October 9 morning skate notes

Good morning from Toyota Sports Center, Insiders. Several notes from today’s morning skate:

-It was an optional morning skate. After video and off-ice workouts, most of the team began to take the ice at roughly 10:15.

-Because it was an optional skate, there were no real line rushes. Jeff Schultz, Derek Forbort and Andy Andreoff remained on the ice for extra work with Jhonas Enroth, so expect Schultz and Andreoff to come out of the lineup. Darryl Sutter confirmed that Jordan Weal would make his NHL debut – Weal also has family and friends making the trip from North Vancouver – and McNabb indicated that he’d be in. “It’s really exciting,” Weal said about making debut. “A lot of work has gone into getting to this part of my career, and the hard work’s just going to continue. It’s going to keep going, and I’m trying to do as much as I can in this game and keep improving from this game moving forward in trying to solidify a solid spot in the lineup.”

-Because of the lack of line rushes, it’s difficult to firmly place where Weal and McNabb would play, but the expectation is that Weal will skate alongside Kyle Clifford and Jordan Nolan. It’s tougher to place where McNabb will play; in his three most recent exhibition games, he skated to the left of Alec Martinez against Colorado at Frozen Fury and to the left of Jamie McBain for the two games prior. Matt Greene and Christian Ehrhoff would also be candidates for a partnership.

-As for the Coyotes, Sarah McLellan has updates from Staples Center:

As McLellan noted, that would be Domi-Vermette-Boedker, Rieder-Hanzal-Duclair, Chipchura-Richardson-Doan, Martinook-Gordon-Downie and Ekman-Larsson-Stone, Grossman-Murphy and Dahlbeck-Michalek. Expect Mike Smith to start in net.

-Tonight marks the first FOX Sports West broadcast of the season (Welcome back Bob, Jim, Patrick and Alex!), and I’ll join during the third segment of Kings Live pre-game to talk about how the lineup could shake up for the near future with Dwight King’s injury.

-Darryl Sutter quotes will follow shortly. Also, we’re on call:

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