Before the first home game of the season in which they’ll celebrate their 60th anniversary, the Kings honored their past by unveiling a modest Hall of Fame on the concourse of Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday.

An hour later, this season’s Kings took the ice and made some history of their own, though not the kind they had hoped for, falling to the Florida Panthers 2-1 to open a season with three losses for the first time since 2020.

For Peter Laviolette, the history was even more unwanted since the team’s 0-2-1 start makes him the first Kings coach to go winless in his first three games since Robbie Ftorek in 1987.

Laviolette was a 23-year-old defenseman with the U.S. national team then. He would go on to win 934 NHL games as a coach, the most for an American, but he has yet to add to that total with the Kings. It didn’t help that two of the first three games with his new franchise came against Colorado and Florida, popular picks to finish the season in the Stanley Cup Final.

And it doesn’t get any easier, with the Kings’ next two games against the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers.

Still, Laviolette was accepting no moral victories Tuesday for just keeping the game close.

“I’m more in the business of winning hockey games. I don’t think there’s any consolation in a 2-1 loss,” he said. “We could have done better with regard to execution, on how we move the puck or how we attack. We turned it over too much in our end. We turned it over too much in the neutral zone.”

The Kings took the lead before the first intermission when Alex Laferriere pounced on the rebound of an Erik Haula shot and put it into the back of the net for his first goal of the season.

Florida took a pair of penalties before the period ended, giving the Kings a two-man advantage and a chance to add to their lead. But they managed to do nothing on the power play and immediately gave up a goal after it, when Florida defenseman Seth Jones scored off a rush 3:49 into the second period.

“Momentum kind of shifted on us when we couldn’t really get that PP going,” captain Drew Doughty said.

“Any given moment inside of a game can give energy or take energy,” Laviolette said. “Obviously when you get that opportunity, you’re looking to create a bigger lead. That didn’t happen. So that pulls it away a little bit.”

Florida, playing for the second time without injured captain Aleksander Barkov, who is out six to eight weeks with a lower-body injury, suffered another massive loss when Brad Marchand skated into the right post after taking a high stick from Brandt Clarke with 52 seconds left in the second period.

Marchand’s left knee appeared to bend awkwardly when he hit the post, and he had to be helped off the ice and to the locker room. He did not come back — nor did the Kings, with Matthew Tkachuk turning a Clarke giveaway at center ice into the go-ahead goal with 8:40 remaining.

When Laviolette joined the team in June he became the Kings’ fourth coach in 28 months. He has been tasked with reorienting the team, moving away from its conservative, defensive-first approach to an aggressive, attacking style, with defensemen often joining the rush.

So far, it has yielded mixed results. Although the Kings, one of the lowest-scoring teams in the NHL last season, still are looking for a win, they’ve scored nine goals in three games and have gotten seven points from their defensemen. But they’ve also given up 15 goals and struggled on special teams, scoring just twice on 12 power plays.

“I didn’t think we played poorly. And I know we’ve lost three now,” Doughty said. “But I’m still confident in what we’re building, and I think we’ve been playing better each game.

“With new coaches, we’re getting new systems and stuff and I think we’ve adjusted to them pretty well. But there’s still room for improvement. And when we really get those down pat, I think we’re going to be a very, very good team.”

Until then, the Kings may continue making more unwanted history; they haven’t opened a season with four straight losses this century.