Line, please…

In Las Vegas tomorrow night, the Kings will go with a fourth line of Rich Clune, Trevor Lewis and Kevin Westgarth. Sunday night in Anaheim, players such as Kyle Clifford, Andrei Loktionov and Brayden Schenn are slotted for action. This time next week, it’s no stretch to think that any of those six players will be getting ready for real NHL games. As noted here for a while, the Kings have quite a decision on their hands in terms of which players to select for the fourth line.

After practice today, Terry Murray indicated that the evaluation might not end on Oct. 8. Westgarth has made the team, but if Scott Parse is still out at the start of the season, it’s possible that four of the other five players will make the team at the start. Today, I asked Terry Murray about versatility and whether the status of Clune and Lewis as older, more experienced players might play into the decision, given that they might be asked to sit out games more often as spare forwards…

MURRAY: “That does play into it. Parse plays into this thing too. With his injury, it opens up an opportunity to players. I think you’re absolutely right. When you have 14 forwards, we have different looks, different kinds of players, and we can make that change depending on the opponent, and we will. I think it’s important, in the early part of the season, to keep everybody going. You don’t want to be coming out of training camp and parking someone on the bench, or up in the press box, for eight, nine, 10 games in a row. That is not the kind of look that I want. I want to keep players involved and focused, emotionally tied into the team. Then, as we get through a bunch of games, if we need to look at something different, to make a decision, we can do that with an honest, very fair, evaluation.”

On the other hand… Asked independently to gave a training-camp analysis of one of those players, Lewis, Murray wasn’t exactly glowing in his praise…

MURRAY: “Trevor Lewis got called up last year and played five or six games for us, and I really liked what he brought to our team. The speed, to be able to hunt pucks down, to put pressure on the two defending defensemen to establish possession and do some pretty good things in the offensive zone with his foot speed. This training camp here, he’s maybe not showing me quite the same stuff as in the games I’m referring to, but it’s another opportunity to get back into a game tomorrow and give us that kind of look. With his speed, he’s versatile and he can play a couple different forward positions. We feel that he’s a good penalty killer, a guy that can upgrade that part of his game. As a result, you’ve got a player that’s pretty valuable.”