LOS ANGELES, CA – Los Angeles Kings forward Anze Kopitar recently made history recording his 1,000th career point on an assist in a win over the Arizona Coyotes. Kopitar is the 91st player in NHL history to reach such a mark.
As wonderful as an accomplishment as that is for one of the best players in the history of the Kings franchise, it probably wasn’t something that popped up as a notification on the home screen of your cell phone or was on the front page of the sports section of the LA Times (assuming you still read newspapers).
No, Kopitar’s impressive feat gets lost in the shuffle of a town that is consistently pre-occupied with minute-by-minute updates and drama that surrounds the Los Angeles Lakers and Dodgers.
Obviously, there’s not only enough to keep fans busy there but this has traditionally been a Lakers/Dodgers town and always will be, especially with transcendent stars like LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Corey Seager, and Mookie Betts, to name a few.
The arrival of two NFL teams to LA doesn’t help either with the Kings’ lack of attention as they have also taken the headlines recently with the arrival of QB Matthew Stafford to the Rams and the emergence of rookie QB Justin Herbert for the Chargers.
However, when LA sports fans think of Kopitar, they should consider him as a pillar of the Los Angeles sports landscape, because his resume is impressive.
He’s won two Stanley Cup championships in 2012 and 2014, a five-time NHL All-Star, a two-time winner of the NHL’s Frank J. Selke Award, an award that honors the best defensive forward, and won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for sportsmanship.
The star forward has also been the Kings’ leading scorer every year since the 2008 season. Not to mention, he’s spent all 16 seasons of his illustrious career with the same franchise. That’s very much in Magic-Kobe-Kershaw territory, three all-time greats who are extremely well-respected, beloved by the city of Los Angeles, and spent their entire careers with one team.
Does Kopitar deserve to be overlooked simply because the Kings aren’t as popular in LA as those other teams? Absolutely not.
We shouldn’t undervalue sustained excellence for a player just because their team might not have as a rich a history as another or because their team is in a rebuilding mode.
Year in and year out, the 33-year-old Kopitar has brought his best and was a bring reason the Kings became an elite team during the 2010’s. One could even make the argument he is one of the most decorated players to ever dawn a Kings uniform, including Wayne Gretzky who has a statue sitting outside Staples Center.
Gretzky has a statue and played for the Kings for just eight seasons, and only made the Stanley Cup Finals once, losing in 1993. Kopitar went there twice and won it both times.
Loyal Kings fans know Kopitar’s value as a longtime cornerstone of the franchise, but now more people should place him higher on the list of LA sports greats and put more respect on his name.
Maybe it’s his stoic personality, maybe its lack of marketing from the NHL, maybe hockey and the Kings aren’t as popular in LA as other teams and stars, but greatness sustained over nearly two decades with one squad should never be overlooked and that definitely includes Anze Kopitar.
