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As his career has been so short he has largely avoided the gaze of the general public, however, NHL scouts have followed him closely since 2003 when he starred at the European Youth Olympic Festival in Bled. He again impressed the scouts when he finished as the third-highest scorer - with six goals and two assists - at the 2004 U-18 Division I World Championships. That year, Kopitar made such an impact that he was even considered for the senior men's national team despite being only 16 at the time. "The then coach wanted to call me up but my father said it was a bit too early," Kopitar recalls. His father, Matjaz Kopitar, is an ice hockey legend from Jesenice who only called it a day a few years ago and has since then worked as an assistant coach with the national team. Last year, Anze finally made the leap into the senior team, which meant that he ended up playing for the national team at three levels throughout the year: the U-18, U-20 and the senior national team in the Pool A World Championships in Austria. After the success of 2004, Anze took on a new challenge in Sweden, where he played for the S"dert"lje junior team. His remarkable rise reached a new level last August when he was picked up by the Los Angeles Kings NHL team. However, in an agreement with the Kings, he stayed on in Sweden for one more year to gain further experience. He was finally able to join his new NHL team-mates at this year's summer training camp. "Kopitar is technically very good, he is tall and strong. We believe that he has the potential to become a leading NHL centre player," Los Angeles general manager Dave Taylor said after the draft. When the Kings did not allow him to play in the Slovenian national championship finals because of the risk of injury, observers took it as another sign that the Americans are very serious about his potential; three other Slovenians drafted by NHL teams never progressed beyond the minor American leagues. Under Father's Watchful Eye The coach of his Swedish team, Per Nygaards, believes that Anze is the best junior player he has ever coached, including all the players in the U-20 Swedish national team. Weighing some 100 kilograms and standing about 190 centimetres tall, he has the size and, coupled with a fantastic hockey sense and a great wrist shot, he is more or less a complete package according to many professionals. "If you compare him with all the other 18-year-olds in the world, he's got to be one of the top players," Nygaards added. An American Internet site gave Kopitar a prospective rating of 8, which is "just a cut below elite status but still possessing all-star potential". Under the guidance of his father, Anze has not put a foot wrong in his career. He takes things slowly, one at a time. It almost seems as though he is simply too good for his age and things need to be slowed down artificially; he barely qualified for the draft because of age restrictions. Besides the hockey skills, Kopitar possesses another quality that can be seen equally clearly both on and off the ice and this is his character. For a teenager, he is extremely mature and he proved that by quickly settling into life in Sweden, far away from his family and friends. His transfer to Sweden proved to be an excellent move that actually opened the doors to the world elite. Scouts rarely venture to Slovenia in search of ice hockey talent but in Sweden they had little choice but to notice him. In the 2004-05 season, he was the leading points scorer (49) in the U-20 league and also its second-highest goalscorer (28). As a member of Los Angeles Kings, he will have every opportunity to meet his boyhood hero Sergei Fedorov.