Back from Minneapolis and, as usual, it feels good to be in L.A. For those who haven’t been there, Minneapolis has a nice downtown area. But I found it interesting to note that in the “State of Hockey,” I saw more people wearing Kevin Garnett Boston Celtics jerseys than anything else. They’re confused people these days, those Minnesotans…

The free-agent signing period begins Tuesday, and it’s such a different feel from last year, when the Kings were presumed to be in the hunt for so many of the “big-name” free agents. It certainly doesn’t appear as though that will be the case this week.

At this point, I would expect the Kings to sign two free-agent defensemen and one free-agent forward, probably a winger. Brad Stuart and Rob Blake remain the most-likely defensemen to be signed. The Kings will have a better shot at getting Stuart than was initially expected and are helped by the fact that Stuart’s agent is Pat Brisson, who is L.A.-based, a close friend of Luc Robitaille and also the agent for Blake and Jack Johnson. It might come down to how much Detroit is bluffing and how much Ken Holland is really willing to spend on Stuart. Stuart made $3.5 million last season and Detroit is claiming it only wants to spend around $3 million per season on Stuart. We’ll see.

As for Blake, he will return as long as he has the desire to play and the Kings feel he’s healthy and ready to go. Shouldn’t be much of a question that he will be back.

As for which forward might sign, that’s a completely open book. Go ahead and speculate away. It’s one of those trickle-down effect things. The top free-agent forwards will sign and then teams will start to take a closer look at the second-tier guys. So we’ll have to see how that shakes out. It’s impossible to predict that market right now.

I expect to get Dean Lombardi on the phone tomorrow to get his thoughts going into free agency, and of course on Tuesday I’ll have continuous updates throughout the day.