Nice on Ice Won’t Cut It Here

OK, King family: We won’t suggest anything too outrageous here. We don’t want any drastic line changes, Wayne Gretzky benched in favor of Mike Allison or anything like that. We shouldn’t get too worked up about one lousy loss. And we definitely wouldn’t advocate that you start playing, uh, dirty hockey. Don’t go around shish kebabing anybody with your sticks.

But, to beat the Edmonton Oilers, you might have to beat them up. Check ‘em, deck ‘em and wreck ‘em. Otherwise, these oily little rascals are just too slick. Unless you smack them around and slow them down, the Oilers will leave your defensemen as frozen in their tracks as the Gretzky statue that guards the door of the Northlands Coliseum, and they will leave your goaltender flopping on his belly like a seal.

Right from Wednesday night’s opening faceoff of the Smythe Division finals, the Oilers demonstrated their superior quickness and stickness. Glenn Anderson put a move on King goalie Kelly Hrudey the likes of which hasn’t been seen in Alberta since Katarina Witt slipped into her lace teddy. He scored. Five minutes later, Jari Kurri did a dipsy-do that left Hrudey sprawling flat on his, uh, mask. Another score.

Came the next two periods and more of the same. Mark Messier slapped one. Score. Martin Gelinas flipped one over the goalie’s glove. Score. Esa Tikkanen bluffed a slap shot and faked Hrudey into the organist’s private box. Score. Joe Murphy made Hrudey go into a dive like the “Red October.” Score. Tikkanen tikked another one in. Score. Game 1 turned into an Edmonton avalanche, 7-0.

Talk about losing ugly.

Maybe for the Kings it was just one of those nights when the only thing that goes right is that your suspenders don’t snap.

Or maybe, just maybe, this was a classic case of a bunch of guys taking too much time off for good behavior. Maybe the time has come for the Kings to turn back into the Manchester Blvd. Bullies, same way they did when they pounded lumps on Edmonton’s helmets last time they met.

When the King-Oiler rumble turned gruesome at the Forum on the final night of February, everybody made note of the 86 penalties and 356 penalty minutes that made this game the nastiest confrontation in the Los Angeles area since the last time Roseanne Barr’s writers had a staff meeting. Oh, the fuss that was made over Marty McSorley, the mutant ninja hockey player, doing his level best to mess up Messier’s face.

Forgotten in all the commotion was that the Kings won that particular game, 4-2. And face it, they don’t ordinarily have much luck against Edmonton, regardless of how that 1989 playoff series turned out. The Oilers played the Kings eight times this season, and lost to them only twice. Edmonton has had L.A.’s number, and we don’t mean 99.

If Wednesday’s game is any indication of how this series is going to go, may we humbly suggest that when the Oilers take the ice here Friday night, the Kings go right out and crown them.

Hey, we were just sort of getting comfortable with the notion of L.A. as a tough hockey town. These were becoming the all-new, leaner, meaner Kings, bad boys dressed in black. Nobody was accusing them of turning into the Philadelphia Flyers, but 356 penalty minutes--man, that’s not hockey, that’s mud-wrestling. That’s some dirty stuff.

And the Kings haven’t been making many friends lately, either. Some of them were offended by former teammate Bernie Nicholls’ alleged comment that the only thing the Kings know about defense is how not to play it. There was also some fuss made over Theron Fleury of Calgary supposedly hurling his stick at Gretzky and calling him “the most hated player in the league,” and Flame Paul Ranheim accusing Gretzky of waving his arms and laughing right in the Flames’ faces.

It was kind of nice having people bad-mouthing the Kings for a change. In the past, people hardly mentioned them at all.

Sadly, though, the Kings who laced up their skates for Game 1 against Edmonton were about as inoffensive as a hockey team gets. We can scarcely remember a hard check into the boards, much less a punch in the snoot. Oh, McSorley gave Kevin Lowe a little love bump as the first period was ending, and later on Lowe and Steve Duchesne demonstrated surgical techniques to each other’s eyebrows with their sticks. Otherwise, the Kings played like perfect gentlemen.

And came away with a big fat zero.

OK, Kings: You tried the polite bit. You tried to be nice, pleasant guests. You probably wiped your feet before stepping into the arena. It didn’t work. The Oilers still have to beat you three more times. Beat them to the punch.