JASON KING knows all about false hope and setbacks but he's as optimistic as ever that his hockey career is about to resume.

The 24-year-old left-winger hasn't played since a March 6 game at MTS Centre, when Rochester Americans defenceman Doug Janik nailed him with an illegal check on his first shift of the game. The concussion kept him out of the Moose lineup for the rest of the season and playoffs and the symptoms of post-concussion syndrome -- headaches and dizziness -- have tortured him to various degrees until recently.

"Definitely the last two or three weeks have been big steps," King said yesterday via phone from Vancouver, where he's been working out with the UBC Thunderbirds and the WHL's Vancouver Giants. "Things (symptoms) have been tapering off. The doctors have told me that once you notice the difference, it gets better quick.

"The last two or three weeks for me, it's been different."

So different, so much clearer, in fact, that King has been going full out in his practices. His practices now include physical contact, a big step. "Everything's full out now," King said. "The doctors want to make sure. They want me to go possibly another week just to see, just to make sure with the contact."

King was cleared to skate without contact about the time the regular season began. He couldn't take the next step until the last three weeks but if he can continue to progress in the next week and be symptom-free, then his assignment to the Moose is the likely next step in this drawn-out story.

"I've felt good, and we've come this far so a few extra days or practices can't hurt," King said.

King said he remembers clearly the play that gave him the concussion. Though he was nowhere near the puck, he was checked hard at the blueline. Janik was penalized for interference and King assisted on the ensuing power-play and scored a third-period goal but said he knew something unsettling was happening to him that day.

"I felt kind of strange the rest of that game," he said. "Something was a little off and it was really noticeable starting the day after."

The Corner Brook, Nfld., native could talk your ear off about the frustration he has since encountered.

"It's been really disappointing," he said. "Definitely frustrating. Really frustrating. I'd get to a certain point of feeling (better) and then I'd have to shut it down...

"That definitely happened a couple of times near the end of last (season). Not so much in the summer because I wasn't going at it as intensely. But I want to say that now it's been a month or more with none of that."

King's friendship with former Moose captain Nolan Baumgartner, now playing full time for the Canucks, has been an important element of support for the sniper. And his fiancée, Jennifer Dawe, has been a rock as well. "She's been with me the whole way through this," King said. "She's somebody to talk to, to just fall back on. I would get really frustrated and get down on myself. Having her as a backup has been so important."

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca