{"id":154756,"date":"2025-09-19T11:30:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/154756\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T11:30:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T11:30:21","slug":"kopitar-to-retire-from-kings-after-this-season-his-20th-in-nhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/154756\/","title":{"rendered":"Kopitar to retire from Kings after this season, his 20th in NHL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anze Kopitar<\/a> is officially entering his final season in the NHL.<\/p>\n

Flanked by his wife and two children, the Los Angeles Kings captain announced Thursday in El Segundo, California that he will be retiring after this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter last season, I had a bit of time over the last few months to think and to talk to the family to see where the path is for me and where it’s going, and after lots and lots of thinking, I\u2019ve decided that this year is going to be my last year playing in the NHL,\u201d Kopitar said. \u201cWith a heavy heart obviously, I\u2019ve accepted that decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys (wife and children) that are sitting here with me, have been with me for the past 20-plus years and now they deserve a husband and a dad to be home and present for the moments that are going to be leading up, especially for these guys (children). They\u2019re soon going to be teenagers and we all know that\u2019s a very important time of their lives and I want to be as present as I can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kopitar is entering his 20th season in the NHL, all with the Kings, who selected him No. 11 in the 2005 NHL Draft. The 38-year-old center is going into the final season of a two-year, $14 million contract (average annual value of $7 million) he signed July 6, 2023.<\/p>\n

The retirement announcement comes on the second day of training camp for Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to get this out of the way now to where I\u2019m not a distraction for the team,\u201d Kopitar said. \u201cFor example, if we\u2019re in a fight coming down the stretch, the last thing I want to do is to take any attention from the team and put it on myself. I just felt this is the best time.\u201d<\/p>\n

A two-time Stanley Cup champion (2012, 2014), Kopitar was named Kings captain June 16, 2016, and is the first player from Slovenia to skate in the League. He and his family will be moving back to Slovenia once he retires.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re both from Slovenia, the kids are excited to every summer to go there, my parents still live there, all of our extended family is there,\u201d Kopitar said. \u201cWe\u2019ll move back for a little bit, we\u2019ll take some deep breaths and we\u2019ll see where our lives take us after that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anze Kopitar is officially entering his final season in the NHL. Flanked by his wife and two children,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-154756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}