As NHL general managers prepared for the much-ballyhooed 2005 draft that marked the end of the lockout, I had my eye on one player.

Kings' Anze Kopitar has exploded this season and is the top scorer in the NHL.

Photograph by : GETTY IMAGES FILE PHOTO

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No, it wasn't Sidney Crosby. Everyone knew about him.

I was waiting to see what would happen with a youngster named Anze Kopitar.

Not because I expected Kopitar to be a superstar (I didn't) but because my wife is of Slovenian descent. Her parents were born there when it was still part of the former Yugoslavia and our 4-year-old son spoke Slovenian before he spoke English.

Kopitar was born in Jesenice, which is close to the resort town of Bled, in northern Slovenia near the Austrian border. He was the 11th pick in the 2005 draft, selected by the Los Angeles Kings.

For a country with just over 2 million people, Slovenia produces a good quantity of elite athletes. There are world-class Slovenian skiers and rowers and a surprisingly good soccer team, which will take on Russia this week in a qualifying playoff for the 2010 World Cup. They even produce a surprising number of basketball players, including Rasho Nesterovic of the Toronto Raptors.

But hockey players? Slovenia is often confused with Slovakia, which is where the hockey players come from. Kopitar is it for Slovenia, the only Slovenian-born player to play in the NHL. Because he's is unique, I've kept my eye on Kopitar since the start of his career. While breaking in on a bad Kings team, Kopitar had good but not eye-popping numbers: 20 goals and 41 points in his rookie 2006-07 season.

The numbers jumped to 32 goals and 45 assists in 2007-08, then 27 and 39. Kopitar was an established star, but he was always well in the minus, including a career-worst minus-17 rating last season.

By any normal standard, Kopitar, 22, was doing very well - but he happened to break in at roughly the same time as the three superstars on the East Coast who were getting all the ink and leading the league in almost everything: Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Alexander Ovechkin.

But with an improving Kings team around him, the 6-foot-4, 220-pounder has exploded this season. Going into last night's game against the Thrashers in Atlanta, Kopitar was the top scorer in the NHL with 14 goals and 16 assists for 30 points, six points up on Marian Gaborik. Better still, Kopitar had a plus-9 rating.

Obviously, it helps that Ovechkin and Malkin have been hurt and that Crosby is in a bizarre, extended slump.

But Kopitar is obviously the kind of elite offensive player you can build around for a decade or more. For Montreal fans who know the team could have drafted him four years ago, Kopitar's success is all the more painful because the Canadiens' young players, almost without exception, have not impressed as the season nears the quarter-pole.

Only two, young Czech veterans Tomas Plekanec and Jaroslav Halak, have remotely lived up to expectations. From there, the performance of the Canadiens' youngsters falls off dramatically. Carey Price has struggled all season. Josh Gorges, who was expected to put up some numbers with Andrei Markov out of the lineup, has one goal (scored on opening night) and two assists.