Anze Kopitar selected as a finalist for 2026 Lady Byng Memorial Trophy

Not done with the Anze Kopitar accolades just yet!

As announced this morning by the NHL, Kings forward Anze Kopitar has been selected as one of three finalists for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for the 2025-26 season.

Per the league website –

The Lady Byng Memorial Trophy is an annual award given “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability.” The winner is selected in a poll of the Professional Hockey Writers Association at the end of the regular season; each voter ranks his top five candidates on a 10-7-5-3-1 points system. Three finalists are named and the trophy is presented at the NHL Awards after the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Kopitar is the defending champion, if you will, having won the award last season as well, the third time in his career he’s won the award, along with 2016 and 2023. He received 50 first-place votes last season, the most in the league, and won the award over Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point and Vegas’ Jack Eichel. This is the third straight season that Kopitar has been selected as a finalist, the fifth time throughout his career he’s been among the Top-3 votegetters. The last player to win the award in back-to-back seasons was Martin St. Louis in 2009-10 and 2010-11. The last player to win the award four times in their career was Pavel Datsyuk, who won it in four consecutive seasons from 2005-09. Throughout NHL history, only four players have won the award four times – Frank Boucher, Red Kelly, Wayne Gretzky and Datsyuk. In his final season in the NHL, Kopitar has the opportunity here to add one final Lady Byng to his Hall of Fame resume, as one of just five players in history to win the award four times, with each of the other four already members of the Hockey Hall of Fame. Kopitar and Datsyuk are the only players in NHL history to win both the Lady Byng and Selke Trophy multiple times. With a Kopitar Lady Byng win in 2026, he would join Datsyuk with 3+ wins for both trophies.

Gretzky won three of his awards with the Kings organization. Combined with three wins from Kopitar and one each from Butch Goring and Marcel Dionne, the Kings have eight lifetime Lady Byng Memorial Trophies, the most of any non-Original Six team.

For Kopitar, there are two additional awards that he could potentially merit consideration for. The NHL will announce the three finalists for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy – awarded for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication – on Monday, May 4 and the finalists for the Frank J. Selke Trophy – for the league’s top defensive forward – on Wednesday, May 6. Kopitar is already one of 32 nominees for the Masterton Trophy and could possibly be considered among the three top vote getters. Remains to be seen, but look out for those announcements to come early next week.

From the team’s official release –

The NHL announced that Anze Kopitar is one of three finalists for the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for the 2025-26 season. First awarded in 1924-25, the Lady Byng is given “to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability” as selected by the Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA). The captain joins Montreal’s Cole Caufield and Ottawa’s Jake Sanderson as the trio of candidates for the award.

The reigning Lady Byng winner from last season, Kopitar has now been a finalist for the award on five occasions (2015, 2016, 2023, 2025, 2026) and won the award three times (2016, 2023, 2025). The veteran center is joined by Wayne Gretzky (1991, 1992, 1994) as the only players in LA Kings history to receive the honor three times. Kopitar and Gretzky are joined by Marcel Dionne (1977) and Butch Goring (1978) as the four players to have won the Lady Byng as members of the Kings.

Should the native of Jesenice, Slovenia, capture the award for the second consecutive season, he would become the fifth player in NHL history to win the trophy on four or more occasions. Red Kelly (1951, 1953, 1954, 1961) and Pavel Datsyuk (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) each captured the Lady Byng four times, Wayne Gretzky won it five times in his career (1980, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1999), and Frank Boucher was chosen as the League’s most gentlemanly player an NHL-best seven times in eight seasons (1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935).

Kopitar finished the final season of his two-decade career with 38 points (12-26=38) in 67 regular-season games in the 2025-26 campaign. The 38-year-old recorded his 20th consecutive season with at least 25 assists, tied for the eighth-most seasons in NHL history. The captain recorded the highest plus/minus rating among all team skaters, posting a +19 through his 67 games. Kopitar also led all Kings forwards in blocked shots (61), face-off wins (744), and face-off winning percentage (FOW%; 56.9%). Kopitar’s 56.9 FOW% was tied for the sixth-best among the 47 league skaters to have taken at least 1,000 draws this season and tied for his third-best percentage to finish a season in his 20-year career.

Across his 67 regular-season contests, Kopitar notched just 10 penalty minutes (PIM), the second-fewest among all Kings skaters to play in at least 40 games for the team behind only Trevor Moore (8 PIM). The captain’s 10 PIM tied his 2014-15 and 2020-21 seasons for the third-fewest in a single season over his career (4 PIM in 2022-23 and 2024-25). League-wide, Kopitar was one of 20 skaters to score at least 30 points while recording 10 or fewer penalty minutes. Among that cohort, Kopitar’s +19 rating was the second-best behind only Vegas’ Mark Stone (+26).

Beginning on March 23, 2024, Kopitar finished his career on a streak of 160 consecutive games without serving more than one minor penalty in the regular season. This two-year long run was the fifth different stretch of at least 100 consecutive regular-season contests without multiple penalties that Kopitar recorded over his two decades in Los Angeles. His longest such streak totaled 315 games from Jan. 4, 2020 – March 19, 2024.

In total, Kopitar played 1,521 regular-season games for the Kings, the 23rd-most games played by any skater in NHL history and the seventh-most games played with a single franchise. On March 14 in New Jersey, Kopitar was crowned as the all-time leading scorer in LA Kings history by posting his 1,307th and 1,308th career points. With his pair of goals in that game, Kopitar broke the record that had been held by Marcel Dionne (550-757=1,307) for more than 45 years and became the eighth player to hold the title. Kopitar finished his regular-season career with 1,316 career points (452-864=1,316) and is just the eighth player born and trained outside of North America to score at least 1,300 points in NHL history.