The Los Angeles Kings currently trail the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 in their Stanley Cup Playoff series. This is following a 3-2 loss at home that saw LA give up two goals in under thirty seconds. While LA has been missing key pieces in Jake Muzzin and Drew Doughty for parts of this series, they have been very outplayed overall. If the LA Kings wish to fight back into this series, Anze Kopitar is going to have to take the reigns like he did all season.

Anze Kopitar Is Key In LA Comeback

His Season

Through the regular season, Anze Kopitar found his game after a poor 2016-17 year that saw him net just 52 points. In 2017-18, the superstar centre had 92 points in 82 games played and generated someHart Trophy nomination talk. Kopitar was a monster by all accounts, scoring 31 more points than the next person on the team, Dustin Brown.

Kopitar also had a 52.14CF% and a 49.13xGF% this season. Both of these stats were positive, relative to his team. He controlled play very well and did this against top competition. Kopitar also only started in the offensive zone 46% of the time. This means that he saw his fair share of defensive zone draws, which makes it more impressive that he put up great numbers. Kopitar was a star all year for the Kings, so what about this post-season?

First Three Games – Points

Obviously, three games is nowhere near a big enough sample size to predict future play, which is not what is happening here.