There were two celebrations at Crypto.com Arena at the Los Angeles Kings hockey game last Monday night. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) who continue to battle the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles.
The Kings lost to the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-1, but the real winners were the LAFD firefighters and first responder heroes who were honored in a pregame ceremony and throughout the game.
During pregame warm-ups, both the Kings and Penguin players wore LAFD caps and then applied LAFD stickers to their helmets for the game. The Kings also replaced their usual logo at center ice with a graphic paying tribute to the LAFD.
Featured during the pregame ceremony were members of the LAFD, West Covina Fire Department, Los Angeles County Fire Department, and Pasadena Fire Department, who formed a circle at center ice during a tribute video. Then there was a moment of silence.
During the ceremonial pregame face-off between both captains from the Kings (Anze Kopitar) and Penguins (Sidney Crosby), the puck was dropped by Pasadena fire engineer Chien Yu whose family lost their home in the Eaton Fire. Yu’s family joined him at center ice.
“Those guys, you know, risk their lives for the community, for the city, and we can’t thank them enough,” Kopitar said after the game. “The city’s been going through some tough times and, obviously, in situations like this, I’m sure the city is going to come together and help and pull their weight in every which way possible to the people that have lost everything and, again, try to help them out, get them on their feet and essentially rebuild.”
In the postgame press conference, Los Angeles coach Jim Hiller expressed his disappointment in the loss but said he also felt a sense of humility. “To see the guys out there and the gals, it was humbling,” Hiller said about the ceremony. “I don’t know, I just felt that way. I felt a little emotional. I just felt like those people have been out there doing some pretty amazing things that we just saw a little bit from a long distance. And we’re in our own little bubble doing what we have to do. It brought it to life for me, pretty personal, and it’s just disappointing we couldn’t do more with it.”