sixth

January has traditionally been the harshest time of the year for the Kings, who haven’t had a winning record in that month the last three seasons. But winter grew dark and gloomy a little earlier than usual because December has hardly been a walk in the park.

With Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken, the Kings head into the NHL’s three-day Christmas break having lost six of their last seven. And things aren’t getting easier any time soon: when the team returns to the ice Saturday, it will play host to the Ducks, who lead the Pacific Division in wins, before closing out 2025 Monday on the road against the Colorado Avalanche, who lead the NHL in wins.

“It’s not going the way we all want to,” forward Kevin Fiala said. “But you know, that’s going to happen for everybody. So it’s us who have to do something about it. Who can pull us out of it? Nobody else.

“I’m not worried. Like, I’m sure we’re gonna get out of this. But it’s not acceptable right now.”

And if it doesn’t change right now, the rest of the season will be as cold as a winter frost for the Kings.

It’s not just that the team is losing, but how it’s losing that is most concerning. The Kings (15-12-9) are 31st in the 32-team NHL in scoring, 31st on the power play and have scored more than two goals just twice in 11 games this month. That’s negated a defense that is second in the league in goals allowed.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to make sense of things,” coach Jim Hiller said when asked to explain a slide that has dropped the Kings into the middle of the division standings. “We just feel like we haven’t had a good run of games where we felt like, win or lose, we really like how we’re playing.

“That’s something that we’ll keep driving towards. We just haven’t had it yet.”

Last season, Hiller’s Kings tied franchise records for wins and points in the regular season and had the best home mark in team history. This season, they’re 4-8-4 at Crypto.com Arena, the second-worst home record in the Western Conference. And that has general manager Ken Holland answering questions about Hiller’s future behind the bench.

“I expect him to be here the rest of the season,” said Holland last week, not exactly a full-throated vote of confidence.

Yet for all their struggles, December has just been a continuation of the things that have plagued the Kings all season.

“We all have high expectations for ourselves,” Hiller said. “We just haven’t hit our stride yet. That’s the part that we’re chasing. That’s what we have to focus on. We have to hit that stride.

“It’s a difficult time right now, for sure.”

On Tuesday, Hiller tried to shake things up by mixing up his lines, most significantly pairing Fiala and Andrei Kuzmenko with center Alex Turcotte. And while Fiala and Kuzmenko responded with goals, they didn’t come until the Kraken had taken a 3-0 lead.

The first goal came from Jordan Eberle, who was left alone in front of the Kings’ net, giving him plenty of space to settle a pass from Matty Beniers before lifting the puck around goaltender Pheonix Copley and under the crossbar for his 13th goal of the season. It was the fourth power-play goal the Kings had given up in the last two nights and the sixth in four games.

The Kraken doubled their lead on a quirky goal less than eight minutes later, with Copley misjudging a deflected shot from Seattle’s Frederick Gaudreau, allowing the puck to knuckle off his glove then trickle through his legs for the goal.

Ben Meyers extended Seattle’s lead to 3-0 with less than four minutes left in the second before the Kings finally got on the board with an unassisted goal from Fiala, his 13th of the season, 11 seconds later.

Kings coach Jim Hiller watches from the bench during the second period of a 3-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday night at Crypto.com Arena.

(Luke Hales / Getty Images)

Now the Kings will have three days to think about that, although Fiala said he’d gotten over the game by the time he finished showering.

“If you win five in a row or lose five in a row or whatever, it’s forgotten. It’s in the past,” he said. “I think we take the good things with us and the bad things we hopefully analyze and get better at.”

For Hiller, the break couldn’t come at a better time. Or a worse time since the team’s current seven-game slump is its deepest since the winter of 2023-24. That one cost coach Todd McLellan his job.

“I hope the players are able to relax and refresh themselves,” Hiller said. “It’s been from September till now, with the schedule and how busy it is. And 85% of our games, we’ve been playing within one goal.

“It’s taxing physically and mentally. So I’m sure those guys need a break.”

Former ‍heavyweight ‍champion beats ⁠social-media-star-turned fighter ‍with a sixth-round knockout in Miami.

Former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua knocked out YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul in their controversial Netflix-backed bout in Miami.

Two-time world champion Joshua made hard work of defeating his vastly less experienced opponent on Friday night, but finally made his superior size and power count in the later stages of the eight-round fight.

A mediocre contest at the Kaseya Center – with the two men reportedly splitting a mammoth purse of $184m – descended into farce at times, with Paul repeatedly dropping to the canvas and grappling at Joshua’s legs.

At one stage even referee Christopher Young appeared to be losing patience, warning the fighters in the fourth round: “The fans did not pay to see this crap.”

As Paul tired, Joshua finally began to land punches with more regularity and after knocking down the American twice in the fifth round the end came swiftly in the sixth.

Joshua backed the 28-year-old into a corner and after teeing up Paul with a crunching left, delivered the knockout blow with a right to the chin that sent his opponent crashing to the canvas.

“It wasn’t the best performance,” Joshua, 36, admitted afterwards. “But the end goal was to get Jake Paul, pin him down and hurt him.

“That was the request leading up, and that was on my mind. It took a bit longer than expected but the right hand finally found its destination.”

Joshua meanwhile praised Paul for lasting into the later rounds.

“I want to give him his props – he got up time and time again,” Joshua said. “It was difficult in there for him, but he kept on trying to find a way. It takes a real man to do that.”

Paul, meanwhile, his mouth bloodied from Joshua’s final assault, said he believed his jaw had been broken – but was satisfied with his performance.

“That was fun. I gave it my all,” Paul said. “I had a blast. I think my jaw is broken by the way. But Anthony’s one of the best to ever do it so. I’m gonna come back and get a world championship.

“I just got tired to be honest – like it was so much handling his weight. I think with better cardio I could have kept it up and kept on fighting. But he hits really hard.”

The bout was carried live to ‌Netflix’s approximately 300 million subscribers.

Friday’s made-for-streaming contest, which came just over a year after Paul had fought a 58-year-old Mike Tyson in a much-derided Netflix fight, had triggered alarm across boxing given the disparity in size and experience between the two men.

Yet the devastating first or second round knockout by Joshua that most had predicted failed to materialise as Paul scrambled desperately to stay outside of the 2012 Olympic champion’s range.

Joshua, fighting for the first time in 15 months, always looked the more threatening fighter though, landing 48 of 146 punches thrown compared to Paul’s meagre total of 16 punches landed.

British heavyweight Anthony Joshua needed six rounds to stop boxing novice Jake Paul, who spent much of the contest in survival mode in one of the most striking mismatches in the sport’s history.

Joshua, a two-time world champion, cut an increasingly frustrated figure as Paul danced around the ring for long spells, refusing to engage, before Joshua finally imposed himself by knocking down the YouTuber-turned-boxer twice in the fifth round.

Paul was down again in the sixth, before Joshua landed a powerful and clean right hand that brought a surreal night to an abrupt conclusion at Miami’s Kaseya Center.

The American did not beat the count, although there was palpable relief inside the arena when he was able to rise to his feet and leave the ring without assistance.