By Lindsay Czarnecki

The nagging groin injury that just won't seem to go away is hurting the overall effectiveness of forward Alexander Frolov.

"He's showing signs that he's rounding into contention, showing signs that he has his usual jump and his usual step," coach Marc Crawford said. "He's a very quick, powerful guy that protects the puck extremely well, and when he does that he usually has enough energy to fulfill something when he creates the space for himself.

"What we've seen is that while he's doing eight-tenths of it, the last two-tenths of it, which is where the payoff comes, he hasn't had a great deal of energy to do that."

Frolov returned to the lineup Dec. 15 and stumbled through his first four games with a minus-five rating. Since then, he has shown improvement by picking up an assist in three of the past fourgames. Despite missing 11games with the injury, he is still fourth on the team in scoring.

"It's so-so," Frolov said of his conditioning. "I've had a lot of problems with my groin, and it's still hurt and I just try to play through it. It's been hard to be in good condition because I couldn't skate for a long time, I didn't do leg workouts, lower body workouts, and now with the schedule there's a game pretty much every next day. It's hard, because we don't really practice a lot. It's getting better so I'm more concerned about it not getting worse."

Practice time has certainly been an issue for Frolov, who was thrown back on the ice during a busy time where the Kings played eight games in 15 days and twice played on back-to-back days.

"We're expecting (his conditioning) will continue to improve the more he practices," Crawford said. "He's a guy who just needs more practice time right now, he really does. Not that we're going to do any great wonders with him as coaches, it's just his timing needs to improve and you get your timing to improve by the series or repetitions that you go through in practice."

Tuesday night's game against Chicago was the Kings' 41st, meaning the club has reached the halfway point of the season.

Reflections on 2007 are those of dissatisfaction as the team went 14-24-2 in the first 40.

"We're disappointed with it, for sure," Crawford said. "We started off with some very good promise after digging a little bit of a hole, going 1-5. And then we started to play very well, I think, it's largely been characteristic of when our goaltending has been good. We had that stretch where Jason (LaBarbera) played really well and our players played really well. We had a terrible December and unfortunately we played a lot of games in that timeframe."

After Crawford stated that LaBarbera and Jean-Sebastien Aubin would each get a start in the next two games, LaBarbera was chosen for Tuesday.

"It's good. Hopefully we can build something off the win," LaBarbera said of the Kings breaking an eight-game losing streak with a victory Saturday at Colorado. "It was our first win in a while so to get that you just want to be able to build off it."

The Kings went on to beat Chicago in overtime Sunday.