period of scoreboard time, and the only winless banner in the league is hanging in their building. Tuesday in Washington is no longer just the next game on the schedule. It is the one that decides whether this start is a slump or a story. Follow the rest of the league's early-season picture in Previously's sports coverage.