HERE WE GO AGAIN

Before the NHL season, King Coach Larry Robinson said he no longer was going to be the eternal optimist he had been in his first two seasons.

So instead of trying to massage the egos of his players with high praise every time they won or did something well, Robinson took a tougher approach.

His reasoning was simple. The Kings were finally mature and talented enough to take it.

Robinson’s approach seems to be working as the NHL resumes play today after the 17-day Olympic break. The Kings head into tonight’s game at Detroit on a 9-1-1 streak and with the fifth-best record in the Western Conference. They have a 13-point cushion over the Edmonton Oilers, the ninth-place team in the conference, and appear on course to end a four-year playoff drought.

“I think we all felt the change in his attitude and hopefully it’s starting to brush off on us,” said forward Steve McKenna, regarding Robinson’s new no-nonsense position. “We realize that there is going to be more attention on us now. It’s crunch time for us. Every mistake will be magnified. Every game is important. We all know the consequences if we don’t play well--from the top line to the bottom.”

For the Kings, one of the most encouraging aspects of their success is that they do not believe they have been playing over their heads or that they’re about to crash back to the lower level. They believe they haven’t lucked into their success.

“I would like us to be higher [in the standings], but I think the guys have worked hard to be where we are,” said Robinson, who has missed the playoffs only twice [both with the Kings] in his 23-season NHL career as a player or coach. “I don’t think it’s a fluke. Whatever the guys have gotten so far, they deserve. They’ve worked hard.”

Even the schedule--which has not been kind to the Kings in recent playoff stretch runs--is in their favor. Although they will play 12 games over the next 21 days, they play seven of them at the Great Western Forum.

And in March--the month that often determines a team’s playoff fate--the Kings play nine of 14 games against teams below .500.

So far this season the Kings are 16-8-2 at the Forum, and of their 26 victories, 21 have come against teams below .500.

“In the NHL, you can’t take a day or night off because any team can beat you,” forward Ian Laperriere said. “This is not like juniors where you can say, ‘Oh, we’ll beat these guys even if we don’t play good.’ You can’t do that in the NHL, where all 26 teams can beat you. Especially in our division, because everybody is so close to making the playoffs.”

The Kings, expected to be one of the worst teams in the league by many preseason publications, led the NHL in goals for almost two weeks at the start of the season. But after a mini-slump in late December and early January, the Kings are slowly becoming the dominant physical team Robinson imagined in training camp.

With center Jozef Stumpel--who has a team-high 57 points--stepping up as one of the top two-way forwards in the game, the Kings have become one of the best teams in the league in protecting a lead. They are 20-1-1 when they score first and 14-0-1 when they lead after the first period.

“We have to go [out] and play simple,” said Laperriere, one of the team’s key physical players. “We didn’t win when we tried to make fancy plays. We won when we made the right plays [and not] ones we couldn’t make. . . . We have to play physical. That’s our game, we can’t change it. We’re a great team, but we have to play physical.”

Robinson says the Kings’ style may actually give them an edge, with the NHL announcing that officials will crack down on interference penalties in the hope of increasing scoring.

Because their system concentrates more on a forechecking than trapping attack, the Kings say they are at no additional risk for more interference penalties. They already rank among the most penalized teams in the league.

“We’ll have to wait and see . . . but there’s nothing new,” Robinson said after viewing the league’s instructional tape sent to every team regarding the upcoming tougher rule guidelines. “Everything [on the tape] is pretty well black and white with how the game [is supposed to be called] anyway. I don’t know if it is going to involve us as much as some of the other clubs.”

If penalties become a growing factor the rest of the season, the Kings will have to improve their special teams. Their power play ranks 18th in the league at 14% (32 goals in 228 chances). In their last nine games, the Kings have scored only four times in 40 man-advantage opportunities.

The Kings have killed penalties a little better. They rank 13th in the league but have killed off 46 of their last 49 short-handed situations in the last 11 games.

“Specialty teams are going to be a key [for our playoff push],” Robinson said. “Even if we are fortunate to make the playoffs, [special teams] are usually the key there too.”

After four disappointing seasons, the Kings are in solid position to return to postseason play.

“I think if we can get between 80 or 90 points then we are pretty well assured of a playoff spot,” Robinson said. “But, I just don’t want to make the playoffs, I want to finish as well as we can. No sense looking at the big picture. Let’s just play well, and let’s see what happens. Teams that look at the big picture and see that they are going to make the playoffs, they sometimes slack off a little bit. Then, bam, they’re in the playoffs but on a downer. You want to go in on a winning note.”