This Was One Deal Luc Liked : With Gretzky Now a King, Robitaille Won’t Trade Places

In his brief career as a hockey player, Luc Robitaille has mastered the skill of shooting a puck. He’s still working on how to guard his heart.

When Robitaille was 17 and playing junior hockey in Hull, Quebec, his best friend, a goalie named Steve Averill, was traded to a rival team.

In his first season in the National Hockey League, one during which Robitaille became the first King ever to be named the league’s rookie of the year, his mentor, Marcel Dionne, was traded to the New York Rangers.

And last month, after a season in which he led the Kings in scoring with 111 points, Robitaille learned that another close friend, teammate Jimmy Carson, had been traded to the Edmonton Oilers in the Wayne Gretzky deal.

“I kind of knew when I came into the league the way it was,” said Robitaille, who still is five months shy of his 23rd birthday. “It’s a business.”

The bottom line, however, is that it still hurts.

“It was tough,” Robitaille said, recalling the phone call he made to Carson on the day of the trade.

“It was probably harder when Marcel got traded, because I saw him going. That was like family. I was there.”

Dionne and his wife, Carol, virtually had become adoptive parents to Robitaille and Carson, taking Robitaille into their home as a boarder and lining up a similar living arrangement for Carson with a neighbor.

“I was in the same room when Marcel found out he was traded,” Robitaille said. “I saw him crying. I saw (Carol) crying.

“When Jimmy was traded, he was in Michigan and I was (home). When I talked to him, he wasn’t thrilled about it at first, but I talked to him again about a week before camp and he was happy. He said (the Oilers) treated him real well.

“He sees he’s going to play with some good players, which will be good for him career-wise. That’s what he thinks, and I agree with him.”

Robitaille finds the thought of playing alongside Gretzky eminently agreeable, too. Better, even, than being owned by Gretzky, which is the position Robitaille found himself in as a junior. Gretzky owned--and still owns--the Hull team.

“I met him a few times,” Robitaille said. “The year the Oilers were eliminated from the playoffs by Calgary, Wayne came to see our games. We loved having him as an owner. It was fun.

“I remember the first time we all met him, it was like, ‘Wayne Gretzky is coming.’ It was special. We all wanted to impress him.

“We used to talk about it all the time: ‘He’s a winner in Edmonton, we have to win for him here.’ ”

Robitaille laughed.

“Funny how small the world is,” he said. “Now I play with him.”

At this stage of training camp, of course, the left winger is uncertain just how much ice time he will share with Gretzky. For now, King Coach Robbie Ftorek is experimenting with Gretzky at center, Bobby Carpenter on his left side and Bernie Nicholls--heretofore a center--skating on the right wing.

Robitaille has been skating on a line centered by another acquisition from Edmonton, Mike Krushelnyski, with Dave Taylor on right wing. A third line has two newcomers, left wing John Tonelli, a free agent from Calgary, and right wing Marty McSorley, also from Edmonton, skating with center Mike Allison.

“It would be fun (to be on Gretzky’s line),” Robitaille said. “Everybody would love that.

“But it depends on what Robbie thinks. If we go with me playing with Wayne and we’re scoring five goals a game and the team is still losing, then he’d have to change us.

“But if I go with him and we’re winning, that’s all that matters. I know our goals-against has to improve, but it really doesn’t matter what the score is if we win. It doesn’t matter if it’s 9-8 if you win all the time.”

Robitaille said that even before the trade, he thought the Kings were headed in the right direction. Winning, he felt, would come in two or three years.

“But now I feel we’re ahead of time--we’re ahead,” he said.

“We have to win this year, and that’s a great feeling. I just love it.”

Krushelnyski and McSorley bring quality, Robitaille said. Gretzky brings greatness--and more.

“This is what really made me happy (with what Gretzky said) at the press conference,” said Robitaille.

“A lot of guys who have been traded at the end of their careers to L.A. have said they’ve been happy to come to L.A. But not too many guys have said they’re coming here to win.

“Gretzky said, ‘I want to come here and I want to win. I want to get a Stanley Cup in L.A.’ It’s a great thing that he says that.”

A Stanley Cup waltz in the Forum? That would give Robitaille something to talk about with his friend, Orel Hershiser, the Dodger pitcher and one-time teen-age hockey player. The two met through a mutual acquaintance who conducts hockey clinics in the L.A. area.

“We played some street hockey together, with Steve Duchesne and another friend of mine,” said Robitaille, who once entertained thoughts of becoming a pitcher. “Orel’s a pretty good hockey player. He didn’t play too hard, because he didn’t want to get hurt, but he can play hockey.”

Will Hershiser throw a fastball in the World Series before Robitaille cranks a slapshot in the Stanley Cup finals? Once, Robitaille might gladly have traded places with Hershiser. For now, however, he’s had enough of trades.