‘They make you feel like you belong’: How Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar have shaped the Kings
To look forward, Drew Doughty and Anze Kopitar have to look back. That’s when they start rattling off the names of the people who guided them when they first broke into the NHL.
Rob Blake is one of them. So is Dustin Brown. Matt Greene is another, as are Dean Lombardi, Mattias Norström and Jarret Stoll. The guidance they all provided helped take Doughty and Kopitar from promising teenagers – Doughty was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2008 NHL draft and Kopitar was the No. 11 pick in 2005 – to franchise-changing stars who spearheaded the Los Angeles Kings’ run of two Stanley Cup championships in three seasons from 2011-12 to 2013-14..
Winning is still the priority for Doughty, who turns 33 next month, and the 35-year-old Kopitar. Not just now, but even well after their playing days are done and their numbers are hanging from the rafters of the Kings’ arena. That is why the two veterans are taking what they have learned and passing it down to the newest generation of Kings with the hopes they can leave the organization in a better place than it was in when they broke in.
“What you are trying to do is pass down knowledge,” Kopitar said. “Then what you need to realize is not every player is the same. Not every leader leads the same way too. You try to stay in the moment as much as you can and you do it within yourself. … For example, I’m usually, or most of the time, not the loudest person in the locker room. But there are times when stuff needs to be said.”
Those teaching moments can come at any time. They can come on the bench during a game when Doughty offers words of encouragement to place a young player at ease. Or in the dressing room after practice. They can come when grabbing a meal at a restaurant with teammates or those evenings when Kopitar hosts a group meal at his home.
This is what coaches, executives and veteran players mean when they talk about culture. But building that culture takes time.
When Kopitar and Doughty joined the Kings, Kopitar in the 2006-07 season and Doughty in 2008-09, the organization was in the midst of a six-year playoff drought. Doughty said his education started with Lombardi, the Kings’ general manager who was the architect of those two Cup title teams.
Lombardi worked with Doughty to teach him what it meant to be a leader, and help him realize how his actions impacted those around him. Doughty said he was a team captain in youth hockey and in major juniors. But his approach shifted more toward having fun while playing hockey.
Three games into his NHL career, Doughty was already leading the Kings in ice time, an accomplishment Lombardi helped put into perspective.
“When I got to this level, I did not realize the overall effect I have and [Lombardi] helped me grow into the player I am now,” Doughty said. “I just did not really think about being a leader. I did not look up to people for leadership. … The one thing I never realized until I got older is people would say, ‘Guys on the team are watching you.’ I was like, ‘Why the hell are they watching me?'”
The impact Greene made on Doughty was so crucial that Doughty said he still goes to him for advice. Doughty lived with Greene during his rookie season, and said Greene was like a brother or a dad to him, and he still is to this day.
Doughty admits he did not always listen. For example, Greene told Doughty to consistently work out. Doughty balked at the idea. At least he did until he got older and began realizing he needed to do the work in order to perform at a high level.
Perhaps the biggest lesson Doughty learned from Greene was understanding what it meant to take ownership of the team.
“That was the one thing he always taught me: This is your team, but if you don’t push the load, who else is going to push it?” Doughty said. “He said, ‘You have to do this’ and I would ask, ‘Why not ask someone else? Why does it have to be me?’ He said, ‘Because this is your job and responsibility.’ That was only three or four years ago when I had that discussion. Now I realize it is part of growing up.”
It’s one thing to hear that. It is another to act upon it. So how did Doughty and Kopitar impact their younger teammates?
For one, they worked to make sure everyone felt welcomed. Kopitar remembered what it was like to be a 19-year-old and be around a future Hall-of-Famer such as Blake. He knows about the nerves in trying to make a good impression and the importance of keeping them in check at the same time.
“I’m sure it’s the same thing with these guys now,” Kopitar said. “Some of these guys watched us growing up 10 years ago winning the first Stanley Cup. It’s got to be sometimes a little uncomfortable. But between me and Drew, I feel like we’re fairly open people and very approachable. We try to make it as comfortable as we possibly can.”
On the day Doughty spoke with ESPN, he was on his way to have lunch with a few of his younger teammates, including rookie defenseman Brandt Clarke, who is 19. Doughty spoke with excitement about Clarke and how they have been working together. He had the same level of enthusiasm when talking about center Quinton Byfield, who turned 20 in August.
