Giving His 5 Worth : Nicholls Making Big Points on and Off the Ice

There is a point of fact concerning King center Bernie Nicholls that is just as well cleared up right now. He does not , contrary to published reports, help his father set out trap lines in the woods when he goes home in the summer to the little town of West Guilford near the slightly larger town of Haliburton, in Ontario.

“Why would anyone put out traps in the summer?” he asked in disbelief. “The animals don’t have their winter coats on then.”

Hmmmm. Good point.

Well, there are going to be those kinds of misunderstandings when you move to a foreign land. Just as it’s bound to be quite a jolt to a kid who grew up skating on the ice in his front yard to be drafted to play hockey in a city where nobody floods the front yard and skates on it in the winter.

Where the ponds never freeze and folks think checking is something you do at the bank.

It’s safe to say that when Bernie Nicholls used to slap that puck across his front yard, he was not dreaming of someday wearing the uniform of the Los Angeles Kings.

Nothing against the Kings, he said: “L.A. is just not a team that a kid would even think of.”

Los Angeles was not his idea of hockey heaven. But Bernie Nicholls was drafted by the Kings in June 1980, the same month that he turned 19 years old. And he learned to live with it.

After 8 years of playing for a team with a habit of not making the playoffs, of scoring lots of goals that very few people appreciated, of centering lines that weren’t exactly star-studded, of waking up alone on Christmas morning half a continent away from his family and wondering why he was suffering this fate, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

In fact, when he gave a passing thought to holding out for a better salary at the start of this season, he dismissed the thought for fear the Kings might trade him.

“This is no time to get traded,” Nicholls said. “It’s getting good now. It’s finally fun. And it’s my team.

“If I went to another team and won the Stanley Cup, it wouldn’t be the same. I’ve paid my dues in L.A. We’ve gone from being a bad team to being a good team. We started at the bottom and now we’re going to be at the top.

“After all those years, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

He saw the glimmer on Aug. 8. He remembers it well. He was in Canada playing in a celebrity golf tournament with Marty McSorley, then of the Edmonton Oilers, when word broke that the Gretzky trade had been made.

Wayne Gretzky was a King. So was McSorley. And Mike Krushelnyski.

Jimmy Carson was no longer a King. But Nicholls still was.

“I was the most excited person there,” Nicholls said. “It was such a thrill to know that I was going to have the opportunity to play with Wayne Gretzky, and to know that we were finally going to be winning.

“You don’t know how embarrassing it is to go home to Canada as early as I was going home to Canada, when everyone else was still playing for the Stanley Cup. I mean, there are only 21 teams in the league and 16 make the playoffs. I’d go home to that little town where every person knows me--it was very embarrassing.

“There aren’t too many guys left on the team who remember how tough it was. Me and Dave Taylor and Dean Kennedy. It’s tough to be fighting for fourth place every year. No matter how well you’re playing individually, if the team isn’t winning, that brings you down.”

Actually, Nicholls has played well individually every season. For a guy who was a fourth-round pick and who is known as a shaky skater, he has gone a long way on his feel for the game, his instinct, his sense for where the puck is and where it’s going to be.

He was the Kings’ rookie of the year his first season up from the minors, in 1982-83, and he has been at or near the top of the Kings’ scoring list every season since. Last season, which he proclaims his best, he had 32 goals and 46 assists for 78 points--third on the team behind Luc Robitaille and Carson.

Nicholls piled up those points despite missing 10 games with a broken finger, playing at least another 5 games before the finger was really healed and missing 5 games when he was suspended for hitting his stick against a Hartford Whaler.

This season he already has 55 points in 25 games, on 28 goals and 27 assists. He is tied with Gretzky in points, the total ranking second only to Pittsburgh’s Mario Lemieux in the league. And the 28 goals lead the league.

That means he’s ahead of Gretzky in goals scored.

Nicholls is very much aware of Gretzky’s status as the reigning king of Kings, and he is very much aware of the impact that having Gretzky on the ice with him has had on his own statistics.

“Getting to play with Gretzky was the best thing that could happen to my career,” Nicholls said. “I don’t feel bad that he overshadows me. He overshadows everybody in the league.

“You don’t know how much more fun it is to play when you have a talent like him on the ice with you--on your side. I felt like I was always trying to do it alone before. When Marcel Dionne was on the team, he wasn’t on my line. I skated with Luc a little bit last year. But, mostly, I’ve been on my own. Tiger Williams is a nice guy, but he can’t hit anything. He could fall out of a boat and not hit water.

“Now it’s exciting to go out there every night and know what kind of good things can happen.”

More often than not, the good thing is a goal by Nicholls on a pass from Gretzky, who has 55 points on 20 goals and 35 assists.

Nicholls has to appreciate help like that. Until the game at Calgary last week, Nicholls had a 10-game goal-scoring streak and 17-game scoring streak. The goals streak was the second-longest in team history and the third-longest in modern NHL history.

Nicholls hyper-extended his left knee and missed part of the first period at Calgary, but he came back. And he injured that knee again when he slid into a post during the game against the New Jersey Devils Tuesday night, but he returned in that game, too.

He’s not one to let an injury stop him. Besides playing with that broken finger last season, he has played with a broken jaw wired shut and an array of lesser injuries.

This is also no time to sit out and nurse hurts.

It’s not just that the team is winning or that he’s compiling points.

“Playing with Wayne has just boosted the whole level of play,” Nicholls said. “He has boosted my level up.”

Nicholls still has another year and an option year to go on a 5-year plus an option-year contract that he signed 3 years ago. But soon he’ll need to start discussing an extension.

Nicholls let it be known before the season that he thought he was worth more than his current contract, reportedly about $200,000 a year. He took notice when team captain Dave Taylor signed a 4-year, $2.5-million contract.

He’s not equating himself to Gretzky nor asking for that kind of money. But neither is it lost on him that Lemieux is translating more-goals-than-Gretzky into a bid for a comparable salary. Lemieux will receive a salary in the $2-million-a-year range.

Nicholls said, simply: “I think my salary is not just a little low, but a lot low. I approached them before the season, and I think I got my point across.

“They didn’t want to talk to me about it before this season. I didn’t want to be a (jerk) about it and hold out. We’d just gotten Gretzky and everything was positive. I was afraid if I did that, they’d get (ticked) off and trade me, and I’d be sorry and they’d end up kicking themselves later, because I think I’m an important part of this team.

“I decided that I’d make my point and then go out and prove that I am of value to this team. The risk I was taking was that I’d go out and (have a bad season). But I think I’m making my point.”

This was the kind of season Nicholls had in mind when he left home at 16 to play for the junior team that had drafted him.

This was the kind of season he had in mind when he bet his future on an NHL career. It just was a long time coming in this strange place.