Gretzky Misses Game--Kings Lose

Wayne Gretzky, who went home to Canada for his grandmother’s funeral, didn’t make it back in time for the Kings’ game Wednesday night against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

So, the big head-to-head battle on Mario Lemieux’s home ice never materialized.

Bernie Nicholls played for the Kings, though, and he’s right in there with Gretzky and Lemieux in the race for the National Hockey League scoring title.

But in the final tally, Nicholls had just 1 point, on a goal that was really pointless just before the buzzer. Meanwhile, Lemieux had 2 goals and 2 assists. And Lemieux did his scoring when the game was being decided.

Points, game, matchup to Mr. Lemieux.

The Penguins’ 5-4 victory took a little bit of the edge off the crowd’s disappointment in missing Gretz- ky’s only game here this season. Of course, the game had been sold out for weeks in anticipation of the matchup. There was a capacity crowd of 16,025 at the Civic Arena.

“We missed Gretzky,” King Coach Robbie Ftorek had to admit. “How much we missed him, I can’t say, because we won’t ever be able to play this game over again and see the difference. But he felt, as we did, that he needed to be with his family at this point in time.”

Gretzky had gone home to Brantford, Ontario, for the Wednesday funeral of his grandmother, Mary Gretzky, who died last Saturday. He was hoping to get back in time for the game, but when he asked to stay with his family for another night, King management had no objection.

It’s the first game that Gretzky has missed all season.

King owner Bruce McNall sent his private plane, a Jetstar, with Gretzky, who had planned to bring the plane and the 2 pilots back here to pick up McNall. (Gretzky’s change of plans left McNall to take a commercial flight to Detroit with the team this morning.)

“He called and said that it was a little tougher than he had anticipated,” Ftorek said. “He’s a pillar in his family, and he felt that he was needed there.”

Nicholls said he had expected Gretzky to be back. “I thought he would be,” Nicholls said. “He had the jet. If everything was going smooth, I’m sure he would have been here.”

Besides missing Gretzky, the Kings also seemed to miss the morning skate. Ftorek canceled the usual game-day workout, which might have accounted for the lethargy that showed at times.

None of the Kings wanted to hide behind either excuse.

King defenseman Tom Laidlaw said: “We made some real bad mistakes in the second period.”

Defenseman Steve Duchesne added: “We didn’t give up because Wayne wasn’t going to be here. We said, ‘Let’s win anyway. Let’s show them we have a good offense team, and win it for him.’ ”

Mike Allison said: “Sometimes we expect Wayne and a couple of other guys to do it for us. He’s usually good for 2 or 3 goals against this team. But I think we all realized we would have to play a little bit better, do a little bit more tonight.”

Allison was one who had to take up the slack. Allison got a lot more ice time in the absence of Gretzky and finished with 1 goal and 2 assists.

Allison, who often plays on Gretzky’s line, went with Ron Duguay and Bob Carpenter Wednesday night. It’s not exactly a threesome that strikes fear around the league, but it worked.

Allison said: “I think the other team was looking at us and kind of laughing, at first. But we went out there and worked hard. They wanted Lemieux’s line against us, but we were shutting them down, and they finally switched up. I think they looked at Bernie’s line and Mike’s (Krushelnyski) and thought they’d better take advantage of the third line.

But it was the third line that gave the Kings their 2-0 lead in the first period. Duguay waited at the left post while goalie Tom Barrasso turned the other way to keep an eye on Dale DeGray. DeGray sent the pass across the crease, and Duguay poked it into the corner before Barrasso could get back.

Allison made it 2-0 less than 4 minutes later, spinning around in front of the goal but getting himself squared up in time to scoop in the rebound of a shot by Duchesne.

The Penguins scored 4 goals in the second period to take a 1-goal lead into the final period.

They scored 3 straight goals--a shorthanded breakaway by Lemieux, a give-and-go from Bob Errey to Lemieux back to Errey, and Randy Cunneyworth’s rebound shot.

The Kings evened the score at 3-3 on a 75-foot slap shot by DeGray at 16:31.

While the game was tied and hanging in the balance, DeGray was cut under the left eye on what he thought should have been called high-sticking on Lemieux. A high-sticking call that draws blood like that has been earning a lot of players automatic ejections under a new rule aimed at cracking down on stick penalties. But there was no call at all.

“I think it was unintentional, but this cut came from the blade of Mario’s stick,” DeGray said. “I was standing up, so that had to be a high stick. A rule’s a rule. Remember when Luc (Robitaille) got ejected for an unintentional high stick when his stick wasn’t even waist high?

“Remember when Lemieux got slashed? That wasn’t intentional, either, and the guy got 3 games. I just thought they should have called it.”

That would have been a pretty tough call before the hometown crowd with the game tied.

And then Lemieux picked up an assist on the back-breaking goal, the goal that Phil Bourque fired through the traffic in front of rookie goalie Mark Fitzpatrick to give the Penguins a 4-3 lead with 19 seconds left in the second period.

It was still 4-3 when Ftorek pulled Fitzpatrick in favor of an extra attacker with less than a minute to play. Lemieux gave the Penguins an empty-net goal to make it 5-3.

When Nicholls finally scored, he made a moot point, taking a pass across the front of the net from Robitaille and just beating the buzzer with the shot.

Nicholls shrugged off that final goal as “nothing.” He was much more concerned with all the things that the Kings didn’t get accomplished Wednesday night.

“I thought we really missed Wayne on the power play,” Nicholls said. “We’re so used to him controlling things that when he wasn’t out there, I thought we were a little lost.”

Ftorek, too, pointed out the power play when asked where Gretzky was missed most.

Lemieux, always a man of few words, downplayed the absence of Gretzky. Lemieux said: “They have other guys, like Bernie Nicholls and Luc Robitaille. We just wanted the 2 points.”

The Kings’ record went to 20-11-1. Pittsburgh is 17-11-2, still tied with the New York Rangers for the lead in the Patrick Division.

King Notes

The Kings announced that Wayne Gretzky would not be back for the game a couple of hours before the game. It was on radio and television before Pittsburgh fans left for the game, so they were not surprised. Local television crews interviewing fans on their way into the Civic Arena were told repeatedly that fans were disappointed.