Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
No.
Where is the fun in that though? When it comes to the question stated in the title, could Trevor Lewis be a top 6 forward, there is at least SOME evidence supporting it.
First off, let us get an overview of Trevor Lewis.
He is 28 years old, going on what will be his sixth full professional season as an NHL player. In that time span of five pro seasons, he has never scored double digit goals and never scored more than 15 points until last season. It was a "Breakout" year for Lewis, who had nine goals and 16 assists for an unexpected 25 point contribution. We say breakout in quotes, because while 25 points is no huge number, it is almost double Lewis's career high to date.
We played with this idea on the blog that
Trevor Lewis was being underutilized back in March. Not surprisingly, Darryl Sutter did not take the advice of the article and push Lewis into the top six for the remainder of the year. He instead, continued to be a bottom six defensive specialist.
When you pull up Lewis's HERO Chart, it makes complete and total sense why he would be used in that respect.
The goal, shot, and corsi suppression are excellent while most of the offensive categories remain stunted. He produces at a mid fourth liner level, while playing defense at a top player rate. The classic maxim amongst Kings fans is that if Trevor Lewis had hands he would be a 40-goal scorer. An obvious exaggeration but to the point no less. Trevor Lewis has seemed to lack finish in his game. However, it is not for lack of trying.
Recently, Ryan Stimson from the SB Nation blog In Lou We Trust, came out with some Tableau's that analyze passing data from certain players and how they contribute offensively.
Trevor Lewis was, surprisingly, really really good at creating scoring chances for his linemates.
How good you ask? Well, he was basically the ONLY one creating scoring chances on his line.
The two bars you want to focus on are the ones on the right side. The SCC/60, and the SCC%. SCC stands for Scoring Chance Contribution. The SCC% bar is the percentage of scoring chance plays that Lewis was DIRECTLY involved in while on the ice. Basically, No. 22 was consistently the only player creating opportunity for his line.
Maybe the more truthful adage about Trevor Lewis should not be that if he "Had hands he would have 40 goals", but more so if he had linemates he would have 40 assists.
Most of the other data on the graph is low. Like, why is he still playing low. The reality there is that those corsi contributions and zone entry percentage numbers are all pretty dependent on your line working as a whole. When you are on the fourth line, it can be difficult to execute that.
Looking at Trevor Lewis's linemates over the last five years in the NHL kind of gives you an idea of how he has been used if you did not know already. The top three forwards which he has played with over the last five years:
Jarret Stoll, Dwight King, Kyle Clifford.
Over the past TWO years: Jarret Stoll, Kyle Clifford, and a run-off between Dwight King and Jordan Nolan.
You see two trends when you start matching up the WOWY numbers of Lewis and his linemates.
A) Lewis is slightly more productive when not playing with the likes of Stoll, King, Clifford, and Nolan. However, that almost never happens. In fact, in the past five years, Lewis has played a total of 3709 even strength minutes. 297 of those have come with Kopitar. 162 of those have come with Jeff Carter. 378 of those have come alongside Dustin Brown.
Roughly, only 7-10 % of his entire Kings career has been played in an elevated role, alongside top six players.
B) His linemates are equally, much more productive when not playing with Lewis.
This all comes back to role. If you are playing with Lewis, you are likely playing in a defensive posture, on the bottom six. Offense is not going to be something you see regularly. Likewise with scoring chances. As we saw earlier though, if there are scoring chances they are almost exclusively being generated by No. 22.
Let's show you Kyle Clifford's WOWY (With you or without you) for an example.
Really good shot suppression, really good goals against numbers, really bad goals for numbers.
Now, side by side, here is Lewis without Clifford and vice versa.
Lewis remains stuck in his bottom line role. His defensive contributions remains high while his offensive contributions remain low. Clifford, on the other hands, sees a bump in the wrong direction in defensive numbers but a spike in offensive numbers. Why? Because when Clifford is moved away from Lewis it normally has meant that Darryl Sutter has elevated Clifford to the top line with Kopitar. We have seen that on a number of occasions over the past two years due to injury or just plain experimentation. Lewis has never been afforded that extended chance...until last year.
Not surprisingly, we saw a bump in production and offensive contribution. He remained a steady defensive contributor, but started to really put together more offensive numbers. The scoring chance generation was quickly cashed in on by linemates who could actually finish. He has always remained in that lower left portion of the graph, meaning poor offense but good defense. Last season he made a step towards the threshold of good offense.
Now, in hockey theory, Lewis works very well with the Kings top line. Kopitar distributes, Lewis creates havoc, Gaborik finishes. Because of his versatility, you could slide him in on either wing and really use his speed to an overall advantage for your team. That being said, due to the depth chart it is hard to imagine any place in the lineup where he could consistently stay and be alongside productive players. You are only as good as who you surround yourself with in most cases. You would have to separate Pearson from Toffoli/Carter or, it would now be, Lucic from Kopitar/Gaborik. Difficult to ask since we are already pretty well set on Lewis being strictly what he is. Until he is proves that results are repeatable, he will probably remain a defensive specialist. Problem is, he probably will not get a chance to prove them repeatable.
"They are who we thought they were." is the oft quoted line from Former Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green. With Lewis, it seems that by this point in his career he is what we think he is. A straight forward defensive player with little offensive capability. Perhaps we do not know that though. From the looks of it, he very well may be a strong play driving winger who could post somewhere in the range of 30-40 points and 25 assists in an elevated role. For various reasons though he has never been given that role for any extended period of time. Is there still time for him? Do we see it this year? It would be a nice surprise for a Kings team that always seems light on the scoring in the deeper recesses of the lineup.
For the most part, people are amusingly right in the exaggeration that he could score 40 if he had hands. Maybe not 40, but he would have probably broke double digits by now. However, there still is an element of Lewis that we can ruminate on more realistically: If he had linemates could he have 25-30 assists?
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