Since a teenage Drew Doughty joined Anze Kopitar on the Kings’ roster in 2008, the team has won its only two Stanley Cups, posted the top five seasons with the most wins in franchise history and six of the top eight seasons with the most points.
So does that makes this the Kings’ golden era?
“Absolutely,” Kings president Luc Robitaille said without hesitation. “Anze Kopitar and Drew have been the key players for our franchise. What they bring in the [dressing] room, what they bring day in and day out, the way that they’re careful to play has a two-way game.
“The success we’ve had, we attribute to them.”
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Age, however, is threatening to dull the shine on that golden era, and that is adding a sense of urgency to this season’s playoff push, which is just beginning.
Doughty, 35, hasn’t played since breaking his left ankle in the preseason, marking the second time in four seasons he lost significant ice time to injury. And Kopitar, still highly productive at 37, has just one full season left on his two-year, $14-million contract while Trevor Lewis, the only other holdover from the Stanley Cup teams, is 38 and one of six Kings who will become free agents this summer.
Yet Robitaille, a Hall of Famer and the franchise’s all-time leader in goals, believes the Kings’ greatest generation has at least one more championship run in it before it skates off into the sunset. And it got a chance Wednesday to see how it measures up to the NHL’s best, gutting out a 2-1 win over the reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.
Both goals came in the third period, the first from Samuel Helenius, his first in the NHL, and the second from Adrian Kempe, his team-leading 24th of the season, with 6 minutes 48 seconds left in the game.
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“To play against a Stanley Cup champion is a big test for your organization,” Robitaille said.
And it’s a test the Kings passed with a furious third-period charge in which they took half the 28 shots on goal they had on the night.
“That’s one of the top two or three games that we’ve had all season,” coach Jim Hiller said. “It’s a hard-fought game. A playoff-style game.”
“It was like a playoff game out there,” forward Kevin Fiala agreed. “We got the job done.”
Yet there’s still quite a bit of work to do to keep the Kings on the same level of teams like the Panthers, who have played in the last two Stanley Cup finals.
With Wednesday’s win the Kings (26-14-5, 57 points) are four points better than they were after 45 games last season, when they were in a 3-14 slump that cost coach Todd McLellan his job. And while the Kings are scuffling again — the win Wednesday was just the second in six games and until the third-period outburst, they had one goal in seven periods — Robitaille said there’s no comparison between the two teams.
“It doesn’t feel like last year,” he said. “I like the way we played, even though we didn’t win those games. So you always say keep doing the same thing over and over and playing the right way [and] you’re going to turn it around.
“Last year felt like we were on our heels and trying not to lose it. Now we’ve been on our toes and playing a certain way that’s hard for other teams.”
The team is clearly Kopitar’s — as it should be — and he’ll undoubtedly play a big part in determining the Kings’ fate. The captain, who hasn’t missed a game, leads the Kings with 31 assists, is second to Kempe with 43 points and is one of just two forwards averaging more than 19 minutes of ice time. He also holds the franchise records for games played and assists, ranks second in points and third in goals.
What he hasn’t done is be the first to lift the Stanley Cup. Dustin Brown was the captain when the Kings won in 2012 and again two years later, making him the first U.S.-born captain to hoist the trophy twice. Given Kopitar’s place in team history, Robitaille said he deserves that honor too.
“I would love for Anze Kopitar to be the first to lift the Cup,” he said. “So there’s certain pressure and we’d like to do it while he’s still a premier player. I think we owe it to our fans and we owe it to guys like him.”
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The Kings are about to get better when it matters most since Doughty has begun skating again. And while Hiller declined to give a timetable for his return, Doughty will accompany the team on a five-game trip that begins Saturday.
“He’ll have an immediate impact just coming back into the group,” the coach said.
“We get Drew back, it’s exactly like making a big trade,” Robitaille agreed. “You can never replace guys like Kopitar and Doughty. It’s impossible. They’re very special players. You know the window of them winning? As you get older, it gets there. So I certainly would like to win it with them.
“But to a certain degree, the legacy they’re leaving within this franchise, it’s going to go on way past them.”
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
