Jordan Weal set to rejoin Kings’ lineup; Jamie McBain’s return possible

Greetings from St. Louis, where the Kings held a meeting Tuesday morning instead of a full game-day skate because they had played Monday night in Chicago.

Coach Darryl Sutter said in the late afternoon that he was considering a couple of lineup changes, but hadn’t quite made up his mind. One virtually certain change: backup goaltender Jhonas Enroth was scheduled to start in place of Jonathan Quick.

Another potential change would involve defenseman Jamie McBain, who missed the Kings’ 4-2 loss at Chicago on Monday to be with his wife, Liz, for the birth of the couple’s first child. Sutter said McBain had rejoined the team in St. Louis, but because McBain hadn’t skated for several days, Sutter was holding off on whether to reinstate McBain against the Blues. McBain has been a stabilizing presence on defense, able to move the puck quickly out of the defensive zone and up to the forwards.

“I haven’t talked to him, so I’m not ready to make that call,” Sutter said. “He knew that Liz was going to have to be in the hospital, so I just told him to keep me abreast, and he did.”

In McBain’s absence Monday, Sutter had Drew Doughty play a season-high 29 minutes and 33 seconds. “In the third period, once we got down, he wasn’t coming off,” Sutter said. “Breaking it down, we played a really good game and so did he, so I thought we needed some more of that in the third period. The kid [Derek Forbort] wasn’t up to speed.”

Sutter also said he was planning Tuesday to play forward Jordan Weal, who hasn’t been in the lineup since the second game of the season. He said he wasn’t sure who would come out.

“We’ve got to see if we can try and get another goal out of someone in that bottom-six guys, to be quite honest,” Sutter said. “We’ve mixed and matched all over.”

He also stated the obvious, saying that the Kings need production from top-six forwards Anze Kopitar (four goals, no assists), Marian Gaborik (one goal, two points) and Dustin Brown (no goals, three points). “They’ve had some good looks. Now they’ve got to finish it off,” Sutter said.

He also said Monday’s game was the first in which the line of Milan Lucic, Jeff Carter and Tyler Toffoli didn’t have scoring chances. “If you look at the game, that stands out,” he said. “But it’s that next group of guys we’ve got to get something from. You can’t just say somebody worked hard.”

The need to produce has become important for left wing Tanner Pearson, who has only one goal this season, and that on the power play.

“That’s a decision we’ve got to make. Tanner’s one of those guys who hasn’t played up to what we thought he would yet,” Sutter said. “His compete level has to go up. Even [Monday] night on the Teravainen goal [Chicago’s third], Tanner’s got to make the play on the boards. It’s basically a set play for us. He’s got to just chip it to [Trevor Lewis] and doesn’t make it. That’s a sort of in-the-heat of battle play that you’ve got to make and usually he makes it, but it cost us.”

Follow Helene Elliott on Twitter @helenenothelen.