Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

11

Anze Kopitar

Los Angeles Kings Center

One thousand three hundred and seventy-three games, 1,211 points, and 70 of them last season at 36.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2006-07LAK72204161-122472119310.420:32
2007-08LAK82324577-1522122320115.920:41
2008-09LAK82273966-173271323411.520:27
2009-10LAK82344781+616141225913.121:47
2010-11LAK75254873+252061623310.721:35
2011-12LAK82255176+122082223010.921:20
2012-13LAK47103242+14160019810.220:29
2013-14LAK82294170+3424100920014.520:53
2014-15LAK79164864-21060413411.919:23
2015-16LAK81254974+341651817714.120:52
2016-17LAK76124052-10285001508.020:46
2017-18LAK82355792+212070620017.522:05
2018-19LAK81223860-203012315614.122:18
2019-20LAK70214162+61671513515.621:02
2020-21LAK56133750-71030411811.021:11
2021-22LAK81194867-6146042109.020:46
2022-23LAK82284674+20470416916.620:18
2023-24LAK81264470+112291613319.619:39
2024-25 so far
Career13734197921211+943441201471323013.020:54

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

81 games, 26 goals and 44 assists for 70 points, 9 on the power play, 22 penalty minutes, 19:39 a night and plus-11. He took 51.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,134 minutes, the 66th percentile, and his ice went 51-40 against an expectation of 44.42-41.35.

Seven goals of finishing above what the chances were worth. Seventy points at 36 in his eighteenth season, and still nineteen and a half minutes a night.

The Finesse Game

133 shots at a median of 21 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20, converted at 19.6 per cent against a career 13.0.

792 career assists in 1,373 games. He no longer shoots often and he has never missed from close. The hands work in traffic and the head is a half-second ahead of everybody, which is what has kept a player with ordinary feet at the top of a roster for eighteen years.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 225 and protects the puck below the goal line as well as anybody in the league.

22 penalty minutes in 81 games and 344 in 1,373 career games is a very low rate for a centre who has always taken the hard assignment. He takes the defensive-zone draw that starts the shift and he kills penalties with 14 career shorthanded goals.

The Intangibles

Eleventh overall in 2005 out of Jesenice, eighteen seasons, 1,373 games and two Stanley Cups, all of it for one organisation. He has been the captain since 2016 and a Selke winner twice.

He is 37 and the skating is the part that has gone. Everything else is intact and the club has no obvious replacement for any of it.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,134 minutes

Expected goals
51.8%
66th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.2%
80th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 40 against. Expected: 44.4 and 41.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
93rd
Numbers
66th

The report ranks him 27 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 415 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1134 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club
LAK took 54.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.8% — 2.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 1,134 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Adrian Kempe51.4%53.4%46.2%
Quinton Byfield52.0%51.3%65.2%
Drew Doughty53.9%49.9%55.6%

51.4% together, 53.4% for him apart and 46.2% for Kempe apart. Kempe was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Kempe than for him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

180 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 26 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.