Creative Tension : Knickle’s Play in Goal Sparks Kings’ Surge, Creates Uncertainty Among the Incumbents

What has the NHL brought goaltender Rick Knickle in his one-month career with the Kings?

Fame, as in interviews with CNN and many major newspapers, plus frequent appearances on sports highlight shows.

Fortune. Well, sort of. Besides his $68,000 salary for the rest of this season, he has earned $2,500 extra from his five victories.

Above all, though, and obscuring those concerns, his ascension to the NHL has helped bring Knickle, 33, closer to his parents--particularly his father, George. Knickle’s father and mother, Janet, live in Lakeland, Fla., in the winter and were on hand to see his first NHL victory, against Tampa Bay on Feb. 22.

Afterward, Knickle started crying in the dressing room.

“I thought his dog died,” King Coach Barry Melrose said.

Then Knickle and his father embraced.

“I think it was the first time I gave my dad a hug,” Knickle said later.

His improbable arrival and instant success with the Kings has helped him gain a greater understanding of his parents.

“He was one of the best players in the Maritimes,” Knickle, who grew up in Greenwood, Nova Scotia, said of his father. “I think he could have made it (to the NHL). He was good enough. But he was in the Air Force, and my parents had six kids in seven years. I see them now and it’s like they’re newlyweds. I really appreciate now everything they’ve done for me. I hope I can do something for them.”

Knickle left home at 17 for the junior hockey team in Brandon, Manitoba, in the Western Hockey League and has spent the last 14 seasons chasing the NHL dream. Except for a five-month retirement in 1987, Knickle and his wife, Tracy, never quit believing he had the ability to reach the NHL.

“I’ve always told him to keep playing if he wanted to,” Tracy said. “I’m not one of those wives or girlfriends who get tired of it. I never asked him to quit. I didn’t ever want him to blame me if he quit too early. I’ve left it up to him.”

Luckily, for Knickle, he won’t ever have “What if?” in the back of his mind. In his eight appearances with the Kings, he has played well in all but one game, and that turned out to be an 8-6 victory over Ottawa. He is 5-3 with a goals-against average of 3.66.

More important, his arrival appears to have changed the Kings’ attitude. Melrose declared about three weeks ago that the race among Knickle, Robb Stauber and Kelly Hrudey for No. 1 goaltender job was wide open. And it still is.

Melrose will keep all three goalies for the rest of the season, but obviously hopes to go with only one during the playoffs. The uncertainty has prompted varying reactions from the three.

Earlier in the month, Stauber said he wanted to be traded if he wasn’t going to play. Hrudey has grown quieter and more distant. After his victory against the Islanders on Thursday, his first in more than a month, Hrudey chose not to speak to reporters, for probably the first time in his King career. And since, Hrudey has been as silent as the “H” in his last name.

Knickle maintains that he is simply happy to be in Los Angeles and talks enough for all three of them. Stauber, too, has remained approachable and talkative, even though he probably went through the toughest stretch of all, going a month between starts.

Knickle, who is expected to start Wednesday against Vancouver, acknowledges that there is a little tension in the dressing room.

“It’s tough,” Knickle said. “I’ve been there before, in Kelly’s situation, where another guy--either an older guy or a younger guy--was brought in. I’m the new guy on the block. I’m not going to come in here and say I’m taking over.

“I don’t know what Kelly’s thinking. I’m sure it hurt him a bit. In sports if you say, ‘Hey, look what I’ve done.’ It’s like, ‘Well, what have you done today?’ I told my wife, ‘Don’t get caught up in this. It’s going to be bumpy.’ ”

What the three-ring goaltending situation has done, however, is make all of them play better to stay competitive. Stauber (13-7-2) has won his last two starts and has played well in his last three. Hrudey, who will play Friday at Edmonton, looked sharp against the Islanders and is 16-19-5.

“(Knickle) came in and gave us a spark,” assistant coach Cap Raeder said. “It was fresh blood. With the competition, he’s made the other guys play better. They see this guy playing all the games, and they want to play, too. They’ve all responded.”

Said Melrose: “I want one guy to step forward and really get hot. That’s the idea. The next weeks will be our Frankenstein stage. All experimenting to try and create the perfect team.”

So far, no one can argue with Melrose’s method. The Kings have won four consecutive games and seven of their last nine, including six in a row at home.

And the coaches don’t care if the competition is unnerving.

“It’s been tough to figure out what will happen,” Stauber said. “(Melrose) has been right on every time. Maybe he’s got ESP.”

There’s a good chance none of this would have happened had Knickle still been toiling away in San Diego with the Gulls of the International Hockey League. Now that he shares a dressing room with Wayne Gretzky and flies with the Kings on their private jet, Knickle can chuckle about all those minor league memories.

In Saginaw, Mich., the Zamboni driver once smashed into the boards while driving off the rink and tore the door off.

“I think he had a few,” Knickle said. “The game was delayed more than half an hour.”

In Flint, Mich., the opposing coaches once took their fight out in the alley outside the dressing room and the teams followed.

“There we were in the alley on our skates,” Knickle said. “The trainer had to re-sharpen all of our skates before the next period.”

And in Albany, N.Y., Knickle learned that the Flint team had sold him there for $1. At least that’s what Knickle believes happened.

“I don’t know if it was a dollar,” he said. “No more than $10. Put it this way, it wasn’t enough to buy dinner at Denny’s.”

Either way, it has given him a different perspective on life in the NHL. “I feel like I didn’t age from 25 to 33,” he said. “That’s why I’ve kept a fresh attitude. I think I can play for another five years.”

No matter what happens, he will always have Los Angeles. The saga isn’t complete yet, but Melrose says, “Rick Knickle is a Norman Rockwell story.”