Byfield and Doughty became close last season when both were injured. Doughty said he and Byfield skated together, worked out together and that he drove Byfield to games last season. They even play video games together.
Kings defenseman Mikey Anderson, who is in his third full season, is one of eight homegrown players younger than 24 on the Kings’ active roster. They are part of a core, which also features Byfield and Alex Turcotte among others, that seems to have the Kings moving on from their rebuild and beginning down the path of potentially being a perennial playoff team.
The 23-year-old Anderson offered insight into what it has been like to learn from Doughty and Kopitar. He said Doughty, who is his defensive partner, will make a subtle joke or say something that will make a teammate smile in the hopes of relaxing him.
“He’s hard on guys, but he is also patient,” Anderson said. “If something doesn’t go right, he’ll let you know what we need to do to fix it. But when things go right, he’s the first guy to tell you, ‘Hey man, great work. Keep doing this. Keep doing that.'”
When asked about Kopitar, Anderson said the Kings’ captain will have the younger players over to his house so they can hang out with his children and have dinner with his family. The first couple of times Anderson had dinner at the Kopitar house, he said he felt starstruck because he was not sure what to expect.
But Anderson eventually realized something that helped him overcome being nervous about going to those family dinners. The more often he was invited, the more Kopitar wanted him to be himself.
Anderson said Doughty and Kopitar are so welcoming that they go as far as making sure their younger teammates feel comfortable with their living situations. That can include anything from making furniture recommendations to connecting them with a real estate agent if needed.
“They make you feel like you belong and you’re part of the team,” Anderson said. “I don’t know if that always happens. But we have been so lucky to have those two, [Jonathan Quick] and I’ll even throw Brownie [Dustin Brown] in there too. For my first couple years, those guys all welcomed the young guys with open arms to be part of their own family.”
After this season, Kopitar has one year left on his contract while Doughty has four. Both have built the sort of resumes that will see them retire as two of the greatest Kings of all time while also making strong cases for being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
But for Doughty and Kopitar, their careers are about more than that.
Maybe there will come a day when players such as Anderson, Byfield or Clarke are in their 30s and look back on what life was like earlier in their careers. They will share stories of what it was like to learn from an older group of guys who cared about them with the hope those lessons can continue to be taught to the next generation.
That is the legacy Doughty and Kopitar want to leave.
“We’ve had some not so good teams at the start and then we had some really good teams,” Kopitar said. “I think our upside now can be very high. I see the potential here with this team and I wouldn’t want to play anywhere else.”
-
Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Inspirational thought of the week:
“Honestly, when we lose, I don’t even get in the shower until early this morning. I’ll just be mad. I just brush my teeth. It’s like, I don’t deserve soap.”
— Syracuse head coach Fran Brown
Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located behind the “sorry, not sorry” bouquet of water hemlocks sent to the Big 12 officiating office from Utah athletic director Mark Harlan, we know all too well the sting of losing football games. We see it every week in every game we watch.
Yeah, yeah, we know what you’re thinking. “Come on, dummy, someone loses every game that anyone watches.” That’s true. At least now it is. We are also old enough to remember when games ended in ties. That was way worse.
But here in the Bottom 10 Cinematic Universe, losses are worse because that’s all you experience. You’d think we’d get used to it, numb from the pain like when you keep accidentally biting that same spot on your tongue to the point that it just becomes sensory free. But instead, it’s like Bruce Banner explained about being the Hulk: “You see, I don’t get a suit of armor. I’m exposed. Like a nerve. It’s a nightmare.”
However, as we learned in “Age of Ultron,” even after one of his worst losses, Bruce Banner does take a shower. So, Coach Brown, take it from us, in a world where every team has a helluva lot more losses than Syracuse … dude, wash up. Seriously. We can smell you from here. And we’re in Kent, Ohio.
With apologies to Mr. Clean, former Miami (Ohio) quarterback Mike Bath, former Southern Illinois running back Wash Henry and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 11 Bottom 10 rankings.
