Friday practice update

While the Kings were on the ice practicing, Willie Mitchell was with a team trainer, visiting a Nashville-area doctor, apparently to determine the extent of the injury he suffered last night in St. Louis. Mitchell had not returned by the time the team returned from practice, but there’s likely to be an update this afternoon. Matt Greene flew back to Los Angeles this morning and will see the Kings’ team doctor there. As for Brad Richardson, Murray said he hadn’t received an update in the past two days but said, “I know he’s been biking. Nelson Emerson is back there. He’s going to get him on the ice and get some skating going.”

As for the healthy, or semi-healthy Kings, Jonathan Bernier is still scheduled to get the start tomorrow against Nashville and the Kings will go with that third-line look of Clifford-Handzus-Simmonds, which Murray said it attributable to equal parts of satisfaction with Clifford and dissatisfaction with Alexei Ponikarovsky. Murray said he would talk to Dean Lombardi today about the possibility of calling up a defenseman from Manchester. The pairings in practice today were Scuderi-Doughty, Johnson-Harrold and Martinez-Drewiske.

Murray indicated that he might get Marco Sturm into a game before the Dec. 23 target date and that the current plan is for Sturm to play with Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown, with the second line going back to a look of Ryan Smyth, Jarret Stoll and Justin Williams. More notes and quotes on all this and more to come…