Kopitar leads Kings past Golden Knights

In Los Angeles, the Vegas Golden Knights scored the first and last goals of the game on Thursday night.

The problem for them was the Kings struck for six of their own between those two markers.

Anze Kopitar had a hat trick and two assists in a 6-2 win for LA.

“When your captain can come out and play that type of game tonight, it sets the tone for everybody,” Kings head coach Todd McLellan said.

Calvin Petersen made 23 saves for the win.

“You just try to stay in the moment, really,” Kopitar said. “You don’t think about that too much. I mean, just play. Like I said, it’s first game of the season, so first and foremost, we wanted to get off to a good start and get the two points in the bank and just kind of go from there.”

Vegas’ Shea Theodore gave the Knights the early 1-0, and Chandler Stephenson closed out the scoring i the third period.

“They were faster than us,” the Golden Knights’ Reilly Smith said. “We were too slow to close and giving them too much time. When you do that it doesn’t matter who you’re playing, you are going to make them look good in this league. They were the much better team tonight.

Drew Doughty and Phillip Danault added single markers for the Kings.

“‘Brownie’ set the tone for us early, made some big hits, scored a big goal for us,” Doughty said. “And then kind of the rest of the team followed him, and then obviously ‘Kopi’ stepped up with the hat trick, and then I got in there with a goal and a couple of assists.

“But the leadership group, I know we’re getting older, whatever you want to say, but we’re still driven. We want to win again. That’s all we care about and we go out there and lead by example and play our butts off, and that’s what we’re going to do every night.”