GLENDALE, Ariz. — The Arizona Coyotes will catch a whiff of the NHL’s head-shaking bureaucracy this weekend when they face the Kings in Los Angeles on Friday and host the Penguins the following night at Gila River Arena.

When asked if he has ever opened the season with a similar back-to-back set, coach Dave Tippett didn’t have to think.

“Never,” he said flatly. “With our schedule, it’s unique in the fact that we have back-to-back (games) with a home game here the second night. Let’s just call it unique.”

Among the challenges presented by a season-opening back-to-back set is what to do with the goalie rotation.

“You kind of want your goalie to start your home opener, don’t you — your No. 1 goalie?” Tippett asked rhetorically while speaking of Mike Smith. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? And then you kind of want him to start the season opener, too, which makes sense.”

“It is what it is. You’ve just got to deal with it and move on. We’ll make sense of nonsense.”

Before they do, the Coyotes will encounter one more piece of nonsense from the league in Los Angeles — this time from the Department of Player Safety rather than the schedule makers.

Kings forwards Milan Lucic and Dustin Brown escaped further discipline from their shenanigans in Wednesday’s 5-1 loss to San Jose and will be in the lineup when L.A. hosts the Coyotes. Lucic, the Kings’ biggest offseason acquisition, was assessed a match penalty for going after San Jose’s Logan Couture after Couture upended him on Wednesday in the Sharks’ 5-1 victory. The match penalty carries an automatic one-game suspension, pending league review, but the league chose not to enforce the suspension.

Captain Dustin Brown escaped supplemental discipline for his clearly late and borderline hit on Couture on which he appears to slam his head up, deliberately into Couture’s face.

Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski outlined the NHL Department of Player Safety’s pretzel logic in not suspending Brown. Brown may be the most hated Coyotes opponent among Arizona fans.

Regardless of those bizarre twists, the Coyotes are overly anxious to play a game, having watched 22 of the league’s other 30 teams get a head start in games on Wednesday and Thursday — none of them in home-and-away, back-to-back sets.

“Everybody’s itching,” captain Shane Doan said. “Camp and preseason are long and then you add in a couple extra days, its not much fun.”

Tippett hinted that even his wife, Wendy, will be happy when the season begins.

“That’s when the house gets back to normal,” he said, “when there’s hockey games going on.”

The Coyotes appear to have settled on forward line combinations and defensive pairings for the opener.

Antoine Vermette has been centering left wing Max Domi and right wing Mikkel Boedker. Martin Hanzal has been centering left wing Tobias Rieder and right wing Anthony Duclair. Brad Richardson has been centering left wing Kyle Chipchura and right wing Shane Doan, and Boyd Gordon has been centering left wing Jordan Martinook and right wing Steve Downie.

John Scott and Joe Vitale were the extra forwards.

On defense, Oliver Ekman-Larsson will play with Michael Stone on the top pairing, Nicklas Grossman will play with Connor Murphy and Klas Dahlbeck will play with Zbynek Michalek. Stefan Elliott is the odd man out.

Tippett said the coaching and management staffs have also divided the players into three tiers that he labels the veterans, the middle group and the young players.

“We’ve got a middle tier that I think is the most important group,” said Tippett, including Hanzal, Ekman-Larsson, Boedker, Richardson and Rieder in that group. “That middle group almost has to be the leaders of our team, play wise.

“You have good veterans in Doan and Vermette and Michalek (Grossmann and Chipchura are also likely in that group) that can support them and then the young players (like Duclair, Domi and Martinook), they’re getting thrust into a situation where they’re going to have to play well.

“Each group can have growth. If we do that, we’ll make progress as an organization.”

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