“Whatever your motivation is, to get back to playing or to get traded, you have to be in shape,” Lecavalier said of the adversity he faced in Philadelphia. “So you’ve got to keep your work ethic. You don’t want to be a cancer in the locker room; you want to be a good guy. You don’t want to be that guy that disrupts everything.”

After Lecavalier’s trade, playing as a depth center behind the Kings stars Anze Kopitar and Jeff Carter was an unfamiliar job for a player who had been so heralded a prospect that Arthur L. Williams Jr., then Tampa Bay’s owner, proclaimed shortly after taking Lecavalier first over all in the 1998 draft that he would become “the Michael Jordan of hockey.” The following season, at 19, Lecavalier became the youngest captain in N.H.L. history.

The Lightning’s management relieved Lecavalier of his captaincy during the 2001-2 season but handed it back to him in 2008, after he signed an 11-year, $85 million contract that made him among the highest-paid players in N.H.L. history. Tampa Bay bought out the contract five years in, ending Lecavalier’s tenure with the franchise.

“I definitely don’t look back; I look forward and in the present,” he said. “At the end, I’m here because I want to help the team win as much as possible. That’s all I want.”

Lecavalier’s reclamation in Los Angeles started with a startling realization. It turned out that after more than a decade as a first-line star, Lecavalier still had plenty to learn about hockey.

“Supporting the puck is huge here,” Lecavalier said. “Just the importance of playing solid in your zone may be something I didn’t really have the last 17 years. There are some teams where there is a system for some guys, but here everyone is playing the same way. I think that’s what makes this team special.

“I used to go away from the play all the time and wonder some games why I didn’t touch the puck. Now I know why, 10 years later. It’s a team game, I find here. Going all through the lineup, everybody has a role. Every individual feels important.”