Luck May Be Changing for This Young Center

King Coach Andy Murray was talking about Eric Belanger and how well he was playing in camp.

“Better than the last couple of years,” said Murray, smiling.

Believe it. There’s a reason.

Belanger wasn’t even in training camp last year.

Two seasons ago, if there was a whistle stopping play, if there was blood on the ice, if there was somebody skating off to the dressing room before practice was due to end, you didn’t even have to look for the number.

It was Belanger.

Maybe the Kings’ move to a new training center in El Segundo has changed his fortune.

“Maybe everything that’s going to happen to me happened in two years,” Belanger said softly in the lilting French-Canadian accent of his native Quebec.

What else can happen?

After three seasons in junior hockey in Canada that indicated he could be a top-six center, Belanger reported to Fredricton of the AHL and showed he could play as an offensive center, logging 17 goals and 34 assists in 56 games. He was called one of the Kings’ brightest prospects when he reported to camp in 1998.

On the first day, in the first scrimmage, Belanger suffered a broken nose.

On Day 2, he stood out in a scrimmage.

On Day 3, he suffered a broken hand, which cost him the rest of camp and made sure he was going to be dispatched to Springfield of the AHL.

There, he suffered a back injury and spent a good part of the season rehabilitating in Los Angeles.

At the end of the season, he went back to Springfield and was moving his furniture to his home in Sherbrooke, about an hour from Montreal. The next day, he found his right arm had swollen.

A rib was affecting circulation, and the bone was removed, leaving a long scar under his right collarbone that is the memory of another training camp lost in rehabilitation, another season in the AHL.

“It has to be tough on him, watching people coming in and being added to the mix,” Murray said. “It’s to his credit that he has come back and played as well as he has.”

Belanger had 15 goals and 25 assists in 65 games at Lowell last season and finally, Thursday at Phoenix, got a chance to play in a King exhibition. It was his first chance in three years to show what he could do against NHL competition.

“Big time,” he said of his happiness at getting his career back on track at age 22. “. . . It’s been tough waiting.”

He got another chance Saturday night in the Kings’ 5-1 exhibition loss to the Colorado Avalanche at Denver, and figures to get a few more before camp is finished.

But his lot in life has changed.

“He knows that he’s probably not going to knock off our top two centers,” Murray said of Jozef Stumpel and Bryan Smolinski. “He knows that he’s going to have to play defense first.

“But he also knows that somebody like Guy Carbonneau was a big scorer in junior hockey and then changed his game and had a long career with Montreal.”

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Dave Reid had a goal and an assist and Patrick Roy stopped 26 shots for the Avalanche on Saturday night.

Jere Karalahti got a late power-play goal for the Kings, who were one of nine on the power play.

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Stephane Fiset and Steve Passmore will share goalie duties tonight at Staples Center, where the Kings play host to the Mighty Ducks at 5.