Thornton back, Tukonen gone

By Rich Hammond on February 23, 2007 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Lauri Tukonen's first stint in the NHL lasted for one game. The Kings sent him down to Manchester today as they activated Scott Thornton from the injured list. Thornton had missed the previous 23 games with a broken wrist.

For the record, and since I didn't get to squeeze it into last night's story, Tukonen played six minutes, 59 seconds. He started the game up top with Kopitar and Brown but in the third period was playing with Willsie and Lundmark/Armstrong. It's impossible to analyze a guy after his first NHL game, so maybe we'll see Tukonen back in L.A. sometime soon.

Going back a couple days, in the Kopitar feature I wrote for Wednesday's paper, I mentioned a YouTube video of his first goal. The guy who hosts the video, Jon, sent me a nice email and I told him I'd plug his video. So for those who haven't seen it, or might want to see it again, here it is. The link is here

J.P. Hoornstra writes about NHL and IHL hockey for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. He welcomes any and all dialogue on the finer points of hockey. E-mail J.P. at jp.hoornstra
@inlandnewspapers.com.

Jill Painter joined the Daily News in 2000 and during the last eight years she's covered the Dodgers, Cal State Northridge, UCLA, Kings, golf and everything in between. Even though she's from Colorado, she still freezes in the Staples Center press box but always manages to thaw her fingers in time to make deadline. E-mail Jill at jill.painter@dailynews
.com.