Welcome to Michigan Hockeycast 8.26. Soak us up today and miss us all summer. We will miss you too. All right, Alex, for our last episode, given where we are and what has happened so far in the NHL playoffs,

I feel like you're the perfect person to talk to about this.

But the Avs swept the Kings yesterday, and it was Anze Kopitar's final game in the NHL.

Obviously, had an illustrious career.

But I would say that his career overlaps

almost perfectly with what you've watched in the NHL.

Sure.

Because he started in what, like 2007, 8 in that range, and that's probably when you started

paying attention.

Yeah.

And you've done some writing, or so you tell me, about a lot of players in the NHL,

um, cataloging your takes on a lot of the really good players.

And it feels like he kind of encompasses your so far in your life era of hockey.

Um, you know, I remember their run for a few years when they were really good, or I guess in

the playoffs, they weren't always that great in the regular season.

But for him to play 20 years in L.A. and have that kind of postseason success in that short

window and then have awesome regular season success.

Like, where does he rank in your, in his era, in your era of, you know, best players in the

league?

He's got to be high up there.

I mean, it was certainly one of the more underrated players of his era.

And it's always tough, a bit of a slippery slope when you do that, because it was the old Patrice Bergeron thing that you're so underrated, then you become overrated. Well, yeah. They've done that with Barcov now, or the most underrated player for 10 years in a row. Okay, well, maybe he's not underrated. Maybe he's perfectly rated. But I think it fits for Copitar in large part because, like, you compare him to the similar

...