FINAL – Kings 5, Islanders 3 – Kopitar, Kempe, Smith

The LA Kings got back in the win column during Anze Kopitar’s 1,500th career NHL regular-season game, as Interim Head Coach D.J. Smith collected his first win with the organization, in a 5-3 victory over the New York Islanders on Thursday evening at Crypto.com Arena.

Coming off a tenacious start to the game, the Kings capitalized early as the top line connected on Artemi Panarin’s first goal of the game. Off an extended shift in the offensive zone, forward Anze Kopitar forced a turnover along the boards, before he sent a no-look pass to Panarin in the left-hand circle. Panarin delayed, outwaited Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin and buried his shot, inside the post and in, for the early 1-0 advantage.

The Kings doubled their lead late in the second period as the fourth line delivered with another strong shift for the 2-0 lead. Forward Taylor Ward knocked back a clearing attempt at the blueline, finding forward Jeff Malott in the slot. Malott made a nice backhanded pass to forward Samuel Helenius, who buried his fourth goal of the season from the left-hand circle to put the hosts up by a pair.

Just 91 seconds after the Helenius goal, defenseman Mikey Anderson made it 3-0 Kings with a shot from the left point. Coming out of the corner, forward Adrian Kempe worked the puck up the wall to Anderson up high. Anderson exchanged passes with defenseman Drew Doughty along the blueline, before he wound up and fire through a Kopitar screen and in for the three-goal advantage.

After the second period appeared to be done, the officials put one second back on the clock, with the Islanders in the offensive zone. Forward Jean-Gabriel Pageau won the draw back to forward Bo Horvat, who shot it first time, past Kings goaltender Darcy Kuemper and in to get the Islanders on the board with 0.3 seconds remaining, sending the game into the intermission at 3-1.

Early in the third period, the Kings restored their three-goal advantage with a power-play goal. Forward Alex Laferriere did the bulk of the work on the play, as he weaved his way through the neutral zone, down the right side of the slot and placed a wrist shot past Sorokin, off the inside of the far post and into the back of the net for his 15th goal of the season and a 4-1 lead.

New York pushed back with a special-teams goal of its own, however, with Pageau once again playing the role of facilitator. Pageau led a 2-on-1 rush the other way, created in some ways by a mis-timed line change by the Kings. He then threaded a pass through to defenseman Adam Pelech, who had joined the rush, before the big defenseman buried from the left side of the slot to pull the Islanders back within two goals.

The Kings pushed back once again as three of their best offensive plays delivered with a pretty goal off the rush. Panarin started the sequence, as he snapped a hard pass to defenseman Brandt Clarke, attacking down the right wing. Clarke delayed before he hit forward Adrian Kempe driving the net, where he buried his team-leading 23rd goal of the season to make it 5-2, giving all three players involved multiple points in the game.

After several minutes of playing 6-on-5, the Islanders scored a goal to cut the deficit to two goals. Attacking in the offensive zone, New York blueliner Matthew Schaefer got a shot through from the center point, with forward Emil Heineman getting a deflection on the way through, bringing the visitors to within the final goal at 5-3.

Hear from Kopitar, Kempe and Interim Head Coach D.J. Smith after tonight’s victory over the Islanders.

Anze Kopitar

Adrian Kempe
On the special nature of seeing Anze Kopitar reach 1,500 NHL games
Yeah, it’s great. Coming in his last season, it’s a special year in general to play with him and hitting this milestone is pretty awesome as well. I’ve said this before, you think about yourself, how you’re getting older, and you’re not even halfway to 1,500, so it’s pretty crazy how many games he’s played, and how consistent, how good he’s been throughout these 20 years. I’m really happy and excited for him, really happy to be part of this. Hopefully we can make something good out of the last 20 games.

On the way the team played since D.J. Smith took over behind the bench
I thought we played really well. I thought the effort was there again. I thought it was there the first game against Colorado as well, so I think we kind of built off that. I think we maybe settled down and played a little bit better with the puck tonight, so I think that helped. Scoring five, should have been six, I think was good confidence booster for everybody as well. It was a good win for everybody in the room, after the change. I think this goes back to a positive group again. It was really fun.

On the goals tonight and if a game like this can propel the Kings going forward
You’ve got to get hot and you’ve got to win games, I think that’s the most important thing. If we play like we did tonight, with the effort, the way we played with the puck and off the puck, I think obviously it’s going to help us to get into good positions. Obviously you have to get hot at the right time and the window is getting smaller and smaller, so this is the time to get hot. If we keep bringing this, I think we have a good shot at it and obviously we’ll see when we get down the road.

D.J. Smith
On his first win as an NHL Head Coach in more than 800 days
You know, it was great. I’ve said all along, it wasn’t exactly the way I planned it, a good buddy mine leaving. I thought we played really hard tonight, real good start, and then we were able to finish it off. I think a lot of credit goes, obviously, to Kopi, 1,500 games and just how hard he played defensively. We’re not talking about the offensive stuff and then our veteran D were really good.

On what he liked most about the first period tonight
We came out ready. Obviously, they played back-to-back, so we wanted to jump on them right away and we did. We were physical, we forechecked, we shot some pucks. Give them credit, they pushed back hard. They’re obviously in the playoffs for a reason right now, they’ve got some guys that are making plays. That young kid back there made a lot of plays and allowed them to have a lot of pucks. But, at the end of the day, we found ways to score.

On a special night for Anze Kopitar, reaching 1,500 games in the NHL and what he’s learned about him as he’s coached him
Just talking to him as a guy, being his age and his experience. Really, I think one thing I learned about Kopi is when he comes to the rink, especially if we’re losing and not playing good, he doesn’t really want to talk about hockey. He wants to get his mind off it and get right. He’ll go in there and tell some stories, tell some jokes and things like that and I think that helps some of the guys, just sometimes when you’re down, not to think so much about the game, but tonight, he was dialed.

