Doughty to play 1,000th game when Kings visit Islanders

Drew Doughty was at his first day of his first NHL training camp with the Los Angeles Kings in 2008, and general manager Dean Lombardi was among the interested observers.

The Kings had selected Doughty with the No. 2 pick of the 2008 NHL Draft and Lombardi was hoping to get a read on the 18-year-old's NHL potential.
The decision to select Doughty had not come easy. Scouts questioned the defenseman's conditioning, and Lombardi and Kings executives had confronted Doughty before the NHL Scouting Combine about getting in better shape.
But in that first practice, Lombardi had all his questions answered.
"I don't know if I've ever had a player like this," Lombardi said. "Quite frankly, he could have been 30 pounds overweight and still dominate the scrimmages.
"How do you describe a great piece of art? That's the only way I can describe him, is an artist. … It was a thing of beauty to watch what this kid can do. You can't teach it. It's like a great artist. You can take all the schooling and stuff, but the great thinkers, the great artists, you can't teach it. And what he had is unteachable."
Doughty, now in his 14th season with the Kings, will play his 1,000th NHL game at the New York Islanders on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; ESPN+, HULU, NHL LIVE).
In his first 999 games, Doughty has scored 557 points (129 goals, 428 assists). He helped the Kings win the Stanley Cup in 2012 and 2014, was voted the Norris Trophy as the best defenseman in the NHL in 2016 and is a two-time NHL First-Team All-Star (2016, 2018). He also helped Canada win the gold medal at the Olympics in 2010 and 2014.
"I'm very proud to play this many games and I hope to … I don't know if I'll get another thousand, but I hope to get a bunch more," Doughty said. "I'm not done. I feel great, I feel younger than I am.
"[1,000 games] was never something I thought of. I just wanted to play as many years, as many games as I could. To be honest, I didn't really know 1,000 games was a milestone. I never once thought of this, but as the years have gone on and I've played with guys that have hit those milestones, then it became a goal for me obviously to play 1,000 games."
Hockey fans know the finished product, but those who were around Doughty at the beginning don't see much different from that first training camp.
"When you get a guy in the top round like this, you've really got a Picasso," Lombardi said. "He's two practices in and you know he's going to make it. And it's not just because we were a bad team."
Doughty's new teammates also figured out quickly what they were working with.
"He was the best defenseman on our team from Day 1, if you ask me," said Toronto Maple Leafs forward Wayne Simmonds, who was a Kings rookie in his second training camp in 2008. "I think we had a lot of great veteran leadership, a lot of guys who helped him hone his game. But you could just tell from the skill aspect, the way he thought it, the way he moved it, he was just at another level."
Lombardi said Doughty continued to build on his training camp success each day and it carried into the regular season.
There are two things he believes a young defenseman must be able to handle to show they belong in the NHL.
The first is how they handle physical play, and Doughty had no issue there.
"As an 18-year-old, they're coming after him to take him out of his game," Lombardi said. "He goes back and this guy catches him, and it was pretty hard. But he's coming back up the rink, and I can almost hear him … he's looking at the guy and was like, 'Is that all you got?' That's how he earned respect. It gets around the league, you can't intimidate this guy."

The other is how they handle adversity, and Lombardi said he saw that in a game against the Edmonton Oilers when Doughty turned the puck over and it led to a goal.
"I turn to the guy next to me and I say, 'OK, now we're going to see if we can make the next step,'" Lombardi said. "I don't want the puck, or he's done for the night. He knows he messed] up in front of 17,000 people and he's going to be intimidated, and now he's just going to throw pucks away."
Instead, Doughty went the other way later in the game.
"A face-off comes back to him and he looks like a running back," Lombardi said. "He splits the forwards in the neutral zone, attacks the defense and somehow goes down and scores a goal."
Though Lombardi needed one day of training camp to know Doughty was NHL ready, Dave Barr knew even sooner.
Barr was GM and coach of Guelph of the Ontario Hockey League during Doughty's three seasons and realized years earlier there wouldn't be a fourth season of junior hockey.
"We knew we weren't getting him back when he was 16 and a half years old," Barr said. "We knew he was gone in his draft year, we're not getting him back for one more year. We knew that. He was just too good."
Barr said that though Doughty might not have had the perfect athlete body as a teenager, his smarts and skills allowed him to consistently play upwards of 30 minutes per game.
"He's not a guy that doesn't use minimal energy," Barr said. "He'll use whatever he needs to use, but he's so intelligent that he doesn't have to do a lot of running around because of turnovers that he's caused or anything like that, because usually he's executing most of his plays, so it was never an issue.
"It's not just because he was smarter and he knew where to go. He was smarter and he knew where to go, and then when he got there he was getting the job done. So it's not like he was just hanging on for 30 minutes. He was dominant for 30 minutes."
At 32 years old, Doughty will be the fourth-youngest defenseman to play 1,000 NHL games, after Scott Stevens, Luke Richardson and Larry Murphy, each of whom was 31. He'll also be the
[first player from the loaded 2008 draft class
to reach that milestone. Islanders forward Josh Bailey is the only other player with 900 games (949).
"That is pretty cool for me," Doughty said. "The other guys in my draft class have had some back luck with injuries. I was fortunate enough not to, but it did mean a little something to me."
And the skills Doughty showed as an 18-year-old haven't diminished much. This season he leads Kings defensemen with 21 points (four goals, 17 assists) in 24 games and averages a team-high 25:20 in ice time.
The Kings (21-16-6) enter Thursday in third place in the Pacific Division.
"He is the guy that raises the bar when he really feels like he needs to," Barr said. "L.A. is having a decent year, they're kind of keeping themselves in the mix [for the Stanley Cup Playoffs], and he's a big reason for it. He's just that guy that he'll always be able to make a difference in the outcome of a game."
Simmonds is confident Doughty will continue making a difference in games.
"All the work he's put in, it's just culminated to this point," Simmonds said. "And I know he's got a lot more hockey left in him. I love that guy. I can honestly say that, so I'm extremely proud of him."
NHL.com deputy managing editor Brian Compton contributed to this report