Two Stanley Cups and 550 points into his career, Anze Kopitar is the pride of Slovenia. And the NHL’s most underrated superstar.

By Dan Robson in Los Angeles

he first time Anze Kopitar brought the Stanley Cup to Slovenia, thousands of fans packed into a soccer field in his hometown, where a stage was erected in his honour. He was driven through the crowd in a horse-drawn carriage as fans stretched their arms over the top of the people in front of them to try and snap a picture of the local legend with his silver mug.

They chanted “Anze, Anze, Anze,” and a row of young hockey players on the stage tapped their sticks in salute. Kopitar hoisted the Cup high above his head and all those in attendance pretended to lift it with him. It was the first time a player from Slovenia had won the Stanley Cup, and the first time hockey’s grail had visited the picturesque nation of two million that borders Austria, Croatia, Italy and Hungary. Many of those people had stayed up through the nights to watch Kopitar and the Los Angeles Kings battle the New Jersey Devils in the 2012 NHL final.

He was a national hero, an icon—the “wonder boy,”as local media called him. “It’s kind of like Brad Pitt walking around here,” says Justin Williams, Kopitar’s longtime Kings teammate, who visited his friend’s hometown the summer they first won the Cup. “Everyone knows who he is.”

For nearly a decade, Kopitar has been one of the best all-around players in the game. And yet, it seems, not everyone knows who Kopitar is. Playing on the West Coast in a city of stars, his local celebrity is naturally muted. And though he’s been one of the most consistent and effective two-way centres in the game, he is routinely left out of discussions about hockey’s greatest players.

If there is indeed a traditional-puck-market bias in the collective hockey conversation, Kopitar is its biggest victim. Nearly a point-per-game player since he entered the league as a 19-year-old, Kopitar is also one of the game’s most reliable penalty killers and his possession numbers are exceptional. Yet he has never won a major NHL award—aside from those two Stanley Cups.

“I think Anze Kopitar right now is the third-best player in the National Hockey League, only behind Crosby and Toews,” said Wayne Gretzky during last season’s playoffs. “And he’s getting better every game.”

Matjaz Kopitar, Anze’s father, exhales in appreciation when the Great One’s analysis is relayed to him over the phone in Slovenia. “Who would know, if not him?” he says. “It has to be true.”

In a quick survey of the Stanley Cup champions at the team’s practice facility near Manhattan Beach in Los Angeles, the dressing room is clearly in agreement with Kopitar’s dad: “I’m sure if he played in Canada or New York or Chicago, he’d probably get more attention,” says Kings captain Dustin Brown.

“He takes pride in defence,” says Drew Doughty. “In five-on-three he’s one of our first killers. In five-on-four he’s one of our first killers. At the end of the game he’s out there. That’s what separates him from other guys.”

But the most insight into what fuels Kopitar’s success comes from a man known for brevity. When Darryl Sutter first joined the Kings, he underestimated Kopitar’s ability—like many do. But he quickly learned that his front-line centre had a “special insight” into the game. Players like that, Sutter says, can help their coaches more than their coaches can help them.

Since Sutter’s realization, Kopitar and his coach have become close. Over the past few years, Kopitar has developed a connection with Sutter’s son, Chris, who has Down syndrome. They talk about basketball and shoot hoops together after practice sometimes when Chris comes down to the rink. Recently, the 27-year-old Slovenian told his coach that he and his wife—whose name, Ines, is tattooed around his ring finger—are expecting a baby girl. It was an emotional conversation, Sutter says.

“You can see the way he is with his family, with his wife—it’s special.”

That connection—to family and home—is the foundation on which Kopitar has built a career that seems destined for the Hall of Fame. And it helps that hockey has always been part of the family lexicon. “There’s good reason why he has so much knowledge about the game. He was raised in the rink,” Sutter says. “He’s been learning it since he was little.”

When he was just a boy, Kopitar watched every move his hero made—how he moved, how he passed, how he shot the puck. He studied every play in the man’s two-way game. Barely old enough for school, young Anze sat in front of the television in his family’s two-storey home in Hrusica, a small steel town in northern Slovenia on the border of Austria.

