Coaches Ponder Lineup Changes

The King coaching staff met Monday night, but its decision-making process could stretch into today concerning the lineup for tonight’s game against the Ottawa Senators, the opener of a four-game trip.

Chiefly pondered is a swap of rookie centers, with Eric Belanger--who has five goals and nine assists in 28 games, most of them with the fourth line--moving into a spot between Luc Robitaille and Glen Murray.

Dropping back would be Steve Reinprecht, who has 10 goals and 13 assists in 43 games, most with the Robitaille-Murray grouping. But Reinprecht has only one goal in 10 games and is viewed as being deficient defensively of late.

The move also could be seen as a way to jump-start Robitaille, who has one goal in 12 games and seems to enjoy playing with Belanger.

And the coaches were also pondering a goalie rotation in which Steve Passmore would get the start either tonight or Wednesday at Toronto. Jamie Storr has started the last three games and has played well in all three.

The goalie rotation is significant in that King Coach Andy Murray looks for a hot hand to play for a while.

“I learned to be the backup last year in Chicago,” said Passmore, who has had two hot stretches with the Kings this season.

“There, even if you played a good game it was, ‘Thanks a lot, now take a seat.’ ”

Jocelyn Thibault was the No. 1 goalie for the Blackhawks, no matter what Passmore did.

“Here, you know if you do play well that you might get a chance to be in there a while,” Passmore said.

Snow in Ottawa turned the Kings’ trip from Southern California into something of an odyssey Monday.

It was originally planned to be a nonstop flight, but the possibility that the Ottawa airport would be closed sent the team plane to Detroit for more fuel.

The airport remained open, but the team was more than three hours late in getting into its hotel.

*

King amateur scouts from North America and Europe are meeting in Ottawa with Dave Taylor, the team’s senior vice president and general manager, to go over rankings of players eligible for the entry draft in June, now that the Central Scouting Bureau has released its list.

The scouting procedure generally involves an overview of players during the first half of the season, then a more concentrated look at a winnowed-out list until the draft. The idea is to get a list of the top 100 players to take to the draft.

The team’s pro scouts meet next week at Phoenix, and from that meeting comes input into possible trades before the March 15 deadline.

TONIGHT

at Ottawa, 4 PST

Fox Sports Net

* Site--Corel Centre.

* Radio--KSPN (1110).

* Records--Kings 19-17-7-1, Senators 24-13-6.

* Record vs. Senators (1999-2000)--0-1.

* Update--The Senators’ five-game winning streak ended with Sunday’s 5-2 loss to the Edmonton Oilers. A scoring tear by the line of Alexei Yashin, Shawn McEachern and Daniel Alfredsson also ended. The line had combined for 21 points in three games, with Yashin earning six of those on goals, three in one game. Goalie Patrick Lalime has started all but two games in the last six weeks and is prospering so much that he expects an invitation today to play for the North American team in the All-Star game.