Trevor Lewis sticks to his script as Kings win again

Their fourth straight win (also their ninth straight win at home) showcased Lewis' longevity and the team's tenacity.

Trevor Lewis has cracked double figures in goals only twice in 16-plus NHL seasons.

Even when he played on the Kings’ 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup championship teams the Utah-born forward didn’t show up in many highlight clips. His role was to do the grunt work, to be diligent defensively, to perform the unglamorous and often unnoticed physical toil that can wear down even the best-conditioned NHL player over the course of long seasons.

Lewis was 37 when this season began—he will turn 38 on Wednesday—and he often looked as though his time had passed, that it was time for the coaching staff to nudge him into the background to allow a younger, speedier forward to take the torch and lead the Kings into the future. When he left the lineup after sustaining a lower-body injury on Nov. 30, it was worth wondering if he’d win back a regular place. Or even if he deserved one.

He not only found a spot when he returned on Saturday, he found himself on the ice in the late minutes of the third period to help the outplayed, outshot Kings protect a 2-1 lead and secure a victory over Tampa Bay. It was his 1,000th regular-season NHL game, a rare occasion. But it was a familiar moment, too, in that he was being trusted to do the grunt work again under the pressure of a close game. And he got the job done, as the Kings held the league’s highest-scoring team (average of 3.78 goals per game) to a lone first-period goal.

“I was talking to the coaches. That’s kind of the perfect way my 1,000th game should have gone, to be out there,” he told reporters afterward. “Grind out a win. I thought everyone played hard.

“There was a lot of emotions going on. It was pretty exciting.”

The Kings (23-10-5, including 14-2-1 at the Crypt) honored Lewis by giving his teammates tee shirts and caps they wore to commemorate the occasion. His children, Boone and Brix, and father, Randy, visited the locker room before the game to read the starting lineup. “He’s kind of the grandpa of the group sometimes,” defenseman Mikey Anderson said. “He’s awesome to have around.”

Anderson scored twice in the first period—once inadvertently, when he deflected a shot by Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman past Darcy Kuemper at 1:09, and again at 7:58, when his long shot got past Andrei Vasilevskiy. That was his fifth goal this season, matching the personal best he set in the 2022-23 season. Anderson played more than 11 minutes in the third period because of an awkward fall suffered by Joel Edmundson and played 25:51 overall in coach Jim Hiller’s now-usual 11-forward, seven-defenseman configuration. Andreas Englund, in on defense for Kyle Burroughs (whose wife recently gave birth) played only 4:53, which was about enough.

Kempe scored the winner in the third, off a great setup from Alex Turcotte. Kuemper made 15 saves in the final period and 33 in total. “Darcy gave us a chance to even have a chance,” Hiller said.

The Kings have won four straight and are 12-2-2 since their 7-2 loss at San Jose on Nov. 25. Kuemper extended his personal nine-game point streak (7-0-2) as the Kings won their ninth straight home game, the third such streak in franchise history, per the Kings’ crack public relations staff. The club record is 12, set during the 1992-93 season, followed by a 10-game home win streak during 1990-91. Their next game, against Calgary on Wednesday, will close a five-game homestand. “There’s a long way to go, for sure,” Hiller said. “I like how we’re playing. We’re certainly going to give ourselves a chance as best we can.”

While the Kings are thriving, the NHL is facing some ponderous problems.

In the olden days, when I wrote regularly about the NHL for the L.A. Times and saw yet another baffling policy decision made by the NHL, I’d write that hockey must be a great game because it survives despite the people who run it.

That still applies. Especially after seeing how the league has killed its golden goose: the annual Winter Classic outdoor game.

Unwilling to play during what had become its regular New Year’s Day slot for fear of competing with the newly restructured college football playoffs, the NHL pushed this season’s encounter between the Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues back a day, to the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. Even so, it still faced stiff competition from college football bowl games and, alarmingly, hit a new ratings low.

The Winter Classic lost much of its novelty over the past decade, a process accelerated by staging too many other outdoor games branded as Stadium Series or Heritage Classic matches. How many times can you manufacture stories and nostalgia about players who grew up playing on outdoor rinks and now get the chance again as adults? How many kids actually still play on outdoor rinks? Those outdoor games have produced some nice visuals and inspired interesting throwback-type uniforms but once they get started, they tend to be just another game, except on ice that’s worse that’s usual.

The big ratings splat this time around confirmed that fans no longer see outdoor games as a special, must-watch occasion.

No amount of hype over Chicago’s Connor Bedard, who skillful but is struggling to meet projections he’d be a superstar, could overcome the mistake of matching the Blackhawks, who are last in the West, against the middling Blues. Nor was this the first time Wrigley Field had hosted an outdoor game: it was the site of the third outdoor game, on Jan. 1, 2009, so the novelty factor wasn’t in play.

The NHL has staged 42 outdoor games. This was the league-high seventh time the Blackhawks were featured in one of those games, though it has been nearly 10 years since they last won the Stanley Cup and they’ve been bogged down in a long rebuilding process the past few seasons. Enough already.

The game being aired on TNT and truTV instead of ABC no doubt narrowed the audience and made the game tougher for viewers to find and access, but it’s time for the NHL to analyze whether it’s worth continuing an event that has clearly lost its luster and is not butting up against the unbeatable obstacle that is football.

Oh, and there’s one more outdoor game to come this season, a Stadium Series matchup between the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets on March 1 at Ohio Stadium.

It will be interesting to see if the new Four Nations Faceoff tournament, which was created to replace the meaningless All-Star Game, will be a hit with fans. The event, to be played Feb. 12-20 in Boston and Montreal, will pit the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland in a round-robin format. I’m not sure there will be much buzz around the tournament, but at least it’s not another no-hit All-Star skatearound.

One last note: happy to see former Kings coach Todd McLellan recently was hired by the Red Wings to replace coach Derek Lalonde. Through Saturday, McLellan had led them to a four-game winning streak.