No timetable for Toffoli’s return yet

Tyler Toffoli, who suffered a lower-body injury late in the Los Angeles Kings’ most recent seven-game road trip, does not yet have a public timetable of when he could return to the lineup. Toffoli appeared briefly at the start of the team’s morning skate in Nashville on December 22 but did not play that game or in the road trip finale in Dallas the following night. In his last performance, he took three shots over 15:05 of ice time in a 3-2 shootout loss in Columbus on December 20.

Though Toffoli was deemed “day to day” late in the road trip, Darryl Sutter’s update Tuesday morning did not offer a sense that the 24-year-old winger would be an option in the near future. He will not travel on the team’s two-game road trip to Vancouver and Edmonton for games on December 28 and 29.

“We’ll get him looked at again early after the new year, so it’ll be at least a week before we even look at him again,” Sutter said.

Toffoli’s consecutive games played streak ended at 149 games when he did not face the Predators. Other than a bout of mononucleosis that caused him to miss six games in the 2014-15 season, he hadn’t missed a game due to injury in his NHL career prior to last week.

With Toffoli’s absence and in advance of the two-game trip, Sutter shifted lines around and placed Devin Setoguchi to the right of Tanner Pearson and Jeff Carter in a slot he had frequently occupied at even strength.

“I mean, it’s always hard to lose a player like that, especially with his offensive ability,” Dustin Brown said. “He’s one of those players that plays all situations, which is hard to overcome, but just like any other injury, it’s an opportunity for other guys to step up. I’ve always said this about our team: we don’t rely on three or four guys. Generally, if you look at a lot of our really good games, we’ve got scoring from all four lines, we’ve got contributions on the back end, so we’ve weathered it before. You’ve got to deal with that. Everyone deals with injuries throughout the year.”

Los Angeles has officially been credited with 115 man-games lost to injury in 2016-17: Andy Andreoff (15), Dustin Brown (2), Marian Gaborik (21), Anze Kopitar (5), Brayden McNabb (25), Jonathan Quick (32), Jeff Zatkoff (11) and Toffoli (2).

In 32 games, Toffoli, who is due to become a restricted free agent at the end of the season, has eight goals, 20 points and a team-best plus-14 rating amidst an average ice time of 17:40.