Kopitar gets 800th career assist in Kings win against Golden Knights

LOS ANGELES -- Anze Kopitar got his 800th career assist in the Los Angeles Kings’ 6-3 win against the Vegas Golden Knights at Crypto.com Arena on Wednesday.

Kopitar, who had a goal and two assists, became the 35th NHL player, and sixth born in Europe, to reach the milestone when he got the primary assist on Kevin Fiala’s power-play goal to put Los Angeles up 5-1 at 6:23 of the third period.

Kopitar has 800 assists in 1,384 NHL games, joining Jaromir Jagr (1,155 assists), Stan Mikita (926 assists), Nicklas Lidstrom (878 assists), Henrik Sedin (830 assists) and Evgeni Malkin (809 assists) in the group of Europe-born players.

“I don’t know how many milestone pucks he has. Probably more than what minor league teams have for practice,” Kings head coach Jim Hiller said of Kopitar.

Fiala and Adrian Kempe each had a goal and an assist, Brandt Clarke had three assists for the Kings (6-3-2), who have won all three of their home games. Darcy Kuemper made 22 saves.

“And with the game that we played last night (a 4-2 loss against the San Jose Sharks), obviously we weren't happy with it and wanted to come out here and have a strong showing,” Kopitar said. “I thought for the most part we did. We did a really good job. And, you know, it's fun to score some goals.”

Pavel Dorofeyev scored twice, and Ilya Samsonov allowed six goals on 27 shots for the Golden Knights (7-3-1), who had their four-game winning streak and five-game point streak (4-0-1) end.

“I mean, they scored their second goal getting to the middle,” Vegas captain Mark Stone said. “Scored their third goal getting to the middle. Fourth goal, the D-man (Clarke) gets to the middle of the ice, feeds backdoor. Fifth goal, same thing, we give up the middle of the ice. I think when we’re at our best, we were pretty tight in there.”

The Kings went up 1-0 at 13:58 of the first. Samsonov tried to shovel a loose puck away from his net but sent it right to Warren Foegele, who was able to backhand the puck in from the left face-off circle.

Kempe made it 2-0 at 14:40 on a wrist shot from the top of the right circle off the rush.

Alex Laferriere put Los Angeles ahead 3-0 at 10:11 of the second period with a wrist shot from the slot.

Kopitar made it 4-0 44 seconds later, standing alone at the right post to tap in a pass from Clarke after the 21-year-old defenseman spun past Alex Pietrangelo at the left circle.

“In the NHL, you start letting good players beat you 1-on-1 in the middle of the ice and in the slot, bad things are going to happen,” Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy said.

Tanner Pearson cut it to 4-1 at 14:58, scoring on a wrist shot from just inside the left circle after being set up by Alexander Holtz.

Fiala scored to make it 5-1 one day after being scratched against the Sharks for missing a team meeting. He was also benched for the final 24:05 of a 3-2 win against the Utah Hockey Club on Saturday for taking too many penalties.

“My alarm didn’t go off,” Fiala said. “Honestly, that's the truth, and I take full responsibility, and I have to be better than that. I felt terrible and let down the teammates, and so of course I had something to make up for.”

Joel Edmundson pushed it to 6-1 at 8:03 of the third on a wrist shot from the left point.

Dorofeyev made it 6-2 at 11:04 on a power-play goal off a pass from Stone, and Dorofeyev buried a backhand at 17:03 for the 6-3 final.

“You need to win games in the NHL [when] scoring three goals on the road,” Cassidy said. “Should be good enough to get points on nights and win some games. And we have scored three in Tampa, three in Florida, three tonight, and at the end of the day, got one point to show for that. So that tells me our problems are on the other side of the puck.”

Golden Knights center Tomas Hertl left the game following a high hit from Mikey Anderson at 18:45 of the second period, but he returned in the third period, picking up the secondary assist on Dorofeyev’s second goal.

“You don’t want to see your guy take any hits, right, but he said he just stepped on his own stick going off, so looked a lot scarier than it was, and glad that he’s OK,” Stone said.

NOTES: Kopitar (800 assists) ranks fourth in assists among active players, trailing Sidney Crosby (1,013), Patrick Kane (818) and Malkin. … Clarke has one goal and six assists during a four-game point streak.