Tukonen recalled

By Rich Hammond on February 21, 2007 6:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

The Kings recalled Lauri Tukonen from Manchester on Wednesday and placed enforcer Raitis Ivanans on the injured list with an arm injury. It will be interesting to see how Tukonen fares in the NHL. The Kings took him with the 11th overall pick in 2004, the same place they took Anze Kopitar the following year, but Tukonen's development has been much slower. Last season he had 14 goals and 22 assists in 62 games and this season he had 10 goals and 13 assists in 43 games. Of course, I can't speak to the minutes he's been playing or who he's been playing with, so numbers can sometimes be misleading. I'll be interested to see how Marc Crawford uses Tukonen.

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.