Ponikarovsky ready (at even strength)

Alexei Ponikarovsky has made it through three days’ worth of practices and is ready to go tonight. After a month out of the lineup with a broken finger, Ponikarovsky will return for the Kings tonight on the third line with Michal Handzus and Wayne Simmonds. Still up for question is when Ponikarovsky will return to penalty-killing duty. He’s a strong defensive forward who had been part of the penalty-kill unit before his injury, but Terry Murray did not commit to immediately putting Ponikarovsky back on that unit.

MURRAY: “I’m going to watch that one closely, see how he’s doing in the first few shifts. I like our penalty killing, the way it’s set up right now. He will get back in, because he was a good penalty killer for us. Whether we use him tonight or not, I’m not sure, but he finished off, before the injury, as a big part of that.”

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.