Embarrassment Can’t Get Greater Than This

If the great Wayne Gretzky truly wants to do something for the Kings before it is too late, he will call all of the players together, with or without the coaches, point to the various mirrors inside the Forum dressing room and tell each and every skater present to go take a good, long, hard look at himself.

He probably won’t. Because he won’t feel that it is his place. Or because it is not in his personality to be so bold. And furthermore, Gretzky having not been able-bodied enough to be of any help to this sorry team himself, perhaps he would feel guilty at passing the buck as easily as he is once again (thankfully) passing the puck.

Yet somebody should step forward to say something to these Kings, because for nearly a month now they have been making monumental fools of themselves. They have lost twice to the toothless San Jose Sharks and twice more--on their home ice, yet--to the hardly electrifying Tampa Bay Lightning, the equivalent of the Dodgers being swept in a home doubleheader by the Florida Marlins.

Wait. It gets worse. In some of these games, the scores have been ugly, not even close--6-0, 6-3. To expansion teams. Even more painful and pitiful to view was a 10-2 flogging, also on the Inglewood ice, by a mediocre Philadelphia Flyer team playing without Eric Lindros, an out-and-out disgrace that ranks as one of the low moments in a lowly franchise’s history.

Nobody ever tells off the Kings, though. Nobody boos the Kings. By now these guys would have been hooted off their home ice at either of the Gardens, Boston or Madison Square, or at any number of other rinks throughout North America. This organization is now several years into its fourth decade, with absolutely nothing to show for itself except two retired jerseys and one forlorn divisional pennant.

One reason nobody knocks the hockey players in this town is because, like so many hockey players, the Kings are by and large a bunch of really nice fellows. They don’t arm themselves with the arrogance or swagger of athletes in certain other mainstream sports, and as a result what happens is that we offer them warmest wishes for continued success.

Only one day you turn a page on your calendar and the date is Jan. 8 and somebody casually observes that the last time Los Angeles won a hockey game was Dec. 12. And then you sit down and watch Tampa Bay skate circles around a team full of past and present All-Stars and you watch Kelly Hrudey flopping up and down in the crease like a man in a carnival dunking booth, and ultimately you realize: “This team just isn’t very good.”

And it never has been. But what’s an owner to do? There isn’t much else the Kings can change. They changed owners. They changed uniforms. They changed presidents and general managers. They played musical coaches. They tried young coaches and old coaches. Bruce McNall got personally involved and then volunteered to personally step aside. McNall tried pampering the team with private planes and perks, after which he tried denying them such pleasures to see what effect, if any, this might have.

They have traded and traded. They have reassembled the Edmonton Oiler championship chess board, bishop by bishop, knight by knight. They have nurtured home-grown draftees such as Rob Blake and Robb Stauber. They spent a month or more overcompensating for the absences of Gretzky and Tomas Sandstrom with some admirable extra effort but have barely resembled the same club since the sad day that hustling Corey Millen became the latest casualty.

They never get any better.

And yet the fans remain kind to the Kings, steadfastly loyal and remarkably tolerant, because for some reason the hard-core Forum faithful appreciate the game of hockey itself on some gut level, or refuse to bail out on a failing team the way baseball or football fans do. So, the Kings sell out. Their fans don’t abandon them. Hockey in California continues to be entertainment tonight.

Even if the team we have been following for more than a quarter of a century stands a good chance of being swept at home next season by the Anaheim Ducks.

Watching the rehabbed Wayne Gretzky in his return engagement Wednesday was a real treat, particularly for those--Gretzky, McNall and Coach Barry Melrose included--who said in separate conversations that each thought Gretzky would never play again. This was his 1,000th game and what an ironic tragedy it would have been had No. 99 been confined to 999.

Gretzky got two assists and afterward said he would go to next month’s All-Star game if invited, because, after all: “There have been guys at the All-Star game with fewer goals than I have.”

True enough. But the goal that matters to Gretzky most, along with his family and physical well-being, should be the goal of the Kings to stop mucking around and start playing like professionals. Because, for the time being, they are playing not so much like rank amateurs, but like a 26-year-old expansion team. Let’s hope they can handle Ottawa.

* GRETZKY

His first road game tonight in Winnipeg will be another step in his return from a back injury. C7