FLASHBACK / The 1982 Playoffs : Kings Hope They Can Play It Again : How Great Was That Win Over Oilers? Well, Greater Than Gretzky; In Fact, It Was So Great That for Two Weeks L.A. Was a Hockey Town

There were times in the last two years when the Kings’ owner, Jerry Buss, was feeling particularly depressed about his hockey team’s poor play. At those times, he would walk into a screening room at his Beverly Hills mansion and take out a video cassette that always made him feel better.

After punching a few buttons on the video cassette recorder, Buss would be whisked back in time to April 10, 1982. The room would be filled with the sights and sounds of the most astonishing game in the Kings’ 17-year history, perhaps the greatest comeback ever in Stanley Cup playoff history.

There, on the screen, were the downtrodden Kings, trailing the Edmonton Oilers, 5-0, going into the third period in Game 3 of the first-round playoff series. If he hit the fast forward button, there were those same King players, spilling onto the ice and celebrating a 6-5 overtime win.

That emotional display proved to be a prelude to an even bigger celebration two games later when, implausibly, the Kings won the series.

“I’d watch it a lot, especially during the summers,” Buss said recently. “I’ve had to rely on that tape heavily. It may be the only good moment I’ve had with the Kings until this season. It still brings chills, watching that game and thinking about the series.”

There have been times the last two years when Buss wanted to punch the pause button and preserve that tingling sensation indefinitely, but the feeling only lasted until the tape ran out.

But now, all those memories from the Kings’ remarkable series victory over the Oilers have been renewed. For the first time since the spring of 1982, the Kings are back in the NHL playoffs. They will meet the Oilers again in the best-of-five first-round series. Game 1 is scheduled Wednesday at Edmonton, exactly three years to the day of the Kings’ amazing comeback victory.

Almost no one expects the Kings to stage a sequel and dethrone the Oilers, defending Stanley Cup champions and favored to repeat this spring. But then, the Kings were given an even slimmer chance of beating Edmonton in the 1981-82 playoffs.

That was the season in which Wayne Gretzky, then 21, broke every long-standing NHL single-season scoring record and the young, brash Oilers finished with the second-best record in the league. The Kings, you may recall, finished 48 points behind Edmonton in the Smythe Division standings and made the playoffs only because the hapless Colorado Rockies--now the hapless New Jersey Devils--were in the same division.

It wasn’t just the disparity in records that made it an upset of epic proportions. It was the acrimony existing between the teams, and the unpredictable way the Kings won the series, that made it so memorable.

The Kings won Game 1 in Edmonton, 10-8, in a wild shootout that featured the most goals in playoff history. In one of the most dramatic moments in the series, King goaltender Mario Lessard stopped a shot by Gretzky on a breakaway that would have tied the score with 1 minute 12 seconds left.

Edmonton won the second game, 3-2, in overtime on a goal by Gretzky. Then there was the Kings’ stirring 6-5 comeback win at the Forum in Game 3, Daryl Evans scoring the winning goal 2:35 into overtime. And, after the Oilers had posted a 3-2 win in Game 4 to send the series to a decisive fifth game, the Kings returned to Edmonton and pounded the Oilers, 7-4.

Also during that improbable 10-day period, there were sideshows and enough low-brow comedy to make even the days off interesting:

--Edmonton Coach Glen Sather scuffled outside the locker room with King publicity director Scott Carmichael, and traded insults with a radio reporter.

--King fans serenaded Gretzky with obscene chants, prompting Sather to criticize them for “classless” behavior.

--Gretzky uncharacteristically criticized Jay Wells for comments the King defenseman had made about Gretzky’s toughness.

--King rookie Bernie Nicholls publicly questioned Gretzky’s sexual preference.

“That whole series was almost indescribable,” said Evans, who has spent most of the last three seasons with the Kings’ minor-league team at New Haven, Conn. “Everything was so spontaneous. No one could have predicted a series like that. It was my rookie season, and just getting to the playoffs was an honor. It’s definitely the greatest I’ve felt in my life. I’ll never forget it.”

Oiler players haven’t forgotten the series, either. When a reporter approached Gretzky on the subject recently, it was as if he had been asked to relive a nightmare.

“Sure, we remember it,” Gretzky said. “It’s something we try to forget, but people won’t let us forget it at all. Even after we made it to the finals the next year (losing to the Islanders in four straight) and won the Cup last year, people always remind us of the L.A. series.”

