Untold riches awaited Adrian Kempe as one of the NHL’s top unrestricted free agents next summer.

Mitch Marner, among last summer’s top targets, got $12 million a season from Vegas in a sign-and-trade deal with Toronto hours before he would have hit the open market. With more goals than Marner over the last four full seasons, how much could Kempe — in his prime at 29 — have demanded?

We’ll never know. Because whatever amount it might have been, Kempe decided it wasn’t worth more than his happiness. So last month he signed an eight-year contract extension worth a reported $85 million with the Kings that figures to keep him with the only organization he’s ever known for the rest of his career.

“There’s probably some teams that would have given me offers. But I never really got to the part where that was something that I wanted,” he said. “I’m really happy here. Always have been. Family-wise, the same.

“So there was never anything else in my mind.”

Read more:Kings searching for answers after sixth loss in seven games: 'It’s a difficult time'

That’s a mind that is apparently at ease now that Kempe’s hockey future has been determined. With 13 goals and a team-high 17 assists, he leads the offensively challenged Kings with 30 points and seven of those goals have come in the 17 games since he signed his extension.

But that’s done little to lift the team, which has lost six of their last seven heading into Saturday’s game with the Ducks. The last time the Kings had a seven-game stretch this bad it cost coach Todd McLellan his job.

“I'm not happy, but I really believe in this group,” said winger Kevin Fiala, who shares the team goal-scoring lead with Kempe. “I really believe this is a great team, great players. We just have to kind of find the game. And not just for some minutes, not even for one game, 60 minutes.

“We have to go for a stretch here, get some wins in a row. Start feeling good, start playing good.”

That might be tough given how the Kings will finish 2025. After Saturday’s home game with the resurgent Ducks, the team travels to Colorado to face the Avalanche, who lead the NHL in points.

If the Kings are to turn things around, they will have to jump start an offense which is second-to-last in the NHL, averaging 2.52 goals a game, and a power play that has converted on less than 14% of its chances, also 31st in the 32-team league. And the responsibility for making that happen probably will fall to Kempe, who has scored as many goals over the past four full seasons as Sidney Crosby and has just six fewer assists than Alex Ovechkin, keeping the Swedish Olympian in heady company.

“Adrian is a bit of a streaky scorer,” coach Jim Hiller said. “A lot of his recent goals are goals that we’ve seen him score before, where he’s either beating someone with speed, a nice deke.

“So to me it’s the type of goals he’s scoring right now that’s got me encouraged.”

That’s not all that’s encouraging. Kempe, a quick and physical two-way forward, is averaging a career-high 19:18 of ice time per game and is on pace to score 30 goals and top 68 points for a second straight season.

With captain Anze Kopitar retiring at the end of the season and defenseman Drew Doughty in the penultimate year of his contract, re-signing Kempe, the team’s future leader on and off the ice, was at the top of Ken Holland’s to-do list when he took over as general manager last spring. And while the length of the contract he offered Kempe never wavered, the price did.

In the end, media reports said Kempe blinked first, telling agent J.P. Berry to lower his salary demands to get a deal done, eventually accepting an average annual value of $10.625 million beginning next season. That nearly doubles the $5.5 million he’ll earn this season and makes him the fifth-best-paid Swede in the NHL, according to the Sweden Herald. But it’s less than he would have gotten on the open market.

“I think it says two things,” Hiller said of the deal. “What it says about the franchise is that the player was known, was drafted here, was developed here.”

What it says about Kempe, he continued, is that he values that loyalty more than money.

“I think he probably appreciates the time and energy spent on his career, getting him to where he was,” Hiller said. “Now it’s his choice and he says, ‘You know what? I want to stay in place.'"

He’s not alone. A number of the Kings’ recent cornerstone players — among them Dustin Brown, Kopitar and Doughty — spent their entire NHL careers with the team. If he avoids serious injury and a major dropoff in play, Kempe will almost certainly rank among the top five in franchise history in games, goals and points when his contract runs out.

