The Kings' captain now has 6 goals, 5 assists and 11 points in 9 games so far this season, tied for the team lead in points with his predecessor Dustin Brown. Uh huh, yep. Furthermore, with a 7-1-1 record, L.A. is one point ahead of the Vegas Golden Knights for the Pacific Division lead.
That's two things I hadn't predicted (although I was hoping for Vegas to have a good season).
I did, however, think Kopitar would bounce back from his awful season last year, one which was a perfect storm of wrongs for him, seeing as he'd just signed a huge 8-year, $80M extension, was named captain after management revoked the title from Brown, the team failed to make the playoffs leading to the ousting of both GM Dean Lombardi and head coach Darryl Sutter, all in a year where most of the best two-way forwards in the league struggled - Patrice Bergeron, Jonathan Toews, and Tomas Plekanec being the closest comparables to Kopitar.
Hopefully L.A. doesn't suffer as many serious injuries this season as last year, although Jeff Carter has now been announced as "out indefinitely" after surgery to repair a cut to the leg...
That being said, here's Kopitar wearing the Kings' black uniform, on card #GJ2-AK from Upper Deck's 2009-10 Series 2 set and UD Game Jersey sub-set:
No comments:
Post a Comment