LOS ANGELES — Kings captain Anže Kopitar’s 1,500th NHL game also marked D.J. Smith’s first win as interim coach and Artemi Panarin’s first goal in black and silver.
The Kings dispensed with the New York Islanders, 5-3, on Thursday night at Crypto.com Arena, winning for the second time in three chances since breaking their season-long, five-game funk.
Kopitar is just the 25th player in more than a century of NHL competition to reach the 1,500-game mark and he could climb as high as 23rd all-time this season, his 20th and final campaign.
He joined Alex Delvecchio, Shane Doan, Gordie Howe, Nicklas Lidström, Alex Ovechkin and Steve Yzerman as the only players to play 1,500 or more games and their entire NHL careers for one franchise. Only two additional players, all-time leader Patrick Marleau and legendary defenseman Ray Bourque, have played 1,500 games with a single franchise while also playing for a second organization.
Panarin, Adrian Kempe and Mikey Anderson each had a goal and an assist. Alex Laferriere and Samuel Helenius also scored, and Brandt Clarke contributed two assists. Darcy Kuemper made 31 saves.
J.G. Pageau had the only assists on goals by Bo Horvat and Adam Pelech for New York. Emil Heineman also scored. Ilya Sorokin didn’t help his Vezina Trophy candidacy by stopping just 30 of 35 shots.
In the final 20 minutes, the Kings wedged a goal allowed, at 4:30, between a pair of their own at the 2:30 and 8:30 marks, with the Isles then clawing back a goal six-on-five.
Islanders coach Patrick Roy, the iconic former goaltender, pulled Sorokin with around 8:30 to play for the second straight night. New York defended its vacated cage effectively the entire time, but scored just once off a brilliant setup by Matthew Schaefer for Heineman’s deflection. The Islanders still lost a second straight game after winning five in a row.
Kempe had sealed the visitors’ fate with his franchise-leading 23rd goal of the season, tapping one in off the rush off a backdoor pass by Clarke.
The Isles scored shorthanded to cut their deficit back to two goals, as a sloppy Kings line change led to a two-on-one that was finished by Pelech.
Laferriere netted a goal, his 15th of the season, on the power play to make it 4-1, receiving Clarke’s drop pass and bursting through the neutral zone, taking on three defenders to rip one past Sorokin.
The Isles pushed back early in the second stanza but fell down late before salvaging a goal with the unlikeliest of buzzer-beaters.
Just one second remained in the period where Pageau won an offensive-zone draw cleanly to Horvat, who let go of a searing wrister that left three tenths of a second on the clock after entering the net. The goal broke up Kuemper’s shutout and left the score at 3-1.
With 4:09 on the clock, Anderson scored his third goal of the season with a firm shot from the left point through a Kopitar screen.
Just 91 seconds earlier, the Kings had made it 2-0 with a goal off the forecheck. Helenius detonated Carson Soucy and separated him from the puck below the goal line. That set in motion a sequence that sent the puck back to the big man for a goal from the inner part of the left circle, his fourth goal of 2025-26.
The Kings dominated the first period to a tune of a 90% expected-goals-for share, per Natural Stat Trick, and got a goal to show for it, Panarin’s 20th of the campaign, 19 of those coming with the New York Rangers prior to being traded in February.
After Panarin’s shot attempt was blocked, Kopitar went into the corner with rookie sensation Schaefer, winning the puck from a man 20 years his junior. He alertly swept the puck across the slot to Panarin, who was so open in front that he could freeze his countryman Sorokin with a look to his right before rifling a shot to his left.
Smith replaced Jim Hiller on Sunday after the Kings’ slump took them out of playoff position. A short-handed Kings squad played decently in his debut while losing to NHL-leading Colorado on Monday night.
More to come on this story.
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