Kings Bide Time, Beat Rangers, 5-2

Marty McSorley was not happy with the 4 minutes of penalty time he received just 1 minute 44 seconds into the Kings’ 5-2 victory over the New York Rangers Monday night at Madison Square Garden.

And he was not a bit happy when he discovered, once he was in the penalty box for using his stick to knock 5-foot 10-inch rookie Tony Granato the ice, that he would be there alone. No penalty was assessed to Granato.

McSorley made his emotions clear by pounding on the glass and shaking it violently.

He had no complaint about the 10-minute misconduct penalty and the 10-minute game misconduct penalty that followed, resulting in his automatic ejection.

“The misconduct was warranted. I overreacted,” McSorley admitted. “I’m not going to argue with that. I was emotional. You have to be emotional when you play this game. But I was very upset with the 4 minutes . . .

“I don’t know how you can give a guy 4 minutes right at the start of a game like that. Everybody knew it was going to be a tough game. To put us at that kind of a disadvantage right away--I was really upset.”

It was a tough game, made even tougher for the Kings by those in the crowd of 17,388 who were hooting at McSorley.

But the Kings held the Rangers without a goal during those initial penalty minutes of a scoreless first period. Then, in the second period, Luc Robitaille and Mike Krushelnyski scored within a 35-second span to turn a 1-1 tie into a 3-1 King lead.

The victory improved the Kings’ record to 20-10-1. The Rangers dipped to 15-12-4.

After the game, McSorley emerged from the locker room in suit and tie and calmly presented his case to reporters. Like an attorney making final arguments to a jury, McSorley suggested that he had earned his penalty minutes for a retaliation move, that Granato had to have started it and that they should have been assessed equal time.

He stopped short of presenting his strongest physical evidence. He did not open his shirt to show where Granato had speared him in the stomach.

He did make these points:

--”Before I did anything, (referee) Andy Van Hellemond came over and said, ‘That’s enough.’ So, of course, I was under the assumption that he had seen the kid spear me. If he didn’t see that, what did he see that he was saying, ‘That’s enough’ about? They usually give you a chance to even it up and then the penalty minutes are evened up.” So McSorley tried to even things up by using his stick in a cross-checking motion and knocking Granato down.

--”How often do I go after a little guy for no apparent reason? I’m always involved with the big guys, and the reasons are obvious.”

--”The times I put our team in jeopardy with a penalty are few and far between. . . . I’m not going to do something that gets us 4 penalty minutes right at the start of the game.”

It also forced the Kings to play the rest of the game without him.

McSorley’s teammates picked up the slack.

King goalie Glenn Healy, who faced 39 shots on goal, stopped 16 of them during a long power play in the third period while the Kings were ahead, 4-2. There was one shot during that span that the Ranger fans thought was in the net, but the red light never came on. Healy says he got a pad on the shot by John Ogrodnick, and the puck fell at his feet--outside the goal.

For 25 seconds the Rangers had a 5-on-4 advantage because of a 2-minute hooking penalty on John Tonelli. But the advantage went to 5-on-3 when Steve Duchesne got 2 minutes for cross-checking. Wayne Gretzky was sent out, along with Tim Watters and Tom Laidlaw, to kill that penalty.

They did.

The Kings were able to stick to their game plan, being patient early until the scoring opportunities presented themselves, and then remaining patient while the Rangers scrambled from behind.

The first goal was Gretzky’s, a long slap shot after a pass from Bernie Nicholls. It presented itself at 3:29 of the second period.

The Rangers countered with a goal by Ogrodnick at 5:58.

Then the Kings made it 2-1 on Robitaille’s goal at 14:15 and 3-1 on Krushelnyski’s rebound goal at 14:50.

The Rangers’ Kelly Kisio said: “When they came back with the 2 big ones, they more or less shut us down.”

King Notes

Defenseman Dean Kennedy was traded to the Rangers for right winger Igor Liba Monday. Kennedy was told of the trade at 5:30 p.m., after he had reported to Madison Square Garden expecting to play for the Kings. Also in the deal, the Rangers received Denis Larocque, currently with the Kings’ New Haven farm club, and the Kings acquired center Todd Elik and defenseman Michael Boyce, currently with the Denver Rangers. Liba, who broke the small finger on his right hand Dec. 4, will not be ready to play immediately. The trade was made largely because the Kings were long on defensemen and short on forwards. Kennedy said he thought Liba would fit in with the Kings as a stable part of Wayne Gretzky’s line.

Liba was a member of the Czechoslovakian Olympic team. Originally drafted by Calgary in the fifth round of the 1983 entry draft, he was traded from Calgary to Minnesota and then, this season, to the Rangers. Ranger General Manager Phil Esposito said: “He doesn’t understand. . . . They’re calling his wife, to explain the trade to her. She speaks more English than Igor does. Everybody speaks more English than Igor. When we told him, he said, ‘Calgary, Minnesota, New York--what is wrong?’ I told him, ‘You’re going to where it’s 80 degrees, and you’re going to play with Gretzky.’ But he’s confused. He wants to know why. Does anybody ever know why? Does anybody have a good answer?”

Wayne Gretzky’s grandmother (his father’s mother, Mary) died Saturday after battling leukemia for 3 years and suffering a stroke 2 weeks ago. She was 85. Gretzky was scheduled to fly home on owner Bruce McNall’s plane today for the funeral on Wednesday and was expected to rejoin the team in time for Wednesday night’s game in Pittsburgh.

King goalie Glen Healy leads the league with 15 victories. . . . Steve Duchesne, one of the four defensemen who were late to practice earlier Monday, said that Coach Robbie Ftorek had told them their fines of $100 each would not be collected if the team beat the Rangers. The others who were late were Kennedy, Doug Crossman and Wayne McBean. They were late because they had assumed that the skate would be at the usual road time, 11:30 a.m. But it started at 10:30 a.m. They arrived at about 10:40.