Just hours after another Los Angeles sporting legend, Clayton Kershaw, announced that 2025 will be his final season, another one of the longest-tenured athletes in Hollywood announced his plans to hang it up. Anze Kopitar, a hockey superstar for the Los Angeles Kings for nearly two decades, announced that 2025-26 will be his final season in the NHL, according to Kings reporter Zach Dooley.
Kopitar has spent his entire 19-year career with the Kings and will play out year 20 this winter into the spring as he rides off into the sunset with the same team that drafted him. The Los Angeles captain has won two Stanley Cups with the franchise and has become synonymous with Kings hockey over the course of the 21st century.
In addition to those two championships, Kopitar has won the Selke Trophy twice as the best defensive forward in hockey. He will be missed in Los Angeles, but the team and the fans will be thrilled to have one last ride with him in 2025-26.
The raw numbers have been very favorable for Kopitar during his career as well. He has played in at least 81 out of 82 games 12 different times during his career, tallying 1,454 appearances in total. During that time, he has scored 440 goals and 838 assists for a total of 1,278 points, including a stellar 92-point season in 2017-18.
The Kings have been a consistent playoff team in recent years, but they have not been able to get over the hump that is the Edmonton Oilers. Connor McDavid and company have eliminated the Kings in four consecutive postseasons, so Kopitar and the Kings will be looking to flip the script this season.
There is no question that the goal this season will be to get Kopitar's hands on the third Stanley Cup of his career and bring the cup back to Hollywood. There is a lot of work to be done before that point, but it would be hard to draw up a better storybook ending to a Hall-of-Fame career.
