Kings captain An\u017ee Kopitar has been regaled and lauded publicly and privately during his final NHL season, No. 20 for the only Slovenian to even play one campaign\u2019s worth of games, and that continued Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Kopitar, 38, was nominated for the Bill Masterton Trophy, which is presented to \u201cthe player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to ice hockey\u201d every season. Each of the 32 franchises has a nominee selected by its chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association.<\/p>\n
This season, one that has been weighed down by injuries like none other save for perhaps the 2010-11 campaign in which he broke his ankle in Game 75 before missing the playoffs, Kopitar has still hit milestone after milestone.<\/p>\n
He reached the vaunted 1,500-game threshold and soon after surpassed Marcel Dionne\u2019s career franchise scoring record, a benchmark set nearly 40 years ago.<\/p>\n
Few active contemporaries \u2013 perhaps Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos would head the list \u2013 have reached such statistical heights, and only Crosby and Ovechkin have also done it all with one franchise.<\/p>\n
Kopitar is also in an even more exclusive club of players to surpass 1,000 points and garner two Selke Trophy honors. Just four players have accomplished the feat. Not even Jonathan Toews and Pavel Datsyuk managed to do so. Kopitar played against each of the other three now-retired centermen: Sergei Fedorov, Rod Brind\u2019Amour and Patrice Bergeron.<\/p>\n
In addition to his two-way excellence, Kopitar has won multiple Lady Byng trophies as the league\u2019s most gentlemanly player. That\u2019s been reflected throughout this season, when the esteem shown for Kopitar has transcended geographical and generational boundaries.<\/p>\n
Both on home ice and in his final visits to stadiums around the league, Kopitar has been busy shaking hands, exchanging hugs and swapping jerseys.<\/p>\n
Ahead of his final regular-season home game Saturday against the archrival Edmonton Oilers, Kopitar\u2019s leadership had the Kings an eyelash from a playoff berth. That\u2019s despite a season of tumult that saw an offseason GM change, a midseason coaching switch and most of the top-nine forward group depart via either trade or season-ending injury after two of last year\u2019s six defensemen changed addresses over the summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kings captain An\u017ee Kopitar has been regaled and lauded publicly and privately during his final NHL season, No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5126],"tags":[367,5,186,1760,240,5303,793,145,5304,5302,4,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-547901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-kings","8":"tag-anze-kopitar","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-kings","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-kings","13":"tag-lakings","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-kings","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-losangeleskings","18":"tag-nhl","19":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116370723188068724","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}