Stickgate: Devils Coach Peter DeBoer strolls down memory lane

NEWARK, N.J. - The Kings are getting ready for Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final and the memory from 19 years ago surfaced, again, on Friday in Newark.

Someone asked Devils Coach Peter DeBoer if he had ever called for a stick measurement.

That drew laughter, naturally, from the assembled press. Near the end of Game 2 in the Stanley Cup Final between the Kings and the Canadiens in 1993, Montreal Coach Jacques Demers called for a measurement of defenseman Marty McSorley’s stick.

The curve of the stick was found to be illegal. Montreal tied the score on the ensuing power play, won the game in overtime, and the rest is famous hockey history. This is the first time the Kings have been to the Final since then.

So back to DeBoer... .

He did do it back in junior hockey when he was coaching Kitchener in the Ontario Hockey League in 2005. And the guilty player was none other than the Ducks’ Corey Perry, who was then playing for the London Knights.

“Mike Richards would remember it, he was my captain in Kitchener,” DeBoer said. “We had all been together with the World Junior team. I had found, probably a little unethically by coaching him [Perry], that his stick was illegal at Christmas.

“We played London in the playoffs. I had Richie call Corey for an illegal stick. We actually got it. Didn’t score in the five-on-three. I think London scored shorthanded and we lost the series. It backfired. “

And since then?

“You know what, they changed the rule to make the bigger curves more legal since then,” DeBoer said. “You have to have a boomerang basically now in order to be called for that. So it’s not even an option.”

RELATED:

PHOTOS: Kings vs. Devils, Game 1

Anze Kopitar at the right place at right time for Kings

If Kings win the Stanley Cup, you might hear Bob Miller call it