LUC WHO’S SMILING NOW : New Coach Has Meant New Confidence for Robitaille

By the spring of 1986, Luc Robitaille was the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League player of the year, the pride of the Hull Olympiques, the leading scorer in the league.

By the spring of 1987, he was the Kings’ leading scorer and their first player ever selected as the National Hockey League’s rookie of the year.

By the spring of 1988, after having been voted into a starting spot for the NHL All-Star game and having repeated as the Kings’ leading scorer, he was the favorite son, the star of the future.

By the spring of 1989, he was fed up.

Or was he discouraged? Disappointed? Disgusted?

“Everybody knew I had the feeling I wasn’t happy with my year,” Robitaille said, understating the obvious for the umpteenth time. “I thought I could have done better.”

Nothing wrong, really, with 46 goals and 52 assists, is there? Third on the team in scoring behind Wayne Gretzky and Bernie Nicholls is nothing to be ashamed of.

And how about being elected by the fans, again, as the starting left wing for the Campbell Conference in the All-Star game?

Actually, he was a little embarrassed by that. He kept joking about how often his parents must have voted.

Robitaille went very meekly into that game.

By February, much of his confidence had been chipped away. It apparently had a lot to do with Robbie Ftorek’s coaching style.

Sure, the statistics indicate that Robitaille had another strong season. But as anyone with low numbers will gladly point out, numbers don’t tell the whole story. Robitaille says it’s true of high numbers, too.

For one thing, his scoring dropped steadily. After opening the season with a hat trick, he kind of trailed off toward the end of the season.

“Like the last three months,” he says with a short, mirthless laugh.

And then there was the way his youthful spark faded.

By season’s end, he had no joie de vivre as they say in the part of Montreal where he grew up.

It was relatively early in the season when, in a fit of frustration after a game at the Montreal Forum, Robitaille crashed a cooler full of ice against a dressing room wall.

By the end of the season, even that fighting spirit was gone.

In the final days, there were no signs of the boyish exuberance or the boyish charm. He was sullen. His spirit apparently was broken.

Ftorek’s way of acknowledging Robitaille’s slump was to cut his ice time. That upset him and caused him to press when he was on the ice. Which made his slump worse. So Ftorek cut his ice time more . . . And tried him on different lines . . . And took him off the power play . . . Cut his ice time more . . .

“It was harder and harder,” Robitaille said. “To play the game is about 80% up in your mind, and a lot of my confidence got away.”

Asked if Ftorek had ever tried to talk him through it, offer advice or support or just attention, Robitaille said: “No.”

Asked why none of the players who were at odds with Ftorek have ever come right out and said anything against him, Robitaille shrugged.

“I have nothing to say against him. Nothing ever happened between us,” he said. “Not much happened in the (locker) room. The players talked among themselves in the room, and we have a lot of great guys on the team. That was good.”

So the players would give Robitaille support.

“But Robbie would stay in the coaches’ room,” he said.

“Robbie didn’t do anything really wrong. He just had his way of doing things. He believed in a system. He wasn’t going to change his way of doing things. Which is probably why he’s not coaching in the NHL.”

Not helping matters for Robitaille were all the trade rumors.

Ever since the trade for Wayne Gretzky during the summer of 1988, when Robitaille was, indeed, considered a key bargaining chip, his name has come up every time a trade with the Kings has been mentioned. Rumors persisted all through last summer.

No wonder. A 23-year-old all-star who seems unhappy? Perfect trade bait. A proven young talent with, maybe, more potential who, maybe, is out of favor with his team?

But Robitaille was never out of favor with the team, especially not with the man who really counts in trade decisions. Owner Bruce McNall is Robitaille’s No. 1 fan. McNall went to great lengths to keep Robitaille out of the Gretzky deal.

So that’s what Robitaille had to keep telling himself every time he heard a rumor.

“I’ve never been traded in my whole career,” he said. “I wouldn’t like to be traded now. There is no better city to play hockey in than L.A. right now. We want to win the Stanley Cup. The fans have been great. It’s a good place to be. I think I have to go out on the ice and show I don’t want to be traded.”

Robitaille lay low through most of the summer, taking a lot of time off as he regathered his confidence. He has been working with weights to improve his strength and his skating, and he says he feels really good. He did a lot of training in August.

He obviously enjoyed training camp at Hull, where he’s a fan favorite and where he spent hours signing autographs. He’s also a media favorite, a real darling of the French-speaking radio and TV reporters.

But there were just as many reporters waiting for him to switch from his more familiar French to his charmingly accented English.

“We used to pack this place,” he said after practice one morning, glowing as he recalled the days when he loved the game. “We won everything here. (Montreal Coach) Pat Burns was the coach, and we had a very good team. It was a good time.”

It was good to be back on the ice that made for those good times.

Robitaille’s spirits are on the rise.

He joked about trying to grow up on a team that just keeps getting older, saying: “They are bringing in players old enough to be my dad. Every year I feel like a rookie. They might initiate me every year if it keeps going that way.”

But at least he has a lot of faith in all those veterans around him. “We have a lot of players who know how to play the game,” Robitaille said. “Now just let them play.”

In the exhibition season, Robitaille is playing on the left side of Bernie Nicholls’ line, with Dave Taylor on the right. They are the three Kings who have been Kings awhile, who have played on a line together in the past.

He likes that, too.

Yes, things are definitely looking up for Robitaille.

“I’ve improved my game a lot,” he said. “I know I could have helped the team more last year, and I’m looking forward to having a better year. I think I’m better defensively--Robbie helped me a lot with my defensive game.

“I think I can help the team a lot more than I did last year. There’s an excitement on the team now.

“It’s good to have a fresh start with a new coach (Tom Webster). He came in and talked with us--he talked with me. He told me he has confidence in me.”

A bit of the old Luc came shining through with his smile as he added: “I think it’s going to be fun.”