Onward

The LA Kings will depart shortly for a road trip in which they’ll face a a number of teams in which “there ain’t no weak sisters,” to quote Darryl Sutter. It’s also a bit of an edgy time around these parts. The trade deadline is Monday – the afternoon of the Tampa Bay game – and there’s the strong possibility that the team won’t return to LAX next carrying the exact same group. It’s a topic I asked several players about after a practice at Toyota Sports Center in which Ilya Kovalchuk joined the Jeff Carter line, Brendan Leipsic joined the Adrian Kempe line and Sean Walker (pictured above at right) did not wear a face shield. Alec Martinez did not skate and will not travel with the Kings today. More on all of these topics will come while in flight.

On the Disqus issue, it’s something that we’re working on. There hasn’t been a universal outage across Disqus, so we’re trying to find the reason for why this is so localized. Disqus isn’t something that’s easily adjusted by our digital team, so please have patience as the disappearing comments reappear during an important and chatter-worthy time of the year.

Thank you, as always, for reading, Insiders. Let’s talk soon.