Woes Continue for Punchless Offense

The goals aren’t coming, but the cliches are.

“It isn’t that we aren’t trying,” King winger Ian Laperriere said after Saturday’s 4-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild.

“Maybe we’re squeezing our sticks.”

Luc Robitaille’s should be sawdust by now.

He has been scoreless in 16 of 18 games and has only three goals over that time.

Ziggy Palffy has failed to score in eight of 10 since returning from an eight-game, injury-induced hiatus.

Rob Blake has failed to score in six of eight and has two goals since Jan. 11.

They will play in next Sunday’s All-Star game at Denver, and not because of their defense.

And they aren’t alone in their offensive futility:

* Nelson Emerson has one goal in 11 games, an empty-netter at Carolina.

* Jozef Stumpel has failed to score in 14 of 17.

* Lubomir Visnovsky has one goal in 17 games.

* Glen Murray has scored in two of the 11 games he has played since recovering from a knee injury.

* Steve Reinprecht has failed to score in 14 of 16.

“We’ve talked to them about all the things that coaches talk about when you are not scoring goals,” King Coach Andy Murray said.

“ ‘Let’s get traffic to the net, let’s get pucks to the net, let’s not let [the opposing goaltender] see pucks.’ They are all the things you do to get your team to recognize they need to score. The pucks are not going in for us right now. That is the bottom line.”

Blake was more specific.

“We need to get our power play going again,” he said of a unit that had two man-advantage opportunities Saturday and generated eight shots in them.

Some of those shots were right in goalie Manny Fernandez’s face, and he handled them.

The Kings are 0 for their last 13 on the power play.

*

To spur the offense, Murray switched Bryan Smolinski and Robitaille Saturday, putting Smolinski on a line with Reinprecht and Glen Murray, and Robitaille on a unit with Palffy and Stumpel.

Later in the game, Murray also switched Belanger and Reinprecht, which effectively ended Reinprecht’s ice time because the Kings played only three lines for most of the third period.

“We thought Steve was having a rough game,” Murray said.