That’s the long-term return on investment Holland and the Kings are hoping for. For the time being, however, they’re counting on Kempe to save a season that seems in danger of spiraling.

Like Fiala, Kempe believes in the Kings.

“If I weren’t happy here, obviously I would consider not playing here,” Kempe said. “We have a good core. We have a good group of younger guys coming up. I think we’re in a good spot.

“Obviously you have to take that in consideration, too, when you sign a new deal. You want to play on a good team, you want to win cups.”

And it’s hard to put a price tag on that.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The NHL’s three-day Christmas break couldn’t come at a better time for the Kings, who have suddenly gone cold as a winter frost.

With Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken at Crypto.com Arena, the Kings head into the schedule pause having lost six of their last seven. And things aren’t getting easier any time soon: when the Kings return to the ice Saturday, they will host the division-leading Ducks before closing out 2025 Monday in Colorado against the Avalanche, the best team in the NHL.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to make sense of things,” coach Jim Hiller said when asked to explain the Kings’ mid-winter slump, which has dropped them into the middle of the Pacific Division standings. “We just feel like we haven't had a good run of games where we felt like, win or lose, we really like how we're playing.

“That's something that we'll keep driving towards. We just haven't had it yet.”

Read more:Kings struggle to stop Blue Jackets on the power play in loss

It’s not just that the Kings (15-12-9) are losing, but how they are losing that is most concerning.

The team, which started Tuesday 31st in the 32-team NHL in scoring and on the power play, has collected more than two goals just twice in 11 games this month. And that’s negated a defense that has given up just 91 goals, second-fewest in the league.

Hiller, who might be on the hot seat a season after guiding the Kings to their best regular season in franchise history, tried to shake things up Tuesday by mixing his lines, most significantly pairing wingers Kevin Fiala and Andrei Kuzmenko on a line centered by Alex Turcotte.

And while Fiala and Kuzmenko responded with goals, it wasn’t enough.

After a scoreless first period, Seattle (15-14-6) went in front to stay 70 seconds into the second when Jordan Eberle, left alone in front of the Kings’ net, had plenty of time and space to settle a pass from Matty Beniers before lifting the puck around goaltender Pheonix Copley and under the crossbar for his 13th goal of the season.

It was the fourth power-play goal the Kings had given up in the last two nights, and the sixth in four games.

The Kraken doubled their lead on a quirky goal less than eight minutes later, with Copley misjudging a deflected shot from Seattle’s Frederick Gaudreau, allowing the puck to knuckle off his glove then trickle through his legs for the goal.

Ben Meyers extended Seattle’s lead to 3-0 with less than four minutes left in the second before the Kings finally got on the board with an unassisted goal from Fiala, his 13th of the season, 11 seconds later.

Kuzmenko pulled the Kings within a goal on a wraparound score, his seventh of the season, with more than 11 minutes to play. But that was all the Kings got. Kraken goalie Joey Daccord held off a frantic attack in the final minutes, stopping 35 shots, and Fiala rang a shot off the crossbar in the final seconds to give Seattle its second win over the Kings in two weeks and its first three-game winning streak of the season.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Adam Fantilli scored with 1:28 left in overtime to lift the Columbus Blue Jackets to a 4–3 win over the Ducks on Tuesday night, breaking a five-game losing streak.

Zach Werenski scored twice and added an assist in his 600th NHL game, Boone Jenner had a goal and an assist, and Kent Johnson added two assists. Jet Greaves stopped 24 shots for his first win since Nov. 20.

Mikael Granlund had a goal and an assist, Ryan Strome and Jackson LaCombe also scored goals, and Ryan Poehling recorded two assists for the Ducks. Ville Husso made 24 saves as the Ducks dropped three games on their five-city trip.

Werenski gave Columbus an early lead at 8:21 of the first period, burying a feed from Jenner to extend his home point streak to 11 games.

Strome pulled the Ducks even with a wrister from the crease at 3:35 of the second period, but Columbus responded with two goals in a 43-second span. Werenski put the Blue Jackets back on top before Jenner backhanded in the rebound of an Ivan Provorov shot just 19 seconds later to make it 3–1.