Kopitar imagined himself on that ice, carving past his opponents and filling the net while the thousands roared—just like they did for his hero. Kopitar had heard of other players, sure: Gretzky, Hull, Lemieux. But they were only characters in his imagination, outlined by numbers in the sports pages and tall tales of greatness. This man, though—this hero—he could see. And so, when Matjaz Kopitar, a goal-scoring left-winger, threw his hands in the air in celebration of winning the Slovenian Ice Hockey League championship for HK Acroni Jesenice—as he did three straight times from 1992 to 1994—his son Anze did, too. And the boy hoped to be like him, the greatest player he could dream of.

Kopitar learned the game when he was four, on the ice rink behind their house, built by his father and grandfather. As he grew, he laid the foundations for his snapshot and quick hands, putting his younger brother, Gasper, in goal as they played for hours into the night. If Dad was home, he’d be out there, too—watching, instructing. If not, he’d be on TV, playing his role as a national hockey icon.

Slovenia was technically young then, having secured independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. It was free and immensely proud. And it was small, measuring 20,000 square kilometres, with just six rinks within its borders. But fans were mad for hockey. The arenas would overflow for games between Jesenice and Olimpija, the team from the country’s capital, Ljubljana—the Slovenian equivalent of Bruins-Habs.

Mateja Kopitar drove her sons everywhere—shuttling them to and from individual games and practices as they always played on separate teams. She saw more hockey than her husband at that time. When Matjaz’s team played at home, he’d bring his sons to the rink. Anze would sit in his father’s stall, too shy to talk, and look around the room. This was it, he thought. One day he’d make it big—he’d make it here.

Kopitar couldn’t see how far this dream could go, then. He couldn’t even watch NHL games, let alone imagine himself playing for the same team Wayne Gretzky once did. The Great One’s poster hung in the middle of the bedroom he shared with his brother, which was scattered with the plastic and wooden mini-sticks they played with nightly until well past bedtime.

When the brothers were still in minor hockey, they picked up the poster just over the border in Austria, in the closest sporting-goods store that sold hockey gear. The brothers saw Gretzky standing tall in his Kings uniform and knew they had to bring it home.

That might have been when his vision expanded beyond the realm of Slovenia, though Kopitar can’t really pin it down. He remembers watching the Russian players who came to his father’s team as imports. The way they played was beautiful, he thought—the puck always moving, every action part of a greater play. But it wasn’t until he watched the Winter Games in Nagano on television that he realized the incredible skill of NHL hockey. Kopitar watched Sergei Fedorov play for Russia and Peter Forsberg for Sweden, and found new models for his game.

Before he was a teenager, Kopitar had outgrown his competition in Slovenia. He played levels above his age and on multiple teams, and he even took a turn in the Slovenian professional league when he was just 15. He’d followed the path of his father right up to his heels; now he’d have to surpass him.

When he was given the chance to play in a Swedish junior league in 2004, Kopitar and his family knew he had to go. He joined the only team that offered him a tryout and set up in a tiny apartment by himself. The move to Sweden was essential, exposing him as one of the top prospects in Europe. He won the league scoring title with 49 points in 30 games, playing in a home rink that sat more than 6,000 people. He was the talk of the 2005 world championship, even when his Slovenian team was being slaughtered by the U.S. and Canada.

Scouts wondered if they’d found Europe’s answer to Sidney Crosby, and pretended they knew where Slovenia was. Unlike most highly touted NHL prospects, though, Kopitar didn’t make the trip to Ottawa for the entry draft in 2005. His team’s pre-season had already started and he didn’t want to abandon his teammates. Instead, the players threw a draft party, watching the names called on television, starting with Crosby. When Kopitar was selected 11th overall by the Los Angeles Kings, his phone rang almost immediately. It was his dad. For years he’d been a hard-nosed, typical hockey man. Now, Matjaz Kopitar wept. It was the first time the son had heard his father cry.

“He couldn’t get any words out,” Kopitar says. They stayed on the phone for a couple of wordless, tear-filled minutes before hanging up. When Kopitar called his father back a little while later, his dad’s pride hadn’t subsided, but the pragmatic coach in him had returned: “This was just the first step you took,” he told his son. “Now it’s time to take the next few.”