LOS ANGELES –– Anže Kopitar spent 20 years working on the power play and the penalty kill, the O-zone and the D-zone, shooting and defending, and leadership and integrity.
Now, he’ll be perfecting the “high ponytail and the bun.”
Kopitar said he was looking forward to dedicating himself fully to his daughter Neža and son Jakob, now that his storied 20-year career officially came to a close after the Kings were eliminated by the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday.
“They get to wake up in the morning and come barge in the room and see me there, which is what they deserve,” Kopitar said. “They’ve been 11 years and nine years [respectively] with a so-called part-time dad, and now they get that full-time.”
Even as he rode off into the sunset, Kopitar was thinking about the only franchise he ever skated for and its future following a sweep by the Avs for the Kings’ fifth consecutive Round 1 bow-out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“I’m just extremely proud of the team to turn it around, because for a little bit, it wasn’t looking good at all,” said Kopitar, whose team narrowly qualified with the NHL’s 20th best point total as the West’s second wild card after firing Jim Hiller on March 1. “When we made the coaching change, I think that things kind of started turning around and I think it’s important to make the playoffs, obviously, and then this is another lesson that we maybe have to go through. I mean, for me, it’s done, but for some of the young guys, they did get to experience that and they got to experience playing against a championship-caliber team.”
Kopitar said that Colorado beat the Kings in the way that elite teams tend to, prevailing with less than their “A+ game.” Though the Kings were in every contest and kept the scores low early in the series, they only led 201 seconds of the matchup and struggled mightily to generate offense. They scored three of their feeble five series goals on the power play and two of those came 6-on-4 with the goalie pulled late.
Kopitar’s long and illustrious tenure in Los Angeles could be divided into two phases, one in which Dean Lombardi was the architect of the roster and Dustin Brown was the captain, and another when Luc Robitaille took over the team presidency shortly after Kopitar had the “C” affixed to his sweater.
Under Lombardi, whom Kopitar went out of his way to credit on Sunday nearly a decade after he left the organization, the Kings emerged from obscurity to win the franchise’s only two Stanley Cups in 2012 and 2014, with a trip to the conference finals in between. Lombardi was a dogged analyst and ruthless questioner of the direction of the team, and one who eschewed any platitudes of what the Kings did well when they fell short. He expected the group’s performance to rise with the stakes and, at their peak, it absolutely did.
Under Robitaille, the vibe has been decidedly distinct and so have the results.
The Kings have gone 8-24 with just four regulation wins in the playoffs since Robitaille usurped Lombardi and ousted Coach Darryl Sutter simultaneously. Their .250 win percentage is the second lowest in the league during that span and their -39 goal differential further reflects their big-game futility.
Despite being a team that has preached defense at every turn and cranked out a product that has often been even more unentertaining than it was unsuccessful, their penalty kill percentage was a meager 64.8% in those tournaments and their goals-against average was the second highest among all franchises.
Kopitar was asked what was most difficult to recreate about the Lombardi era under Robitaille.
“If we had the answer, we probably wouldn’t get bounced in the first round for five years straight,” Kopitar said. “You’re either on the good side, the right side, or the bad side of it. I’ve been lucky enough to be on the good side a couple times and that’s where you live the dream, you’re on top of the world. We’ve not been good enough the last few years. I hope and I believe that this team is going in the right direction.”
One of the players continuing on was SoCal’s own Trevor Moore, who said that Kopitar’s vast contributions to the club and its identity were something “every organization looks for.”
“The culture that he brought was no-nonsense, being a pro when you come to the rink, playing the game the right way. And if you cheat, it’s unacceptable because ‘Kopi’ never cheats,” Moore said.
Moore described the Kings’ playoff struggles –– they began with a competitive seven-game ejection by Edmonton in 2022 and ended with Sunday’s lopsided result under their third different head coach in three years –– as “incredibly frustrating.” While he said desire and fight persisted in the group, he also said the results were “unacceptable” and that “all of us have to really take accountability for that.”
Defenseman Drew Doughty, who, like Kopitar, was a driving force during the glory years, was at more of a loss for explanations or solutions.
“Obviously, it’s old, obviously we want more. We want to win a playoff series or two. I don’t have any answers as to why it’s not happening, but we’ve got to make it happen,” said the team’s highest-paid player by a wide margin. Doughty had his lowest output for a full season of his career.
Kopitar also produced below his standards this year, but his underlying numbers were strong and he was invigorated by the arrival of trade acquisition Artemi Panarin, who signed a two-year contract extension.
What never wavered were the grace, magnanimity and exemplary comportment of the Kings’ captain, whom Smith described as a “throwback and a classy, classy human being.”
“He treats the guys in the back that no one sees, the exact same as his teammates,” said the Kings’ interim head coach. “You hope that the guys that played with him and the guys that come back here will take that and continue that. No one is bigger than the team, and ‘Kopi’ showed that every single day.”