January 7 practice notes

The entire Kings team was back on the main ice at the Toyota Sports Center on Wednesday, two days since their last full team practice and four days since their last game. Los Angeles faces the New York Rangers in a Stanley Cup Final rematch on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. (FOX Sports West / NHL Network / Sportsnet 360).

Lines, via color coding:

White: Gaborik – Kopitar – King
Blue: Pearson – Carter – Toffoli
Green: Brown – Stoll – Williams
Purple: Clifford – Richards – Lewis
Yellow: Andreoff – Nolan

The lines reflect a slight change from those used on Monday, when Jarret Stoll centered Trevor Lewis and Dustin Brown, and Mike Richards centered Kyle Clifford and Justin Williams. It’s worth noting, but don’t put too heavy of a stock into the alignment prior to what’s used during a morning game-day skate.

The defensive pairings included Muzzin-Doughty, Martinez-Greene, Schultz-McBain and Regehr-McNabb. Robyn Regehr participated in the full team practice, and while he was handling pucks and making passes, I didn’t see him attempt any shots. The veteran said yesterday that he hoped to take shots later in the week, and Darryl Sutter said on Monday that Regehr was “at least a week away,” so don’t expect him to play tomorrow versus New York.

Brayden McNabb, meanwhile, was stitched up after suffering a heavy high stick in the shootout loss to Edmonton last week on a play in which he collided heavily with the boards. I asked hockey operations on Saturday whether he was still dealing with the after-effects of that play, or if, by chance, he was dealing with something else, something minor. “Nothing that would keep him out” was the response I received later that afternoon.

Naturally, there was heavy talk this morning about Aaron Portzline’s Columbus Dispatch report that Darryl Sutter will coach one of the teams at the All-Star Game in Columbus two and a half weeks from now. Sutter wasn’t in the position to discuss it at length because it wasn’t official, though he did acknowledge that it was “basically something I’ve talked to the league about off and on for the last three weeks.” I hope to have the story out shortly after lunch.

Lots more to come from El Segundo…