Going forward…now what?

Now that the dust has settled a bit from yesterday’s big trade, let’s shuffle the deck for a moment and see what comes up. At this point, what might the Kings’ lineup realistically look like in 2011-12? Here’s one guess, which is no better or worse than any at this point…

Penner-Kopitar-Williams
Parse-Richards-Brown
Clifford-Stoll-Richardson
Lewis-Loktionov-Westgarth

Scuderi-Doughty
Mitchell-Johnson
Martinez-Greene
Drewiske

Quick
Bernier

This assumes a couple things, most notably that Ryan Smyth, as expected, leaves the roster in the next couple days and that the restricted free agents (Doughty, Richardson, Lewis, Martinez) return. Let’s say Doughty gets $6 million (little more than a guess) and the others get modest salary bumps. That might put the Kings at approximately $57.5 million, with the salary cap set at $64.3 million. It should be noted that one or two players would be added to fill out the roster, which might put the Kings’ real figure closer to $59 million. Does that leave enough room for Dean Lombardi to add another top-level player this summer? Perhaps not, but the ability would be there to add a moderate-sized salary, then keep some cap space open for a possible in-season trade acquisition. How would you like to see it shake out?