Opportunity will abound Wednesday when the Kings have the chance to move to a flawless 4-0-0 on their road swing and 7-0-0 away from home this season while captain Anze Kopitar has a shot to score career goal No. 400.
He buried Nos. 398 and 399 amid victories in Ottawa on Thursday and Philadelphia on Saturday, following a win at Toronto, where he recorded an assist to start the journey. The Kings have been back home during their three-day layoff ahead of a matchup with the 2023 Stanley Cup winners, the Vegas Golden Knights, to technically close out their four-game road trip in Sin City before beginning a homestand of commensurate length.
Not only have the Kings been the NHL’s most successful frequent fliers, they’ve ranked near the top of the league offensively, in terms of volume and balance. Only the Vancouver Canucks have scored more goals per game than the Kings and only Vancouver has had more scorers reach double-digit point totals (six to the Kings’ five, including Kopitar). The Kings have also enjoyed tremendous continuity: Since Arthur Kaliyev’s return from suspension in their third game, they’ve dressed the same lineup every single night.
“We’ve brought some guys in and we have pretty much every line producing right now, which is a good thing for us,” said Adrian Kempe, last year’s team leader in goals. “That hasn’t been an issue for us this year, the goal-scoring.”
The Kings have also received tremendous goaltending from Cam Talbot, who was named the NHL’s second star of the week Monday. His play has been all but overshadowed, however, by the Kings’ copious offense by committee.
Vegas joined the Kings, Canucks, Tampa Bay Lightning Toronto Maple Leafs and Pittsburgh Penguins among the most balanced scoring teams entering Tuesday’s action. The Golden Knights have been led by William Karlsson, who not only has 15 points in 13 outings but also a plus-12 rating buoyed by superlative checking and matchup domination.
That sounds a bit like the perennial scouting report on Kopitar, who has topped the Kings in scoring in all but two campaigns of his illustrious career while earning a reputation as an elite defender. The last player to reach the 400-goal plateau in a Kings jersey was Kopitar’s former linemate Marian Gaborik on Dec. 5, 2017, against the club for which he scored most of those goals, the Minnesota Wild. This season, Kopitar has found himself challenged not only by Kempe and Kevin Fiala once again, but also by local product Trevor Moore and the oft-scrutinized Quinton Byfield.
But only Kopitar is closing in on the latest in a torrent of milestones, his 400th goal. Whenever he next finds the net, Kopitar will become the 108th player in NHL history to cross that threshold, and he could be joined by Boston’s Brad Marchand and Dallas’s Jamie Benn later this season. Like Marchand and Benn, Kopitar has played his entire career for one franchise and become its captain.
“It’s a lot easier to stay in one place when you win already versus exploring other teams to try and win. I’ve felt great here right from the start,” Kopitar said earlier this season.
The full context of Kopitar’s accomplishment may be better viewed through a lens of offensive stars who have also excelled in the defensive zone. Kopitar will become just the seventh 400-goal scorer to also have won at least one Frank J. Selke Trophy as the league’s top defensive forward (Kopitar has two). He will join Patrice Bergeron, Rod Brind’Amour, Sergei Fedorov, Ron Francis, Doug Gilmour and Steve Yzerman in that club.
They are all also 1,000-point scorers, and the only other 1,000-point Selke winner was Bob Clarke (358 goals). Other than Bergeron, none of Kopitar’s renowned peers were able to equal Kopitar’s achievements, with Selke winners Pavel Datsyuk and Jonathan Toews (who has not yet retired but is currently inactive) falling short of those scoring benchmarks, while prolific scorers like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid had yet to capture a Selke.
Karlsson and Vegas captain Mark Stone have joined Kopitar among the top two-way forwards this season. The Golden Knights were the last team to defeat the Kings, edging past them 4-3 in a shootout Oct. 28. That was the second game of a dense stretch of Vegas’ schedule that ended with a 4-2 loss to the Ducks on Sunday, since which the defending champs have been idle.
Kings at Vegas
When: Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Where: T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas
How to watch: TNT, Max
