King-ternational Thoughts – Fiala on Olympics, Kopitar on Playing Teammates, Anderson on Doughty

The 4 Nations Face-Off has just that. 4 nations.

For players from other countries, they’ll have to wait another year for their own opportunity to play best-on-best international hockey.

One such player is Switzerland-native Kevin Fiala, who was not a participant in this season’s tournament, but is set to represent his country next season at the Olympic Winter Games in Italy. For Fiala, it would be his first opportunity to play best-on-best international hockey.

“I would love to play in those tournaments and next year is the Olympics, so it’s very exciting,” Fiala said. “For me, it [would be] my first time going, so very happy, very exciting to represent my country to play in the Olympics. That’s a dream come true.”

Fiala is a part of the best generation of Swiss-born players in NHL history.

While defenseman Roman Josi and forward Nino Niederreiter played in the 2014 Olympics at the beginning of their careers, the bulk of this current group has never played in a best-on-best event.

10 Swiss players have played an NHL game this season and six of them, Fiala included, have 25+ points. Fiala will likely be joined by Josi and Niederreiter, as well a trio of New Jersey Devils – Nico Hischier, Timo Meier and Jonas Siegenthaler – in addition to Phillip Kurashev from Chicago, Pius Suter from Vancouver and J.J. Moser from Utah.

While Fiala warned it’s still a year away, with injuries and other variables potentially getting in the way, he does understand the gravity of how cool an experience it could be for he and his fellow country-mates. While the IIHF World Championships are typically turned down by players from the United States and Canada, among other larger nations, Switzerland is usually very well represented. As one of the smallest participating countries, players take pride in playing for their country, even at that level, and players typically try to play together as often as they can.

“We’ve talked, but it’s still far away, injuries, you hope everything works out for everybody, but of course we are excited to get the best team possible,” he said. “We’re such a small country, so in World Championships we try to get the best possible team, even there, but it’s not possible most of the time because of the playoffs. We’ve talked about it when we got the release that we are allowed to go, every NHL guy, so we’re very excited.”

For now, though, as Fiala finished with, that’s for the future. He didn’t mind the questions and he’ll be excited when the time comes. For now, though, that is not the focus.

“The mindset is here.”

More to come on Fiala, who is playing some of his best hockey as a King, over the next couple days.

Fiala is not the only King with international experience.

For Kings captain Anze Kopitar, he’s a veteran of the 2014 Winter Olympics with Slovenia and the 2016 World Cup of Hockey with Team Europe.

While Slovenia did not qualify for the 2026 Winter Olympics, Kopitar has been there and done that as a part of his distinguished career.

With that in mind, having participated at those higher levels of international competition, a thought came to mind, one that came to mind when Drew Doughty and Adrian Kempe squared off at the 4 Nations Face-Off. When you’re competing internationally against your NHL teammates, how hard are you going? How weird is it?

“It’s a little bit strange,” he said. “I guess the one thing for me is, playing for Team Slovenia, we were expected to lose, so it didn’t impact that too much, but during the Sochi Olympics, I played against Quickie, and Brownie, which was kind of weird. Actually, I left the game because I was sick too, so it wasn’t too weird, but it’s obviously not ideal, because you’re almost forced to not like the guy, with playing against him. It’s the old cliche, but once the puck drops, you’re really trying to do your own thing, it doesn’t really matter who you’re playing against or who you’re playing with. You’re trying to win the game and I guess that’s what happens every time.”

On the international stages, your rivals become your teammates and your teammates become your rivals. Still though, while the competition was extremely high, starting this coming weekend, international play is done and teams will get back together to push for the playoffs. For Koptiar in 2014, the Olympics came midseason for a team that was pushing for its second championship in four seasons, which ultimately came to fruition. In 2016, it was a team pushing for playoff success once again.

So, while you might be against a guy in tournament play, one week later, that’s a teammate you’re trying to win a Stanley Cup with. You might think of potentially letting up in a battle against a guy like that, but in a game of that caliber, at that pace, Kopitar said you’re usually not even able to know that much, even if you wanted to.

“No, you’re living in the moment, really and once you’re on the ice, the game’s too fast to think about that,” he said. “So, you go in the corner, try to win a battle and that’s about it.”

Interesting thoughts, if nothing else.

Lastly, sharing this full quote from defenseman Mikey Anderson, on his longtime partner Drew Doughty and his participation at the 4 Nations Face-Off. It’s an interesting evaluation from Anderson, a budding leader, of his mentor and teammate.

Anderson knows how much of an asset a fully healthy and up to speed Doughty can be. When watching him play, both with Team Canada and recently with the Kings before the break, Anderson admitted he took a bit of an iso-cam on Doughty individually, to really focus in on his teammate. Pretty insightful answer below –

“I think he’s getting better, obviously he’s still coming back and it’s hard. He had [six] games with us before going there and then that takes our league to a different level. I was texting with him a little bit and he looked more patient defensively than he did in some of the games coming back, but I think some of that is, you get so excited after you don’t play for nine months or whatever it was. He’s a guy that kind of lets the game come to him and I thought the last game in particular, I tried to watch him a lot and it was much more in control, I thought. It’s just hard. It’s a long time to come off and you come off the leg injury like that, it’s not easy to get the engine going again, but I think he’s been looking better. It’s good for him and it’s going to be good for us, once he comes back with these games.”

Another day closer to a Kings game. Saturday feels so far away, doesn’t it?

Kings are set to practice again tomorrow and Friday, before the ultimate return to action against Utah this weekend. Much more to come, Insiders!