Kings Have Their Goalie to Reach Goal in Playoffs

If Wayne Gretzky is right about what it takes to win playoff hockey games--and that’s a fairly safe bet--Kelly Hrudey is a very important person to the Kings right now. So important, in fact, that it’s amazing Gretzky wasn’t at the Edmonton Airport to greet Hrudey’s flight Friday evening.

A picture of Gretzky greeted Hrudey, at least. A picture of Gretzky in an Edmonton Oilers uniform, holding the prized Stanley Cup over his head greets all incoming passengers.

It’s fitting. Edmonton means Gretzky and Gretzky means the Stanley Cup.

But this time around, Gretzky is in Edmonton working toward another Stanley Cup for another team. He’s trying to take what he learned with the Oilers and make it work with the Kings.

One thing he’s sure about. Winning in the disciplined, defensive mode of playoff hockey requires a top goalie.

For years, all those years that Gretzky was getting credit for leading the Oilers to the promised Cup, Gretzky was saying that the key to playoff hockey is the goalie. Grant Fuhr, he insisted, was the guy who kept the Oilers in every game.

He said goalie, goalie, goalie until the Kings went out and got Hrudey, a goalie Gretzky rates among the elite of the league. The Kings have rallied in front of Hrudey. Noticeably.

Another thing Gretzky knows for sure is that as hard as it is for any other team to win in Edmonton during the season, it’s much, much harder to win here in the playoffs.

The Oilers won every playoff game played here last season. Nobody beat them at Northlands Coliseum.

The Kings didn’t even win here during this regular season until Hrudey joined the team and settled in.

But with Hrudey in goal, the Kings have beaten the Oilers three straight, including two here.

No doubt about it, the Kings need Hrudey here for tonight’s third game of the best-of-seven National Hockey League playoff series against the Oilers.

He’s here. A day later than the rest of the team, but he’s here.

Hrudey did not take the team charter that left immediately after the Kings’ victory at the Forum Thursday night but, instead, took a commercial flight Friday along with Dr. Michael Mellman, the team’s internist.

Hrudey probably spent the night at Centinela Hospital Medical Center getting intravenous fluids. But he wouldn’t say.

The Kings are carefully guarding all information about the health of their players as flu and pneumonia threaten to become the day-to-day issue dictating which team has the day-to-day edge in this Smythe Division semifinal series.

Earlier in the season, Ken Baumgartner was out for a couple of weeks with pneumonia. Jay Miller, Steve Kasper and Chris Kontos all dealt with the flu.

Now John Tonelli is out with pneumonia, and both Hrudey and Glenn Healy are regaining their strength after suffering from flu this week.

Hrudey missed the opener on Wednesday night, which the Kings lost despite a strong effort by Healy, who was just coming off a bout with the flu himself. With Hrudey back in goal Thursday, the Kings evened the series at 1-1.

And now Hrudey says he is ready to play tonight, the first game on the home ice of the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Hrudey said that he felt better as Thursday night’s game progressed.

“When I came out for warmups, I felt a little woozy and lacking in energy,” he said. “I leaned over and I was just sweating, even though I hadn’t done anything. I thought, ‘If this is how it’s going to be, I’m in for a long night.’ But the defense played real well. They kept the shots down (Hrudey faced 22 shots) and it wasn’t bad.

“As I said after the game, mentally, you can overcome practically any obstacle if you just will it out of your mind. Especially during the playoffs.”

The Kings have been willing it. As well as Healy played Wednesday night--and he had an outstanding game--the team simply plays better and with more confidence when Hrudey is out there.

It was quite a jolt to the team when it learned, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, that Hrudey was too sick to play. It was quite a blow to Hrudey, too.

“I was disheartened at first,” he said. “But during the playoffs, nothing can bother you. Frustration cannot enter your mind. You can’t be on an emotional roller-coaster thinking, ‘Here’s my chance and I’m missing it, what a bad break, what can happen next?’ You just have to accept it for what it is and get on with it. Things that are out of your control, you can’t worry about.”

The Kings have, however, spent some time trying to figure out what has caused the illnesses. Gretzky has suggested that it may be from practicing in the very cold Culver City practice rink and having a drastic temperature change both coming in from the heat and going back out into the heat.

Hrudey thinks it may be the climate changes the Kings experience, traveling from Los Angeles to the cold cities of Canada and the Eastern states, combined with the fatigue the players suffer when they have to travel until the wee hours of the morning to get from one city to the next.

“I’m no medical expert, but with those viruses around, you don’t want to be run down like that,” Hrudey said. “Once you get it among guys on the team, it can spread like wildfire.”

While changing planes in Salt Lake City Friday afternoon, Hrudey was asked about the anticipation involved in playing the two weekend games on the ice of a team with a reputation of the Oilers.

“I don’t want to put a damper on things, but the truth is, I’m not overly excited and I’m not overly nervous by any means,” Hrudey said. “I just know we have a job to do. I know we can go in there and win.

“One of the things I like best about this team is that the attitude is so positive. Always. I’ve enjoyed that since the minute I arrived here. These guys are a little old. A lot of us have kids. A lot of us have been traded, which is a very humbling experience. There’s an attitude here that I love.”

And now that the initial shock of being traded is long gone, he says he’s more than pleased to be with the Kings.

“Oh, it’s great,” Hrudey said.

Greater still for this humble group of veterans would be to go somewhere in the playoffs. The first few times Gretzky returned to Edmonton with his new team, it seemed that the Northlands Coliseum just held too many memories. Gretzky seemed hesitant and his teammates seemed intimidated as they lost their first two games on Oiler ice.

So the last two victories here were big.

King Coach Robbie Ftorek said: “At the beginning of the season, I think it was very emotional for those guys (Gretzky and former Oilers Mike Krushelnyski and Marty McSorley) to play there. . . . But I don’t think that’s a problem now.”

When the Kings won here, and when Gretzky finally scored a goal against the Oilers here, he was relieved, he said, because everyone could stop worrying about it and asking about it.

There is enough to worry about, Gretzky says, with just beating the Oilers, all motivating angles aside.

“They are a very, very talented hockey club,” Gretzky said. “I think this is the toughest rink to play in, come playoff time. And their big guys play best under pressure.

“I think we have to be considered the underdogs. How can we not be the underdogs against the Stanley Cup champions?”

King Notes

Tonight’s game will begin at 5 p.m., PDT. . . . The Kings were 4-4 against the Oilers in the regular season, 2-2 at Edmonton and 2-2 at the Forum.

There is no truth to the rumor being chatted about on Edmonton radio that Kelly Hrudey and John Tonelli actually are suffering from heat prostration and sunstroke after a day of golfing in record L.A. heat.

Chris Kontos, who had a hat trick for the Kings Thursday night, once was a roommate of Robbie Ftorek when they played for the New York Rangers. Ftorek, in fact, had an assist on Kontos’ first NHL goal.

Herb Brooks, who was the Ranger coach when Kontos went home, rather than be sent to the minors for a while, was doing commentary for the SportsChannel Thursday night when Kontos had his outstanding game. “I was really happy for him,” Brooks said. “He’s a good kid. He always was. I think he was getting some bad advice back then.”