On getting that type of performance from Darcy Kuemper tonight
Yeah, I was standing next to [Goaltending Coach Mike Buckley] yesterday at practice and Darcy made a couple saves and he said right to me, ‘Darcy’s back’, whatever that means. Then, he starts and then away he goes, so the goalie coach knows he’s back feeling good. We don’t want to give up odd-man rushes. we shot ourselves in the foot there with a couple, but the D boxed out in front of him, then he made all the saves he had to.

On if he’ll run a few empty-net drills during practice tomorrow
I was saying that, I was thinking of giving the guys an optional tomorrow and not skating, but I think we’ll go out one guy at a time and just fire them down there. A lot of guys played a lot of minutes tonight, so tomorrow we’ll get an optional that we need and then take a crack at Montreal.

Notes –
– Forward Artemi Panarin (1-1=2) scored his 20th goal of the season––his first goal as a member of the Kings––before tallying his 42nd assist of the campaign for his 18th multi-point game of the 2025-26 campaign. With his game-opening goal this evening, Panarin reaches the 20-goal mark for the 10th time in his career, becoming the ninth Russian-born skater with 10 or more such seasons. Per NHL PR, Panarin became the first undrafted player with as many such campaigns since Martin St. Louis (11) Panarin’s assist secured his second multi-point effort in an LA Kings uniform through his first five appearances and marked his 30th career helper against the New York Islanders, making him the sixth active skater to reach such mark.
– Forward Adrian Kempe (1-1=2) recorded his pace-setting 29th assist of the season before scoring his team-leading 23rd goal and 52nd point of the campaign (23-29=52) to extend his point streak to a third game (2-2=4), dating back to Feb. 28 vs. Calgary. Kempe has now recorded six points (3-3=6) over his last five games, dating back to Feb. 5 at Vegas.
– Kempe’s team-leading 11th multi-point performance of the year was his ninth such effort with at least one goal and one assist, tied for 23rd-most League-wide. Kempe became the ninth player in Kings history to score 80 career third-period goals. Per NHL PR, Marcel Dionne paces the list with 195 such tallies.
– Defenseman Mikey Anderson (1-1=2) recorded his eighth assist of the year before scoring his third goal of the season for his first multi-point game of the campaign.
– With his secondary assist on Panarin’s goal, Anderson (73A) broke a three-way tie with Nicolas Hague (72A) and Timothy Liljegren (72A) for sole possession of the fifth-most career assists by a defenseman selected in the 2017 NHL Draft.
– Forward Samuel Helenius (1-0=1) scored his fourth goal of the season, matching his single-season career high set in 2024-25.
– Forward Alex Laferriere (1-0=1) scored his 15th goal of the season, his first power play tally of the campaign. With tonight’s tally, Laferriere has now scored two game-winning goals in his last three games (Feb. 28 vs. CGY) and has three such goals on the 2025-26 campaign. The native of Chatham, N.J., set a career-high in the category last season with four game-winners.
– Defenseman Brandt Clarke (0-2=2) recorded his 23rd and 24th assists of the campaign, earning his first points against the Islanders in three games played against the Metropolitan Division club. With the pair of helpers, Clarke (24A) breaks a tie with Kevin Fiala (22A) for sole possession of the second-most assists among LA Kings skaters this season. Clarke also breaks a tie with Fiala (7 GP) for sole possession of third-most multi-point games among Kings skaters by securing his eighth such performance of the campaign.
– Captain Anze Kopitar (0-1=1) picked up his 19th assist of the season tonight on Artemi Panarin’s first goal as a member of the Kings organization, making the latter the 98th player whose goal Kopitar has assisted on, per NHL PR. Tonight’s helper was the veteran center’s 16th career assist against the Islanders, breaking a tie with Bernie Nicholls for sole possession of the sixth-most helpers against the Islanders in Kings franchise history.
– Kopitar skated in his 1,500th career regular-season NHL game this evening. The Kings captain becomes just the 25th different player in NHL history to reach this mark, and the third active player to do so behind Brent Burns (1,557 GP) and Alex Ovechkin (1,554 GP).
– With his assist tonight, Kopitar also became the 12th different skater in NHL history to record a point in his 1,500th career game, the first skater to do so since Brent Burns (0-1=1) did so on Oct. 11, 2025. Kopitar (446-857=1,303) now sits four points away from tying Marcel Dionne (550-757=1,307) for the most points in Kings franchise history and is five points away from holding the record outright.
– Defenseman Drew Doughty (0-1=1) picked up his 12th assist of the season, the 538th career helper of his career, breaking a tie with former Kings defenseman Rob Blake (537A) for sole possession of the 32nd-most assists by a blueliner in NHL history.
– Forward Taylor Ward (0-1=1) collected his third assist of the season on Helenius’ goal, his fifth point of the year (2-3=5).
– Forward Jeff Malott (0-1=1) secured his first point against the Islanders in his first game played against the club for his sixth assist and ninth point of the season (3-6=9).
– Goaltender Darcy Kuemper (0-1=1) picked up his first assist of the campaign. It is Kuemper’s third career assist as a member of the Kings, his second against the Islanders (0-1=1; Dec. 16, 2017), both of which came on the man-advantage. In addition to his assist tonight, Kuemper made 31 saves on 34 shots to earn his 15th win of the season.

The Kings will hold an optional practice tomorrow at 11 AM at Toyota Sports Performance Center, in advance of Saturday’s matchup against the Montreal Canadiens at Crypto.com Arena.