EL SEGUNDO –– Whether it’s on Saturday, in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final or any point in between, Anže Kopitar’s last shift in downtown Los Angeles will bring finality and forlornness that the Kings’ franchise has never experienced.
They’ve had greats before. In fact, they had “The Great One,” Wayne Gretzky, and the most resplendent jewel of the Triple Crown Line, Marcel Dionne.
But Dionne and Gretzky began and completed their careers elsewhere, their escapes from L.A. unfolding unceremoniously near the trade deadline. Kopitar has spent two decades in black and silver (and occasionally forum blue and gold), becoming the organization’s all-time leader in nearly every category of note and the strongest chain binding its only two Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014.
“I’m just proud that I stuck around for 20 years. To do it with one team for this long is probably the biggest thing for me, and being able to perform at a level to where the team wanted me to stay here,” Kopitar said. “Obviously, we’ve created a lot of friendships and a lot of good memories, and it’s gonna be with me for the rest of my life.”
Before this season, Kopitar took to the podium with his son Jakob, daughter Neža and wife Ines to announce his retirement on the same day another local legend, former Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, declared he was hanging up his spikes. Ines beamed with pride, as well as joy at the end of the long road trips and physical sacrifices.
In his final campaign, Kopitar has missed a career-high number of games due to two separate injuries, and his offensive output will be at its lowest for a full season. He’s still managed to provide strong two-way play, in addition to reaching milestones like 1,500 career games and overtaking Dionne for the franchise scoring lead, all while captaining the Kings in their pursuit of a playoff spot.
“It definitely feels right. I’ve done this for 20 years now. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far, but at the same time, you’ve got to weigh your pros and cons,” Kopitar said. “Could I have played a couple more years? Maybe, but who knows? Even this year was a good indicator. I had my fair share of the injuries that I’ve gotten hit with. The league is getting younger, it’s getting faster, so it’s harder for us to keep pace. To sacrifice all that time that I have sacrificed so far, now it’s time for me to be a dad and be with my kids and Ines.”
‘A pro at 17 years old’
When Kopitar arrived in Los Angeles in 2006, the Kings were 13 years removed from their only Stanley Cup Final appearance and struggling to stay relevant. Another franchise icon, Triple Crown right winger Dave Taylor, saw immediately what the Kings had in Kopitar.
As general manager, Taylor, who said there was “no weakness in Kopitar’s game,” would draft Kopitar and two critical components of the title teams, winger Dustin Brown and goalie Jonathan Quick, who became his closest friends.
“In all of the years that I’ve been on the management side, which is probably 30 years now, he’s the most impressive interview I’ve ever sat in on. When he walked in the room, he was so impressive,” Taylor said. “His size, his composure and the way he carries himself, he was really a pro at 17 years old.”
The son of a coach, Kopitar grew up around the rink in Slovenia. In his youth, as legendary broadcaster Bob Miller once recounted, Kopitar would have his grandmother interview him after watching a game on TV as “the first star of the game” in English, just in case it would come in handy as an NHL player.
At that point, no player from his country had made the NHL, and no Slovenians have firmly established themselves since Kopitar did so either. Even as the dominos fell, competing professionally in Sweden and rising up the draft board, Kopitar could never have envisioned being in the position he finds himself in today.
“I was hoping, at first, and then the ball kind of started rolling. Did I think that I could stick around for 20 years? No, absolutely not,” Kopitar said. “Life can come at you fast, things can go very right or very wrong in a hurry. So for me, for the most part, it’s gone right. I just stay humble. I guess I was born to be a hockey player. I tried to make the most of it, and I guess it worked out well.”
Kopitar is not only one of just four players to record more than 1,000 points and win multiple Frank J. Selke trophies as the NHL’s top defensive forward, but he’s won the Lady Byng Trophy as the league’s most gentlemanly player three times. Kopitar said the trophy fit his personality and style of play, and that he “liked to be on the ice, not in the penalty box.”
In addition to Kopitar’s complete game, another likely Hall of Fame center, John Tavares of the Toronto Maple Leafs, said Kopitar’s intangibles, grace and magnanimity were also distinctive traits.
“He just makes people around him better. Then you talk about him as a gentleman, the way he carries himself and the type of person he is as I’ve gotten to know him,” Tavares said. “It was always an honor to play against him and always a battle. That’s what’s amazing about this league, playing against the world’s best, and he’s been one of those for a long time.”
Tavares and the Leafs, who each congratulated Kopitar individually after the Kings’ overtime victory over Toronto on April 4 at Crypto.com Arena, were hardly his only reverent rivals. Kopitar’s postgames this year have been filled with jersey swaps, heartfelt embraces and a little playful banter. From his closest contemporaries to some of the league’s rising stars, everyone has wanted to salute “Kopi.”
“My favorite one was definitely with (Jonathan Quick),” said Kopitar of his longtime teammate, now tending goal for the New York Rangers. “Playing for the last time against him, and playing all those years with him, you almost don’t appreciate as much how good he is, and how good of a person and how good of a friend he is, and now the last few years that he’s been gone, you miss him and everything. So it was definitely a special moment.”
A franchise player
One of the first NHL stars to take notice of Kopitar was former Detroit Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg, a player who along with Boston’s Patrice Bergeron and Chicago’s Jonathan Toews was constantly mentioned alongside Kopitar as one of hockey’s most complete pivots.
Zetterberg kept an eye on Kopitar’s ascent and soon had the best view imaginable, going nose-to-nose with him in the faceoff circle. Zetterberg’s Wings won the Stanley Cup in 2008 and returned to the Final in 2009, but soon enough it was Kopitar’s moment to see his reflection gleaming in that coveted silver chalice.
“He was a big part of it. When teams go through a rebuild, you have to get, to be successful, franchise players during that time. Kopi is one of those players,” Zetterberg said. “He came into the league and just got better and better, and then L.A. got a really good team there for a few years when they played good playoff hockey all year round.”
The Kings got their feet wet in 2010, Kopitar’s fourth year in the NHL, and suffered a setback when he broke his ankle with seven games left in the following season. But a banner offseason and trade deadline let the Kings build into a photo finish to make the 2012 postseason before going on a run for the ages.
Though few picked the Kings to upset Vancouver in Round 1, the coach of the St. Louis Blues, whom the Kings swept in Round 2, was unsurprised.
“When we played them late in the regular season, I said, ‘Boy, watch out, L.A.’s comin’,” Ken Hitchcock said during those playoffs.
And that they did, going up 3-0 in each of their four seven-game series. Games 1 and 2 of the Stanley Cup Final against the New Jersey Devils both went to OT. Naturally, it was Kopitar winning it for the Kings in Game 1. The man who changed the theretofore unremarkable culture of the franchise in intangible ways had to be the one who got the ball rolling in the most visible manner possible.
Jeff Carter’s against-the-grain snipe in Game 2 put a stranglehold on the series with two road wins, and the Kings would finish the job in Game 6 at home. The moment when Miller and longtime Los Angeles Times scribe Helene Elliott ran into each other in the hallway with the Kings up 4-1 was one of unspoken awe and disbelief, seeing the franchise on the cusp of something it hadn’t achieved once in 45 years of existence.
There was no incredulity two years later.
After three consecutive trips to the conference finals, the Kings found themselves as the only winners of three Game 7s in a single postseason and back in the Final. There were no 3-0 leads or dominant showings, this time they skated along the razor’s edge for three rounds and played nearly seven games’ worth of minutes in a five-game triumph over the Rangers to win Cup No. 2.
“What made it so special was that the group didn’t change a whole lot between the first and the second one. So we always had the belief in each other; we always knew that we could do it,” said Kopitar, who led the Kings in scoring on both dashes to glory. “It was just a matter of going out and really doing it. Between ‘12 and ‘14, they were complete opposite runs, but at the end of the day, it’s the same trophy. Maybe you appreciate the second one a little bit more, because it was a lot harder than the first one, but like I said, it was the same trophy and a great feeling in the end.”
Not done yet
The current Kings have had three coaches in three seasons and two GMs in the past two campaigns, but at their pinnacle, Darryl Sutter and Dean Lombardi were in total command.
“Dean, he put a championship team together. It’s as simple as that. He had the vision of what the championship consists of and how to bring the culture that you need around the team to win,” Kopitar said. “Darryl was unique in the way he knew how to press buttons. He realized, and we realized, that we don’t have to be friends in order for us to win. At the same time, he cared. He cared very much about us, but when it came down to business, he was pressing buttons, because he was trying to extract every single ounce of you to be the best you can be.”
Kopitar would take over the captaincy from Brown in 2016, a period he said was difficult professionally but never put a strain on their close personal friendship. A year later, Lombardi and Sutter were ousted.
What followed in 2018 was a rebuild, one fast-tracked around the four pillars of the Kings’ uncommon success: Kopitar, Brown, Quick and Doughty. Though their turnaround happened more quickly than that of most other franchises, it has stalled with four straight first-round exits – they’ll confront the culprits Saturday when they’ll fittingly face the Edmonton Oilers – and there’s no guarantee of a fifth appearance for Kopitar and company.
Last week with seven games left in the regular season – there are now but four – Kopitar was asked if given the uncertainty of the playoff race he’d considered that the remaining matches on the schedule would be his final appearances.
“I don’t plan on playing just seven more games.”