Kings Starting Out With Hopes and Blues : Team Opens Season Tonight Amid Indecision, Guarded Optimism

When Rogie Vachon, the general manager of the Kings, and Pat Quinn, the coach, sit down for another of their lengthy meetings, each lights a long, thick cigar. When they arise, the room has taken on the appearance and smell of a pool hall or poker parlor.

It has been like that for weeks now, since the men who run the Kings, the second-worst team in the National Hockey League last season, meet often to discuss the new season, which will start tonight when the St. Louis Blues visit the Forum at 7:30.

But if the smoke cloud around Quinn is starting to lift, what he sees may well be enough to drive him to yet another cigar. If it’s not one thing with the Kings, it’s another.

Just when they thought they had drafted well to complement their veterans, injuries have taken out veteran left wings Phil Sykes and Joe Paterson. Sykes underwent surgery on his left wrist last week and will be out for about six weeks. Paterson is recuperating from a groin pull.

And just when it looked as if there was finally enough competition at training camp, too much competition forced the Kings to keep three goaltenders and release at least one defenseman they would rather have kept.

So the Kings are left with some indecision, some position-patching and guarded optimism. Situation normal.

Still, there is hope.

“A good start? We’ve set it as a priority for us,” Quinn said. “If we don’t start well, we won’t press the panic button. But I expect to have a fresher team at the start. In the past, quite honestly, the team didn’t come into camp in good shape. We’ve had to whip them into shape.

“This training camp, we have spent more time putting the parts together as a whole, as a unit. Last year, we tried to be too individual. Our key people tried to hold the puck too long. The Kings have always had an outside reputation as being an I team. We had good skills, good players. But when push came to shove, we just didn’t have it. We have been working on the togetherness concept.”

A fresh start with the infusion of new players perhaps more easily molded into a team concept may help erase the memory of last season’s 23-49-8 record.

“A good start would get us in a good frame of mind,” assistant coach Mike Murphy said. “I think there’s a lack of confidence because of what we did a year ago. We are going to surprise some people. We are going to win. I see the ability to improve over the course of the year. You can play a lot of good games in the league and not win, we’ve seen that.

“One of the great things about the team is that we have some young players with real good skills and they are going to push our veterans. I think we have a team of guys who have good work habits. I don’t think I could have said that two or three years ago.”

Murphy has hit on a bright spot for the Kings--youth. Two rookies have stuck with the team through camp and seem likely to stay considerably longer. Jimmy Carson, the second pick in the 1986 draft, and Luc Robitaille, the Canadian major junior player of the year last season, have made an impact. They will play right away, giving the Kings three strong lines.

At right wing are Dave Taylor, Jim Fox and Bryan Erickson, with Sean McKenna and Paul Guay on the roster. At left wing are Robitaille, Dave (Tiger) Williams and Morris Lukowich.

Center is a strength position for the Kings. Carson, Marcel Dionne, Bernie Nicholls and Brian Wilks all can score, as can Taylor.

But offense was not the problem area for the Kings last season. Defense was. The back row gave up a team-record 389 goals--the offense scored only 284. Larry Playfair, Mark Hardy and Steve Duchesne have looked good in camp and hope to shore up the defense.

The special teams had begun to have hope, especially with the acquisition this week of Bob Bourne in the waiver draft. Bourne is known as a good penalty killer, something the Kings can use with Sykes out.

The injuries have hurt the Kings’ depth in some areas, but they are thick with competition in others.

“We had competition at the positions where we wanted competition,” Quinn said. “We didn’t want to make the error right off the bat (and cut players). The player we choose, we don’t want him to look over his shoulder. At the goaltender spot, for example, one guy who we might have penciled to be No. 1 hasn’t done well, and the guy who was No. 3 has been the best.”

Quinn is referring to his three-goalie arrangement. It is a situation that he considers “less than ideal.” Roland Melanson was acquired from the Rangers in the middle of last season and played in 22 games with the Kings, with a 4-16-1 record. In addition, Melanson suffered a groin injury that got him sent down to New Haven, Conn. Even so, Melanson, 26, was thought of as the top goaltender when camp opened.

“He didn’t have as good a camp as we all expected and he didn’t have as good a camp as he expected,” assistant coach Phil Myre said. “We’re hoping he’ll reach the peak that he reached at the end of last season. He took control for us. He’s a workaholic. I just think he’s pressing right now.”

Melanson was 0-3 in the exhibition season, allowing 15 goals.

“We got Rollie last year to be our ace,” Quinn said. “He’s struggling right now, but we know he can play. We’re not going to throw him out the door.”

Meanwhile, a spiky-haired, well-educated Canadian Olympian, Darren Eliot, is the No. 1 goalie.

Eliot, 24, was taken by the Kings in the 1980 entry draft while at Cornell. After finishing school, he played for the Canadian Olympic team in 1984 and began his professional career later that year at New Haven. Since then, he has bounced back and forth from Los Angeles to the New Haven farm club but starred in camp and forced the Kings’ to keep him on.

“He has great concentration,” said Myre, himself a former goalie. “You could see he was really involved. I’ve found that this year he’s a lot more relaxed than before. He’s really an intense person. So that’s an area where he’s really improved--relaxation.”

The odd man out seems to be Bob Janecyk, the Kings’ starting goalie last season. Janecyk hasn’t been disappointing, as has Melanson, and he hasn’t been stellar, as has Eliot. That’s the trouble. He has been himself--nothing flashy, just steady and consistent.

“He’ll play the same for you in the first game as he does in the last,” Myre said. “He’s a steady goaltender, not stylish. He just stops the puck.”

There may also be nothing stylish about the Kings this season. Quinn hopes for a more integrated, unified team. He says, with some conviction: “We’re going to win this season.”

If Quinn can manage to get all his talent working together, he won’t just be blowing smoke.