DETROIT --

has a dangerous, heavy wrist shot, but Detroit Red Wings coach

wants the power forward to use his size and strength to drive to the net more and snap out of an unusually long scoring slump.

Franzen has gone 10 games without a goal since his five-goal game in a 7-5 victory at Ottawa on Feb. 2.

"The challenge for Mule is we want him on the inside, we want him to be big and physical and be at the net," Babcock said. "He can always be a shooter. He’ll be able to be a shooter at 40. He’ll be able to glide up and down the wing and get two kids to pass him the puck and he’ll score goals.

"But if you want to be a dominant power forward, you got to be involved, you got to be on the inside. And when you’re scoring, those things seem to happen naturally. When you’re not scoring, they tend to get away from you. So he’s just in a process of working his way back."

This is Franzen’s longest goal-scoring drought since he went 11 games without a goal at the start of the 2007-08 season, when he still was a third-line grinder who didn’t log as much ice time.

The 6-foot-3, 225-pound Franzen said he’s not frustrated. He is confident he’ll break through soon, having scored 116 goals in his past 224 games, including the playoffs.

"I’m probably playing the same. Sometimes it goes in, sometimes it doesn’t," Franzen said. "Puck’s just not going in. It happens every year, couple, three, four times you go through a run where you don’t score and then all the sudden you start scoring again."

Franzen, who has been playing on a line with

and

, has four assists, a plus-3 rating and 32 shots on goal during this drought.

New-look Stars fading fast

The free-falling Stars have lost five in a row, scoring only six goals during this stretch, and are 2-10-1 in their past 13.

Leading scorer Brad Richards remains out with concussion-like symptoms -- the result of a hit by Columbus’ Samuel Pahlsson on Feb. 13 -- which have sidelined him for the past four games.

Dallas on Monday acquired puck-moving defenseman Alex Goligoski from the Pittsburgh Penguins for forward James Neal and defenseman Matt Niskanen.

"I think it gives them help on the back end, but I’m sure they’re going to miss Neal and his (21) goals," Red Wings captain

said. "He was a young, offensive threat for them."