After Granlund pulled the Ducks within a goal at 5:29, LaCombe tied the score with 3:16 left in the third. Fantilli then ended it in overtime with a wrister from the right circle.

The win was Columbus' first over the Ducks in Nationwide Arena since Dec. 1, 2017.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

NHL players will not take part in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy if the quality of the ice is not good enough, says deputy commissioner Bill Daly.

But he remains "cautiously optimistic" issues will be resolved in time.

Stars from North America's National Hockey League, the biggest in the world, are set to compete at the Milan-Cortina Olympics next year - their first appearance at a Winter Games since 2014.

But there are doubts around the size and quality of the ice at the Santagiulia Arena in Milan, where construction is still not finished, despite the Games starting on 6 February. Matches will also be held at Milano Rho Arena.

"If the ice is unplayable, the ice is unplayable," Daly said.

"I don't want to be flip about it. We probably will know that in advance of the official start of the Games. What you do at that point becomes a different issue.

"Obviously, if the players feel that the ice is unsafe, we're not going to play.

"It's as simple as that."

The rink in Milan, approved by the International Ice Hockey Federation, is shorter than the minimum requirement in the NHL, leading to suggestions there could be an increase in high-speed collisions.

The NHL players' association said on Saturday the concerns were more around the quality of the ice than the size.

Daly, though, said he did not think the issues were insurmountable.

"We have offered and they're utilising our ice experts and technicians and outside providers," he added.

"We're basically moving everybody there to try to help get this done in a way that's acceptable for NHL athletes. And I'm cautiously optimistic it will be fruitful."

• Ice hockey neck guards mandatory at 2026 Olympics

A lot of people return home for the Thanksgiving weekend. But for Corey Perry, Friday’s homecoming was more than a little bit awkward.

One of the most decorated players in Ducks’ history, Perry was greeted by a smattering of boos when he wore a Kings’ sweater into the Honda Center for the first time. Two hours later he left, carrying the sting of a Ducks’ victory that saw his old team rally from deficits three times before winning the first Freeway Faceoff of the season 5-4 in a shootout.

“Great comeback,” said winger Chris Kreider, whose second-period power-play goal got the Ducks started. “A good job of fighting back. It’s definitely a confident feeling.”

Leo Carlsson, who suffered through two dismal losing seasons during the long post-Perry rebuild in Anaheim, had two assists and the game-tying goal with 91 seconds left in regulation for the Ducks, who trailed 4-2 with less than 10 minutes to play.

“It’s a different team,” Carlsson said. “Hungry. Different mentality, too. So it's been great so far season.”

Only Ryan Getzlaf has played more games for the Ducks then Perry, who left Anaheim in 2019 after 14 seasons, beginning an aimless tour of the NHL that saw him play for five teams before signing a free-agent contract with the Kings last summer.

The Ducks haven’t posted a winning record since he departed.

But after Friday’s victory they lead the division and are off to their best start in more than a decade. The Ducks are second in the Western Conference in wins (15), second in the NHL in goals (89), fourth in the conference in points (31) and were tied for fourth in points (31). For Carlsson, meanwhile, his 13th goal and 19th and 20th assists of the season Friday left 20, is tied for fourth in the league with 33 points.

The Ducks’ other scores Friday came from Olen Zellweger in the second period and Pavel Mintyukov in the third.

The Kings’ scores came Alex Laferriere, Kevin Fiala, Alex Turcotte and Joel Edmundson. With the point they earned by taking the game to overtime, the Kings headed back up the freeway Friday afternoon second in the Pacific Division, two points behind the Ducks.

And, surprisingly, they have Perry to thank for that.

“He’s a massive piece for us right now,” center Philip Danault said. “He’s not the fastest guy on the ice but he’s so smart. He goes into the crease, he gets goals. He gets in the opponent’s head.

“He’s probably one of the big reasons we’re winning.”

Since leaving Anaheim, Perry has come off the visitors’ bench at the Honda Center several times. So Friday’s game wasn’t necessarily one he had circled on his calendar.

“It was home,” he said before the game. “I have nothing but tremendous things to say.”

After missing the start of the season following knee surgery, Perry was activated last month on the same day captain Anze Kopitar was placed on injured reserve with a foot injury. And he immediately took up the slack, scoring the first of his seven goals — good for second on the team — in his second game. He also has six assists, is fourth on the team with 13 points and is averaging more than 14 minutes of ice time just the second time since he left Anaheim.

“You know, it’s fun,” said Perry, who is nearly halfway to his point total of a season ago. “This is what we do for a living.”

Perry, 40, is the third-oldest player in the NHL. But with a Stanley Cup, an MVP award, a goal-scoring title and two Olympic gold medals in his trophy case, he has a resume few players can match. Yet the Ducks bought out the final two seasons and $8.625 million of his contract in 2019, part of a rebuild that has seen the franchise go through three coaches and three general managers without posting a winning record.

“Now it’s seven years later. I don’t know anybody on the team,” Perry said of the Ducks, who have the second-youngest roster in the Western Conference. “It’s turned over so much that it’s a new group.”

And new coach Joel Quenneville, who has a history of coaching success with young players, has that new group playing with confidence.

“We’re never going to give up,” said Carlsson, one of six Ducks younger than 23. “That’s the mentality.”

Laferriere got the scoring started late in the first period, parking himself in front of the goal and banging the puck past Ducks’ goalie Ville Husso, who made two big saves in the shootout.

Kreider tied it seconds into a power play midway through the second period, then Fiala and Zellweger exchanged goals just 59 seconds apart to send the teams into the second intermission tied 2-2.

Turcotte’s first goal of the season on a tip-in put the Kings back in front early in the third period before Edmundson doubled the lead on a slap shot from outside the right faceoff circle. He was helped by Perry’s presence in front of the goal, screening Husso on the shot.

The Kings wouldn’t score again though, allowing the Ducks to force overtime on goals from Mintyukov and Carlsson, who game-tying score came after his team pulled Husso to get an extra attacker.

“It was fun,” McTavish said of his first Freeway Faceoff matinee, which drew a sellout crowd of 17,174. “It was loud. There was a lot of energy in the building. So it was a ton of fun, and obviously more fun to come away with both points.”

Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

York Knights full-back Toa Mata'afa has signed a new deal to remain with the newly promoted Super League club.

The 28-year-old joined the club for 2025, having spent two seasons in France with Baroudeur de Pia and later FC Lezignan.

He made 19 appearances for the Knights in 2025 and scored 12 tries, helping them win the 1895 Cup and reach the Championship Grand Final.

"I'm really excited to continue my journey with the York Knights and step up into the Super League," Mata'afa said.

"It's a great opportunity to keep developing and help the team build on the achievements this year."

Prior to his move to the northern hemisphere, Mata'afa played for North Sydney Bears in the NSW Cup.

"For me, he's a player whose ceiling limit could be anywhere. He's got a really cool head on him, some great leadership ability, great skill and athleticism," Knights head coach Mark Applegarth said.

"The best part about Toa is I think we've barely scratched the surface with him yet and I'm really looking forward to working with him again."

For Kings’ captain Anze Kopitar, Tuesday’s season-opener was the beginning of the end while for Ken Holland, the team’s first-year general manager, it was the end of the beginning.

For both it was also a night to forget, with the Colorado Avalanche skating through, over and around the Kings in a dominant 4-1 victory built on second-period goals from Martin Necas, Sam Malinski, Artturi Lehkonen and a second Necas score midway through the third.

Kevin Fiala got the Kings' only goal on the team’s third power play of the final period, though the score, coming with less than five minutes to play, was little more than a murmur of protest. Kopitar picked up his 839^th career assist on the goal, padding his franchise record.

