Sturm debut on the horizon?

It’s increasingly likely that Marco Sturm will make his Kings debut before the team returns to Los Angeles. The Dec. 23 home game against Edmonton had been the target date, but Terry Murray had left open the possibility of Sturm playing earlier. Now, it seems as though Murray is seeing that as more of a reality. After tomorrow’s game at Nashville, the Kings play Sunday at Chicago and Tuesday at Colorado. For the first time, Murray also hinted at what he might do with Sturm, saying that if he had to make the decision today, he would “probably end up putting him on the left side with Kopitar,” move Dustin Brown back to right wing and go with the second-line look of Ryan Smyth, Jarret Stoll and Justin Williams. Here’s what Murray said today regarding Sturm’s last couple days of practice…

MURRAY: “To me, he’s looking pretty good. He was out there today and he did all the drills in the practice. Then at the end he was very competitive in all the 1-on-1 stuff they were doing at the one end, to get some more work on the conditioning side of it. He was moving well. He held onto the puck. He had a lot of lateral movement, and stops and starts, which are very much game situations. He came through it, in my eyes, looking pretty good. So I’m going to go have a 1-on-1 talk with him now, just to get a look in his eye and hear what he has to say and try to move this forward a little bit.”

Question: You would consider putting him in before that Dec. 23 game?

MURRAY: “I would, absolutely. Anytime he tells me that he’s ready to get going, I’ll put him in the lineup and start him off. Even if it comes down to playing fewer minutes, that’s OK. You don’t have to take a regular shift with your line. If you’re getting 12 minutes a game, as a player on one of the top two lines, that’s OK with me. We can get him started that way. I think it’s more of a decision you have to make as a player coming back from an injury like that. You’ve got to just say, `I feel confident, I feel good, let me get started.’ It’s a step.”