In that two-week period, in which the Kings upset the Oilers and then lost to Vancouver in the second round, the Kings were the hot ticket in town. Home playoff games were sold out as quickly as a rock concert, and the Kings warranted banner headlines and live television remotes.

“Fans at Dodger Stadium even carried portable televisions to watch the broadcasts from Edmonton,” King broadcaster Bob Miller said.

The Kings’ popularity plummeted the next season, though, when they failed to qualify for the playoffs.

“We may have only owned the town for 10 days,” Buss said. “But it was a sweet 10 days. Maybe we can do it again.”

There is always a chance, perhaps only a remote one, that the Kings will do the unthinkable again and beat the Oilers. Even if that happens, though, it’s extremely doubtful that this series can rival the 1981-82 series in terms of excitement, drama and intensity.

So, press the reverse button of your memory for a trip back to the last time the Kings and Oilers met in the playoffs.

GAME ONE

Gretzky has scored so many goals in his short but prolific career that he usually forgets them as soon as they hit the net. Don’t bother asking him to describe a goal he scored last week, let alone three seasons ago.

But Gretzky can give you a detailed account of a potential goal he didn’t score. With less than two minutes remaining in Game 1 of the series, the Kings were frantically trying to preserve a 9-8 lead when Gretzky took a breakout pass from Jari Kurri at the red line and skated in alone on Lessard, the Kings’ weary goaltender.

Making his usual breakaway move--faking a hard slap shot and slipping the puck underneath the goalie’s pads--Gretzky seemed as stunned as everyone else at the Northlands Coliseum when Lessard kicked the puck away.

“If I would’ve scored that goal, it would’ve been 9-9 and who knows what would’ve happened,” Gretzky said. “We might have won the game and changed the whole shape of the series. Lessard didn’t have a good game, but he had a great save on that play. I’ve beaten him on that same move many times.”

Twenty seconds after the save of Lessard’s life, King rookie Nicholls scored an empty-net goal to make it 10-8. Nicholls celebrated by doing a Chuck Berry duck-walk the length of the ice, punching his right fist into the air. But the rest of the Kings seemed too stunned to celebrate. After all, the Oilers had taken a 4-1 lead in the first 10 minutes and seemed on their way to the first of what would probably be three straight wins.

King Coach Don Perry had practically predicted as much. He had told reporters that his team’s chances were remote. But then, before Game 1, he told the players that had been a setup to make the Oilers’ overconfident. According to Nicholls, Perry liked the Kings’ chances all along.

“Even when we got down, 4-2, at the end of the first period, Don told us we could still win,” Nicholls said. “And we did.”

The Kings scored six goals in the next 30 minutes to take an 8-6 lead midway through the third period, only to have the Oilers tie it on goals by Gretzky and Matti Hagman. Charlie Simmer scored what turned out to be the winning goal when a shot by Dave Taylor struck his right leg and caromed past Oiler goalie Grant Fuhr, who had lost only five games all season.

When this improbable shootout was all over, the teams combined for the most goals in Stanley Cup playoff history since the Ottawa Silver Seven and Dawson City had combined for 25 in 1945.

Considering that he faced more than 40 shots and gave up eight goals, Lessard was quite composed afterward. Asked to describe his game-saving stop of Gretzky, Lessard said: “I got lucky, I think.”

The headline in the Edmonton Sun the next morning summed it up even more succinctly: Oh My Gawd!!

GAME TWO

Even after the Kings had won that first game, not many observers seriously thought they had a chance to win the series. But when the Kings went to the locker room to prepare for sudden-death overtime in Game 2 at Edmonton, they suddenly became believers.

“I remember walking back to the locker room and it struck me that we could win the series from these guys,” Nicholls said. “Game 2 was very important. It proved that if everybody on our team played well, we could win.”

But the Kings did not win the game. Gretzky, making up for firing a blank on the breakaway the night before, scored at 6:20 of overtime to give the Oilers a 3-2 win, tying the series. Lessard made 42 saves but couldn’t stop a rising shot by Gretzky from the top of the left circle that wound up in the top right-hand corner of the net.

“We had to win that game,” Gretzky says now. “When we did, we figured to go to L.A., win two games and go on from there.”

Before his team boarded a charter flight to Los Angeles that night, Edmonton Coach Sather made a remark that the rest of the Oilers would soon find themselves repeating: “The Kings are a good hockey team and they aren’t going to fold up for anybody.”

