Emerson’s Game Is Coming of Age

There’s a difference in viewpoint when he goes on the ice. Once, he could look at the net and the best route to it, but now “I look at the five guys out there for the other team,” Nelson Emerson said Tuesday.

“As you get older, you understand that sometimes you have to change your game.”

Emerson, 33, has been a scorer for 11 NHL seasons, with as many as 33 goals in one (1993-94 at Winnipeg) and with five seasons of at least 21 goals.

Now he’s a checker, aligned with Kelly Buchberger and Bob Corkum on the Kings’ “stopper” line.

“On Thursday, we played the [Mike] Modano line [against Dallas], on Saturday the Dougie Weight line [at Edmonton] and then the [Markus] Naslund-[Andrew] Cassels line [at Vancouver],” Emerson said.

The Kings won all three games, and Emerson was minus-two against those lines, no small accomplishment when you consider that his line did not score at all.

It’s not from a lack of effort.

On Sunday at Vancouver, Emerson had five shots and after a two-shot flurry in the second period slammed his stick against the boards in frustration upon arriving at the bench.

“Most teams have to beg for scoring from more than one line,” Emerson said. “We’re trying to get scoring from our third and fourth lines. The top teams get that.”

It would be easier for Emerson to get his goals and points with a move to another line, and it was believed that he might fill in for Glen Murray on the Luc Robitaille unit when Murray was injured. Instead, Craig Johnson moved in there and has prospered.

So Emerson stays where he is, adjusts to a new role after 10 seasons in a different position, and tries to score as best he can.

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Winger Jason Blake, scratched for six games and 10 of the last 13, was sent to Lowell of the American Hockey League to get ice time. The Lock Monsters play four games in the next six nights. . . . Defenseman Jere Karalahti skated for 45 minutes Tuesday and will rejoin the Kings for practice today if there is no setback in his recovery from a bruised ankle.