KEVIN WESTGARTH
This season: 9 games, 0 goals, 0 assists, 9 penalty minutes, 5:02 average ice time.
The good: Westgarth, the Kings’ second Princeton-educated enforcer, had developed a solid reputation in Manchester for his willingness to mix it up. Westgarth, mentioned as a probably successor to Raitis Ivanans, got his first chance in mid-January, not so coincidentally, after the incident against Tampa Bay when the Kings didn’t respond to a hit on Drew Doughty. Westgarth got another call in March after Ivanans suffered an injury.
The bad: It’s hard to make too much of two brief NHL stints, but Westgarth didn’t really do anything to force the Kings to keep him on the roster. His size (6-foot-5) and willingness to drop the gloves allow him to fill a prescribed role, but what did he really show beyond that? Westgarth had 10 points in 65 games in Manchester this season.
Going forward: Westgarth is a restricted free agent this summer, and Ivanans remains under contract for one more season and a paltry $600,000. At 25, Westgarth still has time to improve, and there’s a decent chance that, a year from now, Westgarth will inherit that spot from Ivanans. At this point, is there enough of a difference between Ivanans and Westgarth to justify making a change in that spot?