Richardson left out in line shuffle

Tonight’s return of Alexei Ponikarovsky to the lineup was good news for everyone except Brad Richardson, who will be a healthy scratch. After being a part-time player in 2008-09, Richardson was not a healthy scratch at all last season — he missed one game because of flu symptoms — and had played in 36 games this season, missing four with injury. At one point this season, Richardson was a first-line winger, but after today’s morning skate, Terry Murray talked about his lineup choices. Yesterday, Murray said he wanted to go with Kevin Westgarth on the fourth line, so essentially, Richardson was the odd man out in the trio of himself, Kyle Clifford and Trevor Lewis…

MURRAY: “I’m going to spend some time with him [Richardson] here after he gets done (skating), so I don’t really want to talk too much about it right now. I need to get it to him first. There are some things that I want to address with him. I know he’s a good player, and I want him to be back to where he showed us he can play, last year. But I have some things I want to talk to him about.”

Question: What kind of look are you looking for from that line? There’s some beef and toughness there…

MURRAY: “That’s what we need from that line. We need an aggressive forecheck, we need some physical play, some bumps on the defensemen consistently and just a simple game, in the sense of, let’s get the puck in deep and give ourselves the opportunity with those big bodies.”