GAME THREE

Late in the second period of Game 3, when Edmonton had built a 5-0 lead over the Kings, the sellout crowd of 16,505 at the Forum started booing another futile power play by the Kings. Oiler players on the bench booed and laughed, too. Bob Burgan, a long-time King season ticket-holder who sat behind the opponent’s bench, said that the Oilers also sang songs and squirted each other with water bottles.

A great time was had by all--at the Kings’ expense.

“Hey, the fans were booing, so we did, too,” said Edmonton winger Dave Lumley, now able to laugh at the Oilers’ immaturity. “We did that a lot that year. We had a lot of fun. We thought we were God’s gift to hockey.”

The Oilers were still laughing and joking as they headed for the locker room between the second and third periods.

In the Kings’ locker room, though, angry words and accusations were exchanged between players. Eventually, Perry and veteran winger Mike Murphy calmed the team. Perry, not an inspirational speaker, simply told the team to go out and win a period. In other words, try and make the game respectable.

But Perry hadn’t totally given up hope.

“The thing I’ll always remember about that was what happened when Don was walking out of the room,” said King defenseman Rick Chartraw, now retired and living in Florida. “He says, ‘Give it your best effort every shift.’ Then, he closes the door. A few seconds later he opens it again and says, ‘Oh, by the way. Anyone who doesn’t give it their best effort won’t dress for the next game.’ ”

What happened in the third period was one of the great comebacks in Stanley Cup history. It began at 2:46 when Jay Wells beat Fuhr with a screened slap shot from the left circle. It was only the second goal that Wells, a defenseman, had scored all season. The TV camera panned to the Oiler bench after the goal, and Sather was seen smiling and patting a player on the back. After all, it was only 5-1.

At 5:58, King center Doug Smith lifted a rebound of Mark Hardy’s shot over Fuhr and just under the crossbar. That power-play goal made it 5-2. Sather still had a smirk on his face, but the Oiler bench was no longer laughing at the Kings’ power play.

In the next eight minutes, the Oilers protected the lead. Buss, wanting to beat the traffic, left his center-ice box and told his limo driver to turn on the radio. Buss still was in the general vicinity of the Forum when Simmer jammed the puck past Fuhr from close range with 5:22 left to play. That made it 5-3, Oilers, and Sather looked genuinely concerned.

Meanwhile, Buss’ driver asked if he should turn back to the Forum. Buss said no. The next day, Buss told The Times’ Gordon Edes: “I thought our only chance was if I left. I’ve watched every game to completion and I thought the one game I left would be the miracle of all time, but only if I left.”

Even now, Buss sticks to that story. He said he still gets teased about it by friends. “I think anyone who is superstitious could relate to why I did it,” he said.

It turned out that Buss did miss a miracle that night.

In a frenzied final five minutes, the Kings stopped several excellent chances by Edmonton. Pat Hughes had two breakaways, but Lessard stopped him once and forced him to shoot over the crossbar the other time. With 4:01 left, King winger Steve Bozek made a drop pass to Mark Hardy, who beat Fuhr from the top of the slot. That made it 5-4, Oilers. Sather started pacing.

As the game wore down to the final minute, the Kings were continually pressuring the Oilers but couldn’t score. The Kings had pulled Lessard from goal for a sixth skater and, with 15 seconds left, Hardy launched a desperation slap shot from the point. Fuhr made a pad save, but an instant later, Bozek knocked in the rebound from about 12 feet.

“That was the biggest goal of my life,” said Bozek, now a fourth-line player for the Calgary Flames.

The Kings mobbed Bozek and skated to the locker room bolstered by a standing ovation. The Oilers knelt on the ice. Fuhr, still wearing his mask, rested his head against the goal. Sather eventually led them to the locker room.

“I’ve never seen the Forum in such a frenzy,” Miller, the longtime King broadcaster, said. “We had the normal 15-minute break before overtime and people didn’t want to sit down.”

Perry entered the locker room and had to tell the players to sit down. The Oilers, meanwhile, had to regroup.

“You just knew who was going to win it in overtime,” Lumley said. “You knew who had the momentum.”

Two minutes and 35 seconds into overtime, Smith won a faceoff from Edmonton’s Mark Messier. The puck slid between Smith’s legs to rookie Evans in the right circle. Evans cocked his left arm and fired a blistering shot that sailed over Fuhr’s shoulder into the net, and the Kings had won, 6-5.

