Now in their third decade with the Kings, captain Anze Kopitar and alternate captain Drew Doughty have transformed from fixtures into granite sculptures inside the dressing room.

While that dressing room has been temporarily relocated to Melbourne, Australia, for a pair of preseason games against the Arizona Coyotes on Friday and Saturday, the duo has otherwise been in the same spot for more than 15 years.

Doughty, lurched forward at the back wall with a quip flying in one direction toward a teammate and another readied and aimed at whoever was asking him for a frank assessment of the club’s most recent performance. Kopitar, on the east end of the room, with the same quiet calm belied by an unwavering intensity in his eyes, sitting with a posture whose rectitude matched his poise in chaotic situations on the ice.

“They are different, in terms of personality, but if you see the big picture, they’re the same,” Kings winger Kevin Fiala said. “They want the same things, they know the same [experiences], they just want to win and they know exactly what it takes.”

Of course, their personalities and demeanors could not be much more divergent.

“Kopitar is more, um, adult. I can say that. That says it all,” Fiala said.

Kopitar arrived to the organization in 2005 as a slightly lesser-known commodity thanks to his upbringing at the center of a tiny but increasingly flourishing hockey program in Slovenia. He’s become one of the most durable and most complete centers of his generation if not NHL history, thriving across eras.

“I’ve been doing my thing on the ice and it seems like it’s been working. I’m not going to try and change a whole lot but, yes, the league and the game of hockey itself is changing a little bit so, yeah, you’ve got to adapt,” Kopitar said.

Doughty was a generational talent prospect on defense that could have been a No. 1 pick in many drafts, though he ended up being taken second in 2008 behind another two-time Stanley Cup winner, the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Steven Stamkos.

The Kings’ pair would quaff the bubbly with Lord Stanley in 2012 and 2014, Kopitar the Kings’ top center and Doughty their No. 1 defenseman. A decade later, they’ll enter the 2023-24 season with those exact same roles, and more than ever to offer a group of Kings on a quest to return to short-list contention.

“If you remember in 2008 or 2009, (former GM) Dean Lombardi would talk about ‘we’ve got to go get guys that are character.’ We had to go get Matt Greene and Jarret Stoll. Those guys are here for us, they’ve been here,” Kings president Luc Robitaille said.

“Kopi and Drew, they know what it takes to win, they know what it takes to play in Los Angeles. The L.A. Kings logo means something to them,” he continued. “We’re very fortunate that we didn’t have to go get that type of player just to be part of the rebuild, they happened to still be our best players.”

Robitaille, who was in a different front-office role when the Kings hoisted the Cup twice, said he felt the roster had now been reconstructed for postseason success.

“We’re in that bucket of like eight to 10 teams that we all have a chance at winning a championship,” he said. “We’re not trying to make the playoffs. The goal is not trying to win a round, we’re trying to win the Stanley Cup, and that’s the goal.”

While Kopitar and Doughty will undoubtedly bring their seasoned and sagely presences to the Kings’ mix this season, coach Todd McLellan said he now had the “ability to hand some of that off to others,” like alternate captain Phillip Danault and leading goal-scorer Adrian Kempe.

Much as was the case in 2012 and 2014, when Dustin Brown captained the team with Kopitar serving as an alternate captain and Doughty not yet wearing a letter, the Kings have created a leadership-by-committee situation wherein many players felt they had a voice in the room.

That surely included Trevor Lewis, a two-time Cup winner who returned to the organization this season and described Doughty as the “same guy” he remembered from their time as roommates early in their careers. Joining Lewis were 36-year-old goalie Cam Talbot, who played for McLellan in Edmonton, and flashy trade pickup Pierre-Luc Dubois. While Dubois, 25, has been soaking up his new surroundings bit by bit, he got acquainted with Doughty at break-neck speed.

“It’s not too hard to get to know Drew. The first time I was here, he picked me up to go to the rink and it felt like I had known him for my entire life,” Dubois said. “He doesn’t stop talking so you get to know him really quickly, he’s a great guy.”

For Doughty, the familiarity with Lewis and the novelty of new teammates are surely welcome as he enters his 16th pro campaign. He was asked if he felt like it had been that long after all the bumps, bruises and, of course, so many of the same meetings every season.

“Uh, yeah, it does,” Doughty said. “But there’s still the same hunger coming into camp, still super excited to play another season and keep her going.”

Related Articles