L.A. Offers Lesson in How Not to Win a Hockey Game

You do not deserve to win a hockey game when your defense gets outmuscled and outhustled, when your power play can barely get a shot off, when your enforcer practically takes out a lease on the penalty box, and when your leading goal-scorer of the evening takes cheap shots on the goalie between shots on goal.

Sorry. You just don’t.

The Kings were disorganized and disorderly during Thursday night’s Smythe Division playoff Game 2 at the Saddledome, eventually won, 8-3, by the undeniably impressive Calgary Flames, who have hung losses on Los Angeles in 12 of their last 15 clashes.

Are the Kings in dire straits? Yes. Do the Kings have their pucks to the wall? Yes. Can the Kings still come back to win this thing? Well, as a matter of fact, yes. The Dodgers were down to the Mets. The Lakers were down to the Pistons. The Kings were down to the Oilers. Nothing is irreversible.

No way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks, however, will the Black and Silver square this series Saturday and Monday at the Forum unless they stop trying to make their opponents black and blue. The Kings got where they are this season by having the best offense of any team in hockey, not by being hockey’s most offensive team.

What a sorry spectacle it was, Bernie Nicholls sucker-punching Calgary goalie Mike Vernon in the head, Dave Taylor sparring with Jim Peplinski for nearly a full minute, Marty McSorley retaliating after Peplinski pestered Wayne Gretzky, and Jay Miller scuffling with anybody handy. Some may take this as a compliment, but Miller is one of those hockey players who ought to be managed by Bobby (the Brain) Heenan.

Of far more concern, twice in two losing causes the Kings got taken out of their game plan. In Game 1, they came out attacking, firing at will, only to retreat, like prizefighters more interested in self-preservation than a knockout, which eventually cost them the decision. In Game 2, they fell behind early, lost their heads and lost another game.

Sight of the night was Robbie Ftorek, the losing coach, demanding that the Calgary goalie’s stick be measured, with the score 8-3. Vernon hardly needed a big stick to beat the Kings. He could have stopped them with a teaspoon.

At a point in this farce, when the Flames scored their fourth goal, the Kings had accumulated exactly three shots. That’s how potent their offense was. Of course, Vernon never saw his team’s fourth goal, because Nicholls had just cold-cocked Calgary’s All-Star goalie with a right cross. Had Al MacInnis not scored on the other end, Nicholls undoubtedly would have gotten two minutes for mugging.

As for L.A.’s goalie, nobody can say Kelly Hrudey was not entitled to an off-night, but what in the world has possessed Hrudey to start straying so far from his post? The Kings have defensemen who are spending more time in the crease these days than Hrudey does. If the guy wanders any farther, he’s going to need to show an usher a ticket to get back in.

After playing with fire more than once in this series, Hrudey finally got burned by the Flames when he raked the puck right into his own pads, late in the second period, thereby offering Hakan Loob a virtually empty net. Loob got the goal, making the score 6-1. Hrudey, by all rights, at least should have gotten the assist.

All in all, it was another dark night in Calgary for the Californians. The good news, of course, is that at least they now get to return to the Forum, where Hrudey happens to be undefeated.

Somebody please tell Bruce McNall to offer Calgary’s owner $10 million to play the rest of the series in Inglewood.

His boys had trouble in Game 2 crossing the blue line without the puck, much less with it. The Flames were in their face all night long, never letting up. Even that little rink gnat, Theoren Fleury, all 5 feet 5 inches of him, gave the Kings fits, playing tough enough that he even got called for high-sticking at one point. With Fleury, you’d think the best he could manage was low-sticking.

Doug (Scarface) Gilmour, bearing the ugly reminder of a John Tonelli stick on his cheek, scored twice in the first period, and the Kings simply never recovered. Hrudey lasted only two periods, but it must have felt longer to him than that quadruple-overtime game he played for the Islanders two years ago against Washington.

Goaltending should not be the Kings’ No. 1 concern, however, as the series moves to their ice. Their biggest worry should be the fact that somebody needs to file a missing-persons report on Luc Robitaille, who is reportedly still out there playing but hasn’t been seen in too many Stars of the Games ceremonies lately.

Hey, Robitaille remains one of our favorite players, but frankly, he’s made his mark more often near the center square of the “Hollywood Squares” game show in the last few days than he has at center ice.

The Kings do still have time to turn things around. Their home crowd, with its own version of the Hollywood Squares, will be in full voice Saturday night when the guys take the ice for Game 3.