The Golden(plated) Flashes are still America’s last winless FBS team, losing their 18th straight game when they were edged by Ohio 41-0. Now they travel to My Hammy of Ohio, where they are given a 2.8% chance to win by the ESPN Analytics Ouija board, er, I mean Matchup Predictor. But honestly, that game will only be the appetizer ahead of the, yes, Week 13 main course that is the Wagon Wheel showdown with Akronmonious. And by appetizer we mean way-past-the-expiration-date freezer-burned mini-pizza bagels.
The New Owls not only used their talons to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at UTEP, losing in double overtime, they earned Bottom 10 Bonus Points for firing their head coach — and during their first year as an FBS team, no less. Though the AD issued a statement that Brian Bohannon had “stepped down,” Bohannon himself responded on social media: “Contrary to what’s been reported, I want to be clear that I did not step down.” But there is no confusion as to whether the Owls have stepped up or down in these rankings, where every move up is also a move down.
Brett Favre Funding U. lost to We Are Marshall 37-3, meaning all eight of their defeats this season have been by double digits. In related news, I also received double digit political texts on Election Day — and one of those was from Favre. No, for real. I wonder, did he cover the data charges himself or did he steal change from the donation jar at his grocery store checkout?
Sometimes in this life we are asked to do things that go against the fiber of our being. Like taking your daughter to the concert of an artist you’ve never heard of. Or me having to use Earth’s most annoying instrument, the leaf blower. This weekend this team of Minutemen will be asked to try to defeat Liberty.
5. The Sunshine State
The Coveted Fifth Spot has never been more crowded. The FBS, FCS and NFL teams of Florida posted a 1-11 record over the weekend, salvaged only by the Miami Dolphins’ win over the Los Angeles Rams on “Monday Night Football.” UC(not S)F, US(not C)F, FA(not I)U, Stetson, Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman all lost, led in misery by the Wildcats’ five-overtime loss to Southern. The Flori-duh Gate Doors celebrated the announced retaining of coach Billy Napier by losing to Texas in a squeaker 49-17. And My Hammy of Florida finally spotted an opponent a lead too large for a Cam Ward comeback and took its first loss of the season, falling to unranked Georgia Tech. If only someone else in the state could relate to that …
The Semi-No’s are continuing to work around the Coveted Fifth Spot by earning their Bottom 10 keep the old-fashioned way, not only losing to semi/sorta/kinda ACC member Notre Dame by a scant 52-3, but also earning a pile of their own Bottom 10 Bonus Points not by firing head coach Mike Norvell, but because Norvell fired both his offensive and defensive coordinators and a wide receivers coach. In related news, over the weekend a friend of mine steered his bass boat into a giant pile of sharp rocks and reacted by throwing his shirt and hat overboard.
It was three weekends ago that the Buttermakers lost to then-second-ranked Oregon 35-0. On Saturday, they lost to then-second-ranked Ohio State 45-0. Now they play sixth-ranked Penn State, and in two weeks end their season playing currently eighth-ranked Indiana. We have to assume that a team of professors from Purdue’s legendary mechanical engineering department is studying this experience as a way to assess the stress put on a school bus that is attempting to drive over a lava field covered in landmines.
The Minors have a weekend off to continue their post-Kennesaw victory party. And what’s the best way to snap yourself out of a two-week hangover? Hair of the dog? A cold bucket of water over the head? How about the hair of a coontick hound and a bucket of water from the river during a Week 13 trip to Neyland Stadium to play Tennessee?
Whatever is left of UTEP after Knoxville will then play whatever is left of the Other Aggies after their Week 12 trip to face the OG Aggies of Texas A&M. If there’s any justice in this world, then the loser and/or winner of that Aggie Bowl would go on to play …
The Other Other Aggies lost to the one-loss team the nation forgot about, Warshington State. But if you consider the week before that, we find a Bottom 10 conundrum. Utah State beat WhyOMGing? but the week before that lost to Whew Mexico by five points. Meanwhile, Wyoming, who lost to Utah State two weeks ago, spent last weekend beating New Mexico by five points. Perhaps we will be given some clarity when Wyoming ends the year at Washington State. Or perhaps we will have already given up. As so many here in the Bottom 10 seem to do.
Waiting list: Miss Sus Hippie State, Georgia State Not Southern, FA(not I)U, Akronmonious, Meh-dle Tennessee, WhyOMGing?, Temple of Doom, Living on Tulsa Time, You A Bee?, Standfird, people who put all those election signs up but now won’t take them down.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports7 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway