Kings No Longer Living in Hope

As summer waned a year ago, there was doubt.

Hope, maybe, and in some cases, lingering memories, but even they had faded over the four seasons since the Kings had made the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“We believed we could do something,” said left winger Luc Robitaille, who had come home to the club after three seasons in places like Pittsburgh and New York.

“We hoped we could go to the playoffs.”

And now. . . .

“This year, we’re not talking about going to the playoffs,” Robitaille said. “We’re not going to accept just getting to the playoffs. We want to win some games there, at least go to the finals. We think we are in the playoffs this year.”

The difference in 12 months is vast, almost as vast as the distance between today--when the Kings open training camp at Iceoplex in North Hills--and April, when the regular season’s final accounting is due.

“Before last year, guys didn’t want to play here,” said Rob Blake, the Norris Trophy winner as the NHL’s top defenseman. “Now, they want to be here.”

Blake, though eager to be in training camp, probably won’t be for a while. He has skated with about 24 teammates for two weeks in an enthusiastic pre-camp camp, but today he officially becomes a holdout, while agent Ron Salcer and the Kings negotiate a contract that certainly will make him the highest-paid defenseman in the league.

At issue is how highly paid that will be, the Kings having offered $25 million for five years, Blake seeking what is believed to be $10 million more for that period, or $18-19 million for two fewer years.

“We disagree,” Salcer said of the situation that has hardened in the past few days because the Kings consider Blake a valuable defenseman and the agent is trying to persuade them that he is more than that--the team’s MVP, perhaps--and should be paid accordingly.

While they work out their differences, the Kings will work out their deficiencies on specialty teams in a camp that breaks in only six days with the first exhibition, Saturday at Las Vegas.

Specialty teams were one of the reasons that, for all their success in improving in the standings by 30 points last season, the Kings faltered in the playoffs, losing to St. Louis in four games.

“In the end, what hurt us in the playoffs was discipline,” said Coach Larry Robinson. “We took too many penalties, and if you’re going to take penalties, you’d better be good at penalty killing.”

The Kings were 19th in the league at that specialty, giving up a goal 15.8% of the time.

Conversely, they were 15th in power-play efficiency at 14.2%.

In short, the specialty teams weren’t that special, which is the reason that defenseman Steve Duchesne is back, signed as a free agent seven seasons after leaving the Kings in 1991.

“He’s as good as any defenseman in the league on the power play,” said Dave Taylor, the team’s vice president and general manager. “He had 29 points on power plays last season.”

While Duchesne and another veteran newcomer, Doug Bodger, work on their specialties, Taylor will be watching to see if youth is served.

If Olli Jokinen shows he has matured in the Finnish Elite League, to which he was sent after an aborted start with the Kings last season, Taylor’s job becomes a lot easier. If the maturity is extreme and Jokinen quickly becomes the scorer the Kings hope he can be, the pressure on Taylor to spend so much time on the phone, looking to trade for an offensive weapon, is lessened.

King Notes

The signing of left winger Steve McKenna reduced the list of unsigned players to four: defenseman Rob Blake, goalie Jamie Storr, enforcer Matt Johnson and defenseman Aki Berg. . . . Berg could be a particular problem, because Saturday he returned home to Finland, apparently not close to signing a new contract. . . . Right winger Dan Bylsma (foot surgery) and Jason Morgan (knee tendinitis) will not skate when camp opens today.

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Kings at a Glance

* Today: Training camp opens

* Sept. 19: Exhibition play begins, vs. Colorado at Las Vegas

* Oct. 10: Regular season begins, at Edmonton