The Los Angeles Kings have a pretty lengthy list of injured players but the good news is that some appear close to returning while one is going to unfortunately have to wait a few weeks to reach a career milestone. These are some injury updates from Tuesday.
Trevor Lewis expected to miss a few weeks before his 1,000th game
On Saturday, Trevor Lewis was playing in his 999th game, 781 of them with the team that drafted him in the first round of the 2006 NHL Draft. This season he appeared in all 25 games for the Los Angeles Kings as he worked towards his 1,000 game but is going to have to wait a few weeks before reaching that milestone.
In the game against the Ottawa Senators, Lewis left early due to an injury and on Tuesday head coach Jim Hiller confirmed that he will miss between 4-6 weeks due to the lower body injury, according to Dennis Bernstein.
While Lewis has played in every game to this point, his ice time has been pretty limited as he averaged under 11 minutes per game. It wouldn't be surprising to see someone like Samuel Helenius get a bump in ice time in his absence.
Arthur Kaliyev returns to practice for the Los Angeles Kings
According to Russell Morgan of Hockey Royalty, Arthur Kaliyev was participating in practice with the Los Angeles Kings. As Morgan notes, he believes this is the first time he has practiced with the team since he suffered his training camp injury.
The former second round pick had a promising start to his career with 27 goals in his first two full seasons with the Kings in 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. This past year though he struggled a bit with only seven goals and after HIller took over, Kaliyev's ice time really diminished and he fell out of the rotation.
There is no question the talent is there for Arthur Kaliyev to have an impact on this offense as he has one of the best shots on the team. The uncertainty lies in how Hiller plans to incorporate him and if he will get enough ice time to have that impact.
Darcy Kuemper returns to practice and looks close to returning
In addition to Kaliyev, Russell Morgan also noted that Darcy Kuemper returned to practice and he didn't have a non-contact jersey. This is probably a great sign that he is really close to returning, possibly as early as this week.
Kuemper was placed on injured reserve in the middle of November and it was the second time this season he missed time due to an injury. This season he has only been able to appear in 10 games and has a save percentage of .899 and a goals against average of 2.65.
In his absence, David Rittich has played really well, outside of the game against the San Jose Sharks. It will be interesting to see how Hiller handles the rotation in net once Kuemper is able to return, which also will mean Erik Portillo will return to the Ontario Reign.