Gretzky Wanted to Play : Hockey: His mobility was limited, but not his desire to compete. A doctor finally told him he had to sit out.

As he spoke to reporters in a hallway underneath the stands Tuesday night at the Forum, his back to the ice, owner Bruce McNall of the Kings turned to see a Zamboni bearing down on him.

“With our luck, we’ll get run over by this,” McNall told the group. “The worst thing is, I wouldn’t get killed. You guys would, and I’d get sued. I wouldn’t be lucky enough to get killed by this thing.”

McNall could be excused for imagining a worst-case scenario.

His crippled team already trailed the Edmonton Oilers, three games to none, in the best-of-seven Smythe Division championship series when McNall was told about an hour before the faceoff that Wayne Gretzky would not be able to play in Game 4 because of the pain in his hyper-extended back.

Gretzky missed the last 1 1/2 weeks of the regular season and the Kings’ first two games of the playoffs because of the injury, which was sustained on a blindside check by Alan Kerr of the New York Islanders on March 22, but returned to lead the Kings with nine points in the last four games of their first-round upset of the Calgary Flames.

But late in the first period of Game 3 against the Oilers Sunday night at the Forum, Gretzky was cross-checked by defenseman Steve Smith.

“Yesterday, he was really hurting badly,” McNall said. “He got hit in the same spot as the other hit, so basically he was pretty bad after the last game. There was a lot of doubt in my mind as to whether he could play. (But) he has been hurt the whole series. It has been amazing that he has been able to play.”

Despite the pain, though, Gretzky wanted to play Tuesday.

“When he came in, I said, ‘How do you feel?’ ” McNall said. “And he said, ‘Well, I’m going to try to go.’ But he went downstairs (to the locker room) and the doctors saw that he had no mobility at all.

“He just couldn’t do it.”

Said Gretzky: “I knew yesterday that I wasn’t going to play. When we’ve done this therapy, we’ve said the only way I could hurt the back again is if I got hit the same way, and I got hit the exact same way.”

Steve Lombardo, the King physician, said that Gretzky’s back had stiffened to the point where his mobility was limited.

“I wouldn’t say it’s worse, but when he got hit the other night, he had a significant setback,” Lombardo said. “I wouldn’t say it was exactly to where he had started from, but it was (like) he was starting over again.”

Gretzky was told by Lombardo to sit out, McNall said.

“I didn’t think he should play, but that’s his decision, and he always wants to play,” McNall said of the NHL’s all-time leading scorer. “He was trying to find a way to play, but there was no way to do it.

“The doctor has told him for the whole series, ‘Do not play.’ Finally, the doctor today, I understand, told him, ‘You can’t play.’ And I guess he took that more seriously.

“In theory, I guess, it’s Wayne’s decision, but most of the cards were taken out of his hands. The doctors were pretty adamant that it wouldn’t be a smart thing for him to do.”

As the Kings bowed out of the playoffs, swept in the division finals for second consecutive year, Gretzky was limited to watching.