Read more:Anze Kopitar reflects upon his decision to retire as Kings enter season at a crossroads

Kopitar, the Kings’ all-time leader in several other categories, including games, announced last month that this season, his 20^th in the NHL, would be his last yet. And while those numbers will eventually take him to the Hall of Fame, first there will be a farewell tour around the league, one that got off to an uneven start Tuesday with the sellout crowd at Crypto.com Arena saluting him with a standing ovation pregame. Kopitar wasn’t much of a factor after that, however, taking just one shot in 18 minutes.

Meanwhile for Holland, hired last May to get the Kings beyond the opening round of the playoffs for the first time since 2014, the game marked the end of his summer restructuring with his new team. And the first impression wasn’t a good one, with the Kings losing their opener for the third time in four seasons.

Both teams played cautiously in a first period that ended with the Kings skating shorthanded after Colorado’s Josh Manson took down the Kings’ Warren Foegele with an elbow, a hit Jeff Malott acknowledged by chasing Manson down the ice and dropping the gloves. Both players drew five-minute fighting penalties but Malott was also given two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct.

The Kings killed the penalty, which spilled over into the second period, but seconds after both teams were back at full strength, Necas gave the Avalanche the lead for good with a wrister from the right circle.

Read more:Kings' Corey Perry to miss six to eight weeks after knee surgery

Malinski, a defenseman, doubled the advantage less than seven minutes later, blasting a shot from just inside the blue line through traffic and by goalie Darcy Kuemper. Lehkonen gave Colorado its third goal of the second period on a rebound with 5:18 left.

Necas then made it 4-0 on a power-play goal halfway through the final period. Fiala matched that with the Kings’ first goal of the year less than five minutes later.

The Kings, meanwhile, rarely challenged Colorado’s Scott Wedgewood, playing tentatively and creating little offense, putting just nine shots on goal through the first 36 minutes. After a big third period, they finished with 25.

As a result Holland’s first game with the Kings was an an uneven as his first summer with the team. Although he added forwards Corey Perry (who will miss the first month of the season with a knee injury) and Joel Armia, defensemen Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci and goalkeeper Anton Forsberg, and re-signed winger Andrei Kuzmenko to a club-friendly contract, defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov, Holland’s main offseason target, left for the New York Rangers.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Luc Robitaille knew his hockey playing career was over when it took him longer to get his battered body ready for a game than it did to play it.

“It became harder and harder physically,” said Robitaille, whose next stop was the hall of fame. “I think I knew at that point.”

And once his mind was made up, there was no turning back.

For Anze Kopitar, who is in the peak of good health, the decision was a little different. The Kings’ longtime center announced last month that, at 38, he will retire after this season and spend more time with his family. But, like Robitaille, there will be no turning back.

“I'm not going to change my mind,” he said.

In fact, he’s not going to change anything. Kopitar said he’s approaching this season, his 20th with the Kings, the same way he approached the first 19.

Read more:Kings captain Anze Kopitar says he will retire at the end of the 2025-26 season

“The last few years, I told myself that I have to enjoy it because you don't know when the ending is com[ing],” he said. “So I've been enjoying it. I'm obviously having a lot of fun, still playing the game. This year won't be any different.

“The focus is still on this season.”

A season that kicks off Tuesday when the Kings host the Colorado Avalanche. But while Kopitar is starting the season the same way as always, he’s hoping for a different ending since the Kings’ last four years have ended with first-round playoff losses to the Edmonton Oilers.

Another Stanley Cup title would be a nice parting gift, especially since Kopitar, entering a team-record 10th season as captain, would be the first man to hoist the trophy, an honor that went to Dustin Brown when the Kings won in 2012 and 2014.

“I'd like to win every year. I'd like to win this year,” he said.

“My kids weren't born when we won, so I'd like to win so they can experience that feeling too.”

However Kopitar’s season finishes, his career will end with him joining Robitaille, now the Kings president, in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He is the Kings' all-time leader in games (1,454), assists (838) and winning goals (78) and ranks in the top three in goals, points, plus-minus and power-play scores.

And just nine players in NHL history have played more games with one team than Kopitar, who has spent his entire career with the Kings.

Unlike Robitaille, he’s hardly hobbling off into retirement. He led the Kings with 46 assists and was second with 67 points last season, playing in 81 of 82 games. He also won his third Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, which goes to the player exhibiting the best sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct in the NHL.

But his two children — daughter Neza, 10, is a talented figure skater and son Jakob, 9, plays hockey — deserve more of his time and attention, he said.

“I still love to be in hockey and I’m still productive,” Kopitar said. “But on the flip side, the kids need their dad to be more present and be a dad, not a hockey player. I can walk away on my own terms and not be forced to retire because of injuries and because the body's not holding up.”

That wasn’t Robitaille’s experience. A fractured ankle late in career and lower back pain so severe he could hardly get out of bed, led to his retirement in 2006, less than six months before Kopitar’s NHL debut.

“It kind of felt to me that I had squeezed everything out of the lemon. There was nothing left,” Robitaille said. “I was really at peace.”

As for what advice he’d give his captain, Robitaille said he’ll tell Kopitar to make time to stop and smell the roses on his last trip around the league.

“If you listen to 99% of the guys that retire in any sport, the one thing they miss is the [locker] room,” he said. “So when you know you’re near the end, you’ve got to make sure you pay attention to every one of those little moments that you’re going to miss for the next 50 years of your life.

“You’re playing a game. You’re 30 years old or 40 years old — 38 for Kopi — and he’s playing a game. It’s amazing. Most people don’t get to do that in their life, you know?”

Kopitar’s decision comes with the Kings at a crossroads. They tied team records for points (105) and wins (48) last season while going a franchise-best 31-6-4 at home in Jim Hiller’s first full season as coach. That earned the team second place in the Pacific Division, its best finish in a decade.

The postseason was déjà vu all over again, however, with the Oilers eliminating the Kings.

General manager Rob Blake resigned four days later and was replaced by Ken Holland, who won four Stanley Cups as GM of the Detroit Red Wings. The Kings' core is also in transition because when Kopitar steps aside, only defenseman Drew Doughty will remain from their Stanley Cup-winning teams.

“Passing the torch, [we]'ve been trying to for the past few years, been trying to mentor some of the kids in this locker room,” Kopitar said. “Maybe that's what it is.”

Holland had mixed results in his first summer with the Kings, adding forwards Corey Perry (who will miss the first month of the season because of a knee injury) and Joel Armia, defensemen Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci and goalkeeper Anton Forsberg, and re-signing winger Andrei Kuzmenko to a club-friendly contract.

Read more:Elliott: Why Anze Kopitar beats Gretzky, Dionne and Robitaille as king of Kings

Also back are leading scorers Kevin Fiala and Adrian Kempe, who had 35 goals each, wingers Warren Foegele and Quinton Byfield and goaltender Darcy Kuemper, who had a career-best 2.02 goals-against average and finished third in Vezina Trophy voting.

But Holland lost veteran defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov to the New York Rangers and failed to land Mitch Marner, the summer’s most-sought player, who wound up in Las Vegas.

And now he’s the team’s first general manager in two decades who has been forced to ponder a future without Anze Kopitar.

“We’re really going to enjoy having Kopi in the lineup this year. But next summer it’s going to be a big void,” Holland said on the Canucks Central podcast. “He’s big and strong. And it’s hard to find big, strong, talented centermen.

“He’s very intelligent. And I think the team follows his lead.”

As for Kopitar, he’s not thinking past the next nine months. He has the rest of his life to figure out what comes next.

“I haven't really given too much thought of what's going to happen [next], except for being home for my kids,” he said. “I'll take my time and then see what, see what life throws at me.

“I'm going to miss the game of hockey. What I'm not gonna miss is working out, getting ready for the season, all the hours you’ve got to put in. But the game itself, of course, I'm going to miss it. It's been here for the better part of 35 years. But listen, the summers are going to be more enjoyable.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Anze Kopitar, widely considered the greatest player in Kings franchise history and poised to become the team's all-time leading scorer, announced Thursday he will retire at the end of the 2025-26 season.