In the excitement that followed, Wells told writers that Gretzky wasn’t a team player, that he just scored goals for himself. Gretzky called Wells “a nobody who never will be anybody.” Nicholls, talking to teammates, not reporters, questioned Gretzky’s manliness. It made headlines the next day in both Edmonton newspapers.

While Gretzky fumed, Fuhr removed his goalie mask and threw up in a sink.

Outside the Forum, traffic was stopped on Manchester Boulevard. Horns blared and voices shouted. One car had an Oiler jersey tied to the back.

GAME FOUR

Fortunately for both teams, there was a day off between games. Still, the intensity was carried over to Game 4 at the Forum. The standing ovation the Kings received when they stepped onto the ice was timed at four minutes, a minute longer than the one before Game 3.

Once again, the Kings were the only team to score in the third period. But they could score only once as the Oilers posted a 3-2 victory, sending the series to a decisive fifth game in Edmonton.

Even in victory, the Oilers appeared frustrated. Edmonton winger Glenn Anderson, who scored what proved to be the winning goal in the second period, held his stick aloft at center ice and bowed to the crowd in response to repeated gibes from King fans.

Afterward, Sather and Carmichael, King public relations director who had cheered outside the locker rooms after Game 3, scuffled outside the locker room. Later, Sather and a local radio reporter traded insults.

“A lot of their players put their sticks to my face, too,” Carmichael said.

Because of tight scheduling, the teams shared a charter flight from Los Angeles to Edmonton that same night. There was no fraternization. The Oilers stayed in the back of the plane, the Kings in the front. Adding to the tension, Edmonton’s airport was blanketed with fog and snow. The plane didn’t touch down, it slammed down.

When the Kings finally reached their hotel at 4:30 in the morning, the lobby was empty except for an elderly lady lurking in the shadows.

“She’s standing there in Oiler blue and orange, shaking her fist and saying, ‘You didn’t treat my boys good. But we’re going to get you tonight,’ ” Miller said. “One of our guys said, ‘Lady, why don’t you go to bed.’ ”

GAME FIVE

It would be reasonable to think that by Game 5, Edmonton no longer would have been overconfident. The opposite was true. The Oilers were sure that the Kings were finished, since the determining game was being played at the Northlands Coliseum, where the Oilers had lost only five games all season.

“When I think about it now, there was no way we should have been confident,” Gretzky said. “We thought it would be easy. They were on our ice with our fans screaming at them. But it turned out the pressure was on us.”

Meanwhile, in the King locker room, there was a loose attitude.

“We had nothing to lose,” Evans said. “We weren’t even supposed to get that far. Our season was already a success.”

Three minutes into the third period, it was clear that the Oilers were going to lose. The Kings had a 7-2 lead, too much for even the high scoring Oilers to overcome. Two late Edmonton goals didn’t temper the embarrassment.

The next day, the Edmonton newspapers took more shots than the Oilers had the previous night. Journal columnist Terry Jones wrote: “From today until they win a playoff series again, they (the Oilers) are weak-kneed wimps who thought they were God’s gift to the NHL but found out they were nothing but adolescent, front-running good-time-Charlies.”

The headline in the Edmonton Sun simply read: CHOKE. POSTSCRIPT

A lot has happened to both teams in the last three years. The Oilers have basically the same team, but they have developed into a team that could dominate hockey for years. On the other hand, only eight Kings remain from the 1981-82 team, and there have been two coaching changes as well as a front-office shuffle.

Edmonton players say the loss to the Kings helped them mature quickly enough to advance to the championship series the next season and ultimately beat the Islanders last spring.

“It was one of the best things that ever happened to our team,” defenseman Paul Coffey said. “Things might have come too easy for us then. We were young and cocky. Before you become successful, you have to fall down on your face. But no matter how successful we become, we can always think back to the L.A. series to keep it in perspective.”

For the Kings, it was a brief moment in the spotlight, nothing more.

“The general feeling has been so down the last few years,” Buss said. “Generally, I’ve been pretty successful in whatever I’ve done. I have a great basketball team (the Lakers) and I have tried to develop a great hockey team. When we beat Edmonton, we seemed to be vindicated. We’re trying to develop it again.”

Sather said he doubts that there will be a repeat of the 1981-82 playoff series this time around. “It’s completely different,” he said. “We’ve grown up. They have different players. It’s a different situation. It can never happen again.”

Or so he hopes.