Already, It’s Time to Face Off : Hockey: Kings open training camp today. McSorley reports late and is fined $500.

It’s still summer, according to the calendar, just the start of the stretch run for baseball and only the opening kickoff for football, but, ready or not, here comes hockey.

Four and a half months after limping off the Forum ice, swept out of the 1990 playoffs by the eventual champion Edmonton Oilers, the Kings return to the ice today on the other side of the continent for the beginning of another training camp.

Eighty-three players will be involved in today’s two opening scrimmages.

Among them will be Wayne Gretzky, who ended last season watching agonizingly from a Forum seat, sidelined by a back injury. Gretzky’s was just one name on a Kings’ injury list that included half the squad by season’s end.

“It took seven weeks until I felt better,” Gretzky said.

So no lingering problems?

“I won’t know until I get hit.”

Not so lucky is defenseman Tom Laidlaw, who went out with a back injury on March 17 and has yet to return.

He is receiving cortisone shots, but Coach Tom Webster said, “It would be a bonus if he could come back by the middle of the year .”

Translation: The Kings aren’t counting on him.

Fellow defenseman Bob Halkidis, recovering from off-season shoulder surgery, isn’t here either. He is expected back next month, around the time of the season opener.

Also among the missing Thursday, the deadline for reporting, was defenseman Marty McSorley. He arrived Friday and was fined about $500, the maximum allowed.

His agent, Michael Barnett, said McSorley’s tardiness was caused by “a personal matter,” but that didn’t seem to satisfy General Manager Rogie Vachon.

“I’m disappointed,” Vachon said. “Very disappointed. I didn’t expect that. It came out of the blue. I don’t want to start camp like this. I don’t think his reason was very important, but, it happened.”

King Notes

Defenseman Darryl Sydor, the team’s top draft choice, has a cast on one hand after breaking a knuckle in a junior game last week. . . . The newest King, goalie Daniel Berthiaume, obtained for Craig Duncanson in a trade with the Minnesota North Stars on Thursday, will be starting his fifth full season in the NHL with a record of 51-48-13 and a goals-against average of 3.62. He will be in a tough fight with Ron Scott and Mario Gosselin for the backup goalie’s job behind Kelly Hrudey, according to Vachon. “He’ll have to earn the job,” the Kings’ general manager said. “We’re not just going to give it to him.”

Coach Tom Webster plans to leave Hull with a traveling squad of 35 players, the rest being split evenly between the Kings’ American Hockey League club, the New Haven Nighthawks, and their new farm team, the Phoenix Roadrunners of the International Hockey League.

The Kings will be in camp here a week, then will start their 10-game exhibition schedule next Friday against the Nordiques in Quebec. The Kings will play the Pittsburgh Penguins five times--in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Dallas and Houston--the New York Rangers in Miami and the Vancouver Canucks in Seattle and Vancouver. Then they’ll return home for their only Forum exhibition game Sept. 29 against the New York Islanders. They will open the regular season against the Islanders on Oct. 4.