Allison Will Miss 2 Months

CHICAGO -- For Jason Allison and the Kings, the bad news out of Culver City on Wednesday was actually good.

Or, at least, not as bad as they had initially feared.

An MRI exam on Allison’s injured right knee revealed that the team’s scoring leader had suffered a torn medial collateral ligament and a sprained anterior cruciate ligament in Tuesday night’s 4-0 victory over the Atlanta Thrashers.

In layman’s terms: The injury, suffered in a violent knee-on-knee collision with Thrasher defenseman Andy Sutton, is not as serious as first thought.

Allison, 27, is expected to be sidelined eight to 12 weeks, keeping him out of the lineup probably into late December and possibly into late January, the heart of the schedule. He could be sidelined for nearly 40 games.

But he should be back for the regular season’s final two months and, if the Kings can build on their fast start in his absence, the playoffs too.

And he won’t need surgery. A torn ACL would have required a complete reconstruction of the knee and would have ended Allison’s season after only nine games. It would have sidelined him for six months -- or, in reality, 11.

“I’m disappointed in what happened,” Allison said from his Manhattan Beach home in a statement released by the club, “but there was a chance that it could have been worse, so there is something positive to take from this.”

In Chicago, where the Kings will wrap up a five-game trip tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks, the news was met with a sigh of relief.

“Really, really good news,” captain Mattias Norstrom said. “I think we’re all really happy to hear it. When we saw him last night, getting on the bus and getting on the plane, it looked really bad....

“I saw the replay today a couple times. It looks ugly. And when I heard the news it was [only] eight to 12 weeks, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ He was really lucky.”

Coach Andy Murray gathered the team for a meeting late in the day to discuss lineup changes and carrying on without Allison, who has scored 85 points in 82 games since joining the Kings last October in a trade with the Boston Bruins.

“He’s a great player and you miss great players,” Murray said of Allison, who has 11 points in nine games this season, “but I haven’t even thought about what we’re losing. I’m trying to figure out what we can get from these other guys.”

Allison was carrying the puck up the right side of the ice near the red line midway through the first period Tuesday night when he tried to sidestep the onrushing Sutton, who at 6 feet 6 and 245 pounds is one of the league’s biggest players.

Sutton, however, seemed to stick his leg out as the 6-3, 215-pound Allison tried to maneuver around him to the inside. Their right knees slammed together.

Allison fell to the ice, grimacing and clutching his knee.

Helped off the ice, he spent the rest of game in the dressing room. He flew with the Kings to Chicago after the game, then flew home Wednesday morning to meet with team physician Robert Kvitne. His rehabilitation has already started.

The Kings, meanwhile, believe that the hit warrants a suspension for Sutton, even though referees Stephane Auger and Ian Walsh did not penalize him.

“You get a little angry and upset when you see an injury like that because hopefully the players have respect for each other,” Norstrom said. “Looking at the replay, I can’t really say that Sutton did this with intent to injure, but it’s a pretty dangerous play to step up at someone like that.”