In His Second Season, Karalahti Adjusts Game

Jere Karalahti figures he’s a slow starter.

Coach Andy Murray likes the way Karalahti has started the season, though he added that the Kings could always use a bit more offense. That’s what got Karalahti from Finland to the NHL a year ago, but his game has adapted to the Kings’ needs this season.

“I’m taking care of my defensive game first,” he said Tuesday. “I try to join the rush . . . but first I am trying to make sure [the opposing teams] don’t get scoring chances.”

They haven’t had all that many against him and Aki Berg, a pairing over the last eight games, in which the Kings have gone 6-0-2. Karalahti is plus-five on the plus-minus scale, indicating he’s taking care of business when the other team has the puck.

Offense is another matter.

He came to the U.S. with a reputation as a scorer and in 48 games last season had six goals and 10 assists. Many of those points came on the power play, a unit he seldom appears with since the Kings added defensemen Mathieu Schneider and Lubomir Visnovsky, and since winger Nelson Emerson has begun taking a turn on the point.

Rob Blake also is getting as much power-play time as he can stand.

“Of course, I like playing on the power play,” Karalahti said. “Anybody does.”

As an indication of how his game has changed, Karalahti now plays on the penalty-killing unit.

“Last season, I didn’t play ‘PK,’ ” he said. “I like playing PK.”

What hasn’t changed is the hitting. There are NHL players whose stature within the game tends to let them get through competition virtually untouched. Except when Karalahti plays. It’s as though he doesn’t know the untouchables.

Actually, he doesn’t care.

“It’s always been a part of my game,” he said. “You have to hit.”

The scoring, he believes, will come.

“I’ve always been better later in the season,” he said.

That might be because he’s seldom in condition at the start of the season. Karalahti likes his summers free. He reported to the Kings in August, a month before camp, but was somewhat less than enthusiastic in the weight room. That changed when he looked around and saw the competition.

“Now I realize what I have to do,” he said. “In Finland, we played 50 games instead of 82, and we worked out off the ice but only every other day, not every day like here.”

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Goalie Stephane Fiset, who has not played this season because of a sprained right knee, took his first turns with the Kings during Tuesday’s practice, after spending 20 minutes before the workout doing drills with goalie consultant Don Edwards.

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Winger Brad Chartrand reported to the Kings from Lowell on Tuesday, replacing winger Glen Murray, who suffered a torn thigh muscle last Saturday and figures to be out several weeks.