Regardless of how they perform, the Los Angeles Kings are going to be a different team in 2026-27. The last, and greatest, piece of their double Stanley Cup winning mini-dynasty, Anze Kopitar, won't be there, and his #11 jersey won't be seen on LA Kings colors ever again. Rightly, the team has announced that they'll be retiring the jersey now that their long-term captain has stepped away from the game for good.
Kopitar's accomplishments speak for themselves. Two Stanley Cup rings, three Lady Byng trophies, two Selke trophies for best defensive forward, and a Mark Messier leadership award. He managed 1316 points in 1521 National Hockey League appearances, in 79 of which he scored the game winning goal. Nearly a season's worth of wins coming off the stick of a single player.
Jersey retirements should be rare
Not every team is blessed with a storied history. The Montreal Canadiens have a plethora of numbers hanging in their home arena, and looking up in the home of any of the other Original Six franchises will show you similar past glory. The Edmonton Oilers 1980s heyday gave them a slate of Hall of Famers from a single generation, and most of the names they've hoisted fairly earned their spot. *cough* Kevin Lowe? Charlie Huddy was better *cough*
In the future, Connor McDavid's #97 is all but guaranteed to find its place up there, and Leon Draisaitl may as well. Others, such as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman, from the current era may need a Stanley Cup win before jersey retirement becomes a possibility. The next couple years could go a long way toward determining what the rafters at Roger's Place look like in the more distant future.
Other teams, with fewer success stories in their past, have established a lower bar for jersey retirement. The Vancouver Canucks retired Trevor Linden's #16, in spite of a lack of career hardware (he did win the King Clancy Memorial trophy in 1997), and that sits with other talented, but Cup-less alumni players. Stan Smyl, Pavel Bure, Markus Naslund, and the Sedin twins all made their marks in the NHL, and its understandable when your franchise has never managed to win the Stanley Cup, that other benchmarks are needed to justify jersey retirement.
In Kopitar's case, he helped transform the Kings into a competitor, and his steady presence and leadership kept them in the mix even as his career wound down. He took on top competition throughout his career, and he leaves both a hole in the lineup, and a hell of a legacy.
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