{"id":153833,"date":"2025-09-19T07:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T07:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/153833\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T07:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T07:07:07","slug":"kings-anze-kopitar-to-retire-after-2025-26-nhl-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/153833\/","title":{"rendered":"Kings&#8217; Anze Kopitar to retire after 2025-26 NHL season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anze Kopitar will call it quits after this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Kings captain will retire following the 2025-26 season \u2014 his 20th of his career \u2014 ending a run that included two Stanley Cup titles, three Lady Byng Trophies three times and two Selke Trophies.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=boKYxQEGc64&amp;t=63s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Kopitar announced the decision<\/a> at a news conference on Thursday after the Kings wrapped up their first day of training camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Anze Kopitar in action during the Kings\u2019 6-4 road loss to the Oilers in the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs on May 1, 2025. Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>The 28-year-old Slovenian noted that part of the reasoning was his desire to be more present for his family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey deserve a husband and a dad to be home to be present for the moments that are going to be leading up, especially for these guys,\u201d he said, pointing to his children. \u201cThey\u2019re soon going to be teenagers, and we all know that that\u2019s a very important time of their lives, and I want to be as present as I can be.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy announce now? I just felt that, in a simple way to put it, I want to get this out of the way now, to where I\u2019m not a distraction for the team. For example, if we\u2019re in a fight coming down the stretch, the last thing I want to do is take any attention away from the team and put it on myself. I just felt that this is the best time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Kopitar announced the news hours after fellow Los Angeles sports star, Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/09\/18\/sports\/clayton-kershaw-retiring-at-end-of-season-after-legendary-dodgers-career\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">revealed that he would be retiring<\/a> at the end of this MLB season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Anze Kopitar carries the Stanley Cup after the Kings beat the Rangers at home in Game 5 on June 13, 2014. AP<\/p>\n<p>The Kings center even made light of the timing. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI guess some pretty big news broke when Kershaw retired, so thank you for coming here,\u201d he said with a chuckle to the assembled press.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Kopitar has appeared in nearly 1,500 NHL games \u2014 all with the Kings \u2014 and has scored 440 goals with 1,278 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>King star Anze Kopitar, accompanied by wife, Ines, announces he will retire at the conclusion of the 2025-26 season during a press conference on Sept. 18, 2025.   NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles drafted Kopitar with the 11th overall pick in the 2005 NHL Draft, kickstarting a career that is likely to end with his name in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He was part of cup-winning teams in 2012 and 2014, coincidentally toppling two of the three metro-area teams \u2014 the Devils and Rangers \u2014 in the Stanley Cup Final.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Kopitar is already the Kings\u2019 all-time leader in games (1,454), assists (838) and game-winning goals (78). <\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s 30 points shy of taking control of the club record for most points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anze Kopitar will call it quits after this season.\u00a0 The Kings captain will retire following the 2025-26 season&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,7526,575,85],"class_list":["post-153833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}