October 10 practice notes

Good afternoon from Toyota Sports Center. Forward lines from today’s morning skate, as grouped together by colored jerseys:

White: Gaborik-Kopitar-Brown
Blue: Lucic-Carter-Toffoli
Green: Pearson-Shore-Lewis
Purple: Clifford-Andreoff-Nolan-Weal

-Defensive pairings remained the same from Friday night: McNabb-Doughty, Muzzin-Ehrhoff, Martinez-Greene and Forbort-Schultz.

-Saturday’s practice was another long skate that took up the better part of the 11:00 hour. The team is off Sunday, and Darryl Sutter wanted to get a good aerobic day of work in. There’s a weekend break in the schedule, so this is an early season quirk that comes with playing at home on a Friday night and not until Tuesday, when the Kings return to Staples Center to face the Vancouver Canucks.

-Because the Kopitar line has struggled to generate offense through the preseason and the first two regular season games, Milan Lucic was moved to Jeff Carter’s line, with Tanner Pearson assigned to Nick Shore’s line and Dustin Brown jumping up to the top line, opposite Marian Gaborik. This moves Gaborik back to the left side, where he most often plays with Brown. “We know what we can expect out of each other there, and we’ve created some chemistry last year at times,” Gaborik said after practice. Sutter also discussed the reasons for the adjustments; stories to come.

-I have a personal event this evening – a friend of the blog is getting married! – so content will slow in the afternoon. More to come today, though, and thank you, as always, for reading. Enjoy your Saturday, Insiders.

After signing 1 autograph, Darryl Sutter said to me, "I just ruined this stick." I asked why. He said "I signed it" pic.twitter.com/d8jSIIOMNs

— Frozen Royalty (@frozenroyalty) October 10, 2015