"I just felt this is the time, but saying that, I'm looking extremely forward to this next season," said Kopitar, who added the decision was rooted in spending more time with his family. "I still have a lot of motivation. I've got a lot of energy, a lot of desire to compete at the highest level."

Kopitar said he was confident his decision would hold — even if the Kings made it all the way to Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final.

"My mind is made up. It was a hard decision," Kopitar said. "I want to get this out of the way now, to where I’m not a distraction for the team. ... I just felt that this is the best time."

Entering his 20th season with the Kings and the final year of his contract, the decision was somewhat expected from the 38-year-old team captain. He told KCAL News last month he was thinking about retirement and that it could be his last NHL season.

Kings general manager Ken Holland told NHL Network Radio in July that Kopitar indicated he wasn’t seeking a contract extension this summer and was intending to take things a “year at a time.”

Kopitar's announcement came only hours after Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw announced he would retire at the end of the season.

“Must have been something in the universe for us to decide to do it on the same day,” Kopitar said.

Kopitar’s Hall of Fame credentials have already been established. The greatest player ever from Slovenia, he helped lead the Kings to the franchise’s Stanley Cup victories in 2012 and 2014 as part of a core four that included Dustin Brown, Jonathan Quick and Drew Doughty.

Kopitar is second all-time in franchise scoring, with 1,278 points in a franchise-leading 1,454 games played. He is 30 points away from breaking Marcel Dionne’s team record for most points (1,307). He ranks third all-time in franchise goals (440) behind Luc Robitaille (557) and Dionne (550) and leads in assists (838). He is a two-time Selke trophy winner (best defensive forward) and three-time Lady Byng trophy winner (gentlemanly play).

Drafted 11th overall by the Kings in 2005, Kopitar made an immediate impact during his 2006-07 rookie season, finishing with 20 goals and 61 points for a downtrodden team that was in the middle of a six-year playoff drought.

Eventually, with Doughty joining the team in 2008 coupled with steady growth from Brown, Quick and Kopitar, the Kings returned to the playoffs in 2010 before capturing the franchise’s first Stanley Cup in 2012.

Kopitar has stood out on a team that has had many greats, including NHL all-time leading scorer Wayne Gretzky.

“It’s really hard for me to sit here and say I’m the greatest King. That’s just not my personality. Far from it,” Kopitar told The Times’ Helene Elliott in 2023. “There’s been great Kings in this organization, with Marcel, Luc, Dave [Taylor], Wayne, Blakey [Rob Blake]. The list can go on for a little bit. Brownie. Individually, yes, but it’s about collective wins.”

Read more:Kings' Corey Perry to miss six to eight weeks after knee surgery

With Kopitar's decision, the biggest roster question facing the Kings remains whether they can re-sign Adrian Kempe to a long-term deal. Kempe, who has led the team in points the last two seasons, is in the final year of his contract.

The Kings open the preseason Sunday against the Ducks in the Empire Classic at Toyota Arena in Ontario. They begin the regular season against the Colorado Avalanche at Crypto.com Arena on Oct. 7.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

For Ken Holland, the Kings’ decidedly old-school general manager, new isn’t necessarily better. Take the NHL draft, for example.

Holland presided over more than a quarter-century of drafts with the Detroit Red Wings and Edmonton Oilers, and they were generally held in one place, with everyone from the executives doing the drafting to the players being drafted on site.

On Friday, for the first time in a non-pandemic environment, the draft was conducted semi-remotely, with the top 93 draft-eligible players and their families filling some of the seats in the half-empty Peacock Theater in Los Angeles while team representatives made their selections from their home markets.

Read more:Kings hire Hall of Famer Ken Holland as their new general manager

And whatever the league was attempting to accomplish with the decentralized format, other than saving on travel, it didn’t work.

After each pick was announced on a giant video board that took up two-thirds of the theater’s massive stage, players made their way up the aisle to be greeted by Commissioner Gary Bettman. They then pulled on a team jersey and hat before being led into the "Draft House" — a small virtual reality room in the center of the stage — for what amounted to a congratulatory Zoom call with the club’s brass.

