Kings’ Doughty, Quick hoping to play in late exhibition games

Defenseman Drew Doughty, who sustained an upper-body injury in what he described as a freak accident during an on-ice session back home in Canada before the Kings opened training camp, said Tuesday he’s “good to go” and is awaiting clearance to play in an exhibition game.

“I still don’t know the status on that but I’ve been feeling good. Feeling good for a while, no problems,” he said after the morning training camp session at El Segundo.

“Whenever the coaches and medical staff deem me ready to play, I’ll be ready to go.”

Goaltender Jonathan Quick, who underwent wrist surgery during the summer, participated in Tuesday’s morning session and said he’s progressing well. He said he planned to talk to Coach Darryl Sutter and the training staff to plan on when he might play in an exhibition game. He said he’s eager to get back in there.

“I’m getting there. Every day I feel a little bit better than the day before,” Quick said.

“I would like to play. Anything you could do at this time, it helps to prepare for the season. So, that’s the goal, to try and get a game or two in preseason and we’ll see if that ends up working out.”

Sutter said he wants Quick to get some game action before camp ends.

“We have the advantage of the days,” Sutter said. “He doesn’t need five games. I’d rather, to be honest, if we could get two full games out of him I’d be happy with that.”

Doughty was held out of the first few training camp sessions but resumed skating Monday. He said he knew the injury wasn’t serious, “and I knew that when I got back here they’d just kind of let me gradually get back into skates and get back on the ice, just to keep it safe. There’s no point in rushing anything.”

He also said that missing a few days of camp and the early exhibition games shouldn’t set him back because he’s in good shape. However, he added he does want to play a few exhibition games to sharpen his timing.

“It’s tough to come off the summer break and just jump into regular-season hockey,” he said. “You definitely need one or two games under your belt to be ready for the season. … My defensive reads will come to me. I’ll just be getting ready to battle in those corners. That will be the first adjustment I’ll have to make.”

One more injury note: Defenseman Robyn Regehr suffered an unspecified injury that required him to get three stitches during the second period of the Kings’ split-squad game at Glendale, Ariz., on Monday. He’s OK, Sutter said, but his absence shortened the bench and led to defenseman Slava Voynov playing 32 minutes and five seconds, an astonishing number for an exhibition game. Sutter said most of that was special-teams play, but that’s still extraordinary.

“It shows how good of a shape he’s in and how seriously he took his off-season because without doing that, you can’t play 32 minutes,” Doughty said.