If Kings Are to Grab Cup, Gretzky Has to Go for It

I always thought Wayne Gretzky came with the Stanley Cup attached. He took a bath in it in the off-season. Used it as a flower pot on the back porch.

The Kings weren’t buying a man, they were buying the Cup. Four times in the last five years, Gretzky has come home with the championship. Five times in the last six years, he--and his team--have been in the finals. He plays hockey the way Babe Ruth played baseball, or Bill Tilden tennis, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar basketball. He dominates.

His statistics are staggering--most points (goals plus assists) in hockey history, 1,837; most assists, 1,200, and fourth-most goals, 637, in fewer than half the games played by Gordie Howe, the leader in goals.

You look at Gretzky’s numbers and you figure there must be two of him. Or that he gets his own puck. His playoff statistics are even more amazing. He has 81 goals and 171 assists in 120 games. He is as at home on the ice as a polar bear, as unstoppable as a glacier. He’s won every award hockey can give, including the one for “most gentlemanly” (in hockey, that’s not real hard to win).

So, when that dealer in rare old coins, Bruce McNall, the Kings’ owner, nabbed him out of Edmonton last year, Canada reacted as if he had just made off with Niagara Falls or the Grand Banks.

L.A. sat back to wait for the happy ending. After all, this is the town where Kirk Gibson limped up to bat in the bottom of the ninth inning and delivered, effectively, the baseball championship. This is where Magic Johnson throws in those half-court three-pointers at the buzzer in playoffs.

Gretzky was perfect for the part. He didn’t look like a hockey player. He looked like Lochinvar. He had all his teeth, these green eyes and long blond locks. His nose wasn’t even broken. Best of all, he didn’t play this kind of dock-fight hockey the rest of the league favored.

Watching Gretzky was a little like watching the Ice Capades. He could have played in a tutu. His moves about the ice were studies in grace and style and precision. You figured Baryshnikov would play hockey this way. He almost looked like a poet.

But he handled the ice--and the puck--like a riverboat gambler. He could pass the puck around like a deck of marked cards. He required watching at all times. Hockey is not a game in which you can double-team, but every team in the league would assign a player to shadow Gretzky like a pickpocket in a bus station. They would be so locked they looked at times like a figure-skating dance team.

None of this slowed Gretzky noticeably.

Until Wednesday night, when the show moved onto Broadway--the playoffs.

It was the opening of Stanley Cup, 1989. The opposition was the Edmonton Oilers. Now, the Edmonton Oilers, sans Gretzky, are supposed to be just a bunch of ice skaters. They weren’t important in this drama, just the scenery.

It was the hottest April 5 in L.A. history, 105 and climbing. The Forum ice was about the consistency of lemon sherbet. The puck floated. Skates rusted. Five more degrees and the game would have been water polo. You wouldn’t need skates, you’d need fins.

And Wayne Gretzky, who has 252 points in playoff play, got only one. A sellout crowd sat stunned. It was like watching the hero get killed in the first act.

The game was as carefully played as a mating dance between two porcupines. Both teams seemed more interested in hoarding the puck than shooting it. They kept looking as if they were trying to find a place to hide it, like a dog with a bone.

The Kings lost for the same reason National Football League teams with a late lead lose. They went into a prevent defense with a one-goal lead and five minutes to play.

The Oilers taught them the folly of this by scoring two goals in 1 minute 7 seconds. Gretzky never seemed to have the puck.

You had to ask yourself, did the Yankees buy Babe Ruth to bunt? Do people pay to see Mike Tyson clinch? Do you get the ball in to Kareem--or do you tell him just to stay out of foul trouble? What is Gretzky, a penalty-killer?

He was so invisible the other night, a journalist afterward wanted to know if he had his usual ice time--or was he just a guy they send out to bring in the plays?

Did Gretzky roll up 81 playoff goals protecting leads? Or did he do it with a more reckless attack? We thought we were getting a home run hitter, not a glove man; a puncher, not a jabber.

Maybe he won’t come with the Stanley Cup attached if he spends his time digging the puck out of corners like a housewife after a cobweb. When Gretzky goes one period with only one shot on goal, and one with none, you are getting the puck to the wrong people. You can’t score if you don’t shoot.

Some years ago, when the football coach, John McKay, had the super runner, O.J. Simpson, in the backfield, someone wanted to know why Simpson carried the ball so much in a game.

“When you have a cannon, you shoot it,” McKay explained.

The Kings came out firing Thursday night, beating an anvil chorus on the Oiler net, nearly doubling their shots on goal from the previous night, 44-26, and getting Gretzky his first ’89 playoff score as they won, 5-2.