The young men were celebrating the biggest moment of their lives yet they came off like Dorothy speaking to the Wizard of Oz. Much of it was awkward, especially when James Hagens, the eighth selection, was left waving at Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney after the audio in the Bruins’ war room in Boston went mute. That was just one of multiple technical glitches that included echoes and timing delays that left players and executives talking over one another.

When it became obvious the painfully slow-paced event would plod past 4½ hours, the Draft House was closed to some teams.

Brady Martin, the fifth pick, didn’t even bother to come to L.A. So when Nashville announced his selection — via a celebrity video taped at a golf course — the NHL showed a video of Martin working on his family’s farm. Russian goaltender Pyotr Andreyanov wouldn’t even get that treatment. When he was announced as the 20th overall pick, the NHL had nothing to show, making Andreyanov the first no-show of the no-show draft.

Matthew Schaefer, a 17-year-old defenseman from Hamilton, Canada,, who was taken with the No. 1 pick by the New York Islanders, said being part of video draft did not spoil his big day.

“I'm just honored to be picked,” said Schaefer who cried, alongside his dad and brother, when his name was called. “I dreamt about it my whole life. It’s such an honor. Especially the first pick overall.”

For Holland, however, none of that counts as progress.

“I’m old and I’m old fashioned. So I like the old way,” said the Kings general manager, whose view was shared by other GMs around the league. “You draft some player in the sixth round and all of a sudden you hear ‘yay!’ way up in the corner. It’s him, it’s his family, and they’re all excited to hear [his] name announced by an NHL team.

“This weekend, to me, is about the young players.”

Aside from the technical difficulties, the actual draft went largely to form. The Ducks, as expected, took Roger McQueen, an 18-year-old forward from Saskatchewan, with their top pick, the 10th overall selection. The Kings, meanwhile, traded their first pick, No. 24 overall, to the Pittsburgh Penguins. After moving down seven spots they took right-handed-shooting defenseman Henry Brzustewicz, 18, a Minnesota native, with the penultimate pick of the first day.

Round two through seven of the draft will be conducted Saturday.

The Ducks, who had a top-10 pick for a seventh straight year, see the 6-foot-5 McQueen as a raw talent who can develop into a top-line center.

“He has a big body. But what goes along with that is his skill and skating ability,” said general manager Pat Verbeek, whose team has 10 picks this weekend.

For the Kings, this draft was the first public move in what could be an intense couple of weeks. Defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov and winger Andrei Kuzmenko are unrestricted free agents and the team would like to re-sign both before they hit the open market Tuesday.

“If we re-sign Gavrikov, there’s not going to be a ton of change,” Holland said. “If we don’t, then there’s going to be change.”

Gavrikov, 29, emerged as a solid presence on the blue line, playing a career-high 82 games and posting the best goals-against average of the 17 defensemen to play at least 1,500 minutes. Former Kings GM Rob Blake made Gavrikov a contract offer last March, said Holland, who has since sweetened the deal twice. Replacing him, the GM said, could require a couple of signings.

Kuzmenko, 29, reenergized the offense after coming over from Philadelphia at the trade deadline, with the Kings going 17-5 and averaging nearly four goals a game down the stretch.

“We like Kuzmenko. Kuzmenko likes it here; he likes his role,” Holland said. “I’m talking to him. I talked two, three, four times this week with his agent. So we’ll see.”

Signing both players would put a big dent in the Kings’ $21.7 million in salary-cap space.

“We have a lot of cap space but it doesn’t take much and it’s gone,” Holland said. “We’ve got to figure out how we want to spend our money and they need to figure out how much money they can get.”

Aside from Gavrikov and Kuzmenko, the Kings don’t have many loose ends to tie up. The team is confident it can get forward Alex Laferriere, a restricted free agent, to agree to a short-term deal and it has to decide whether to re-sign David Rittich, an unrestricted free agent, as the backup to starting goalkeeper Darcy Kuemper.

Two players who could be moving on are forward Tanner Jeannot and defenseman Jordan Spence, both of whom are looking for more ice time and may have to leave to get it.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.