NHL PLAYOFFS : As Boys Become Kings, Dreams Become Real : Game 1: Childhood thoughts were of Maple Leaf Gardens. L.A. opens the conference finals there.

The boys of winter grew up dreaming of Maple Leaf Gardens, of taking the ice someday for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

They played pond hockey in small towns scattered throughout Ontario: Wayne Gretzky in Brantford, Rob Blake in Simcoe, Warren Rychel in Tecumseh and Marty McSorley in Cayuga, to name a few. Even far away from Toronto, in Kelvington, Saskatchewan, King Coach Barry Melrose grew up watching one team on Hockey Night In Canada--the Maple Leafs.

“It’s like a kid in Los Angeles growing up watching the Dodgers win the World Series or a Yankee fan in New York,” Gretzky said.

Said Rychel: “This is what it is about. Watching Hockey Night In Canada during the playoffs and being allowed to stay up late on a school night.”

But then you grow up and enter the real world. And you realize you have to beat Toronto to get to the Stanley Cup final.

Goodby, adolescence.

Gretzky, for all of his accomplishments, will face a new experience when the Kings play the Maple Leafs tonight in the opening game of the Campbell Conference final. It will be his first playoff game at Maple Leaf Garden. As a teen-ager, he sneaked into a playoff game there, but the Maple Leafs were in decline during his most prosperous years in Edmonton.

The Maple Leafs’ last Stanley Cup championship banner is older than the King franchise. Toronto defeated the Montreal Canadiens in the 1967 Cup final, months before the first puck was dropped in Southern California.

Toronto’s dry spell is older than their rookie goalie, Felix Potvin, who is 21. In a sense, they have been living off tradition for almost 26 years. The Kings needed 26 years to get past the second round of the playoffs, but they never had any grandiose tradition to live up to.

The teams are meeting for the first time in a best-of-seven series. The Kings were 1-2-1 against Toronto during the regular season.

This series features the Kings’ high-powered attack against the Maple Leafs’ disciplined defensive system. There’s even family involved: Melrose, a former Maple Leaf player, will be trying to figure out ways to stop his first cousin, Toronto left wing Wendel Clark.

Playoffs are often influenced by individual matchups, and this series has no shortage of intriguing ones, among them:

Gretzky vs. Doug Gilmour--The rejuvenation of Gretzky is remarkable, and the entire league has taken note.

The victory over St. Louis in Game 7 was ensured, but not quite complete, when Toronto Coach Pat Burns’ mind started wandering.

“There are four teams left, and we are one of them,” Burns said. “All I was thinking in the third period was: ‘Who will I match with Wayne Gretzky?’ I’m too smart to get too excited.”

Especially since the years have seemed to melt off Gretzky, 32, who is the NHL’s leading playoff scorer with eight goals and 23 points. He realizes the Kings might never get this close again, and his teammates are starting to draw from his enthusiasm.

“They’re loaded with confidence, and they’re skating phenomenally,” said Maple Leaf forward Glenn Anderson, a former teammate of Gretzky’s in Edmonton. “I’m looking forward to it. But I wish I wasn’t playing them, because they know what the secret ingredient is. They can smell and taste the Cup. I think they’re the team to be beaten.

“He (Gretzky) is the chemistry of that team. He knows what it takes to win and people feed off his electricity, sitting beside him. It’s going to be very difficult to stop him.”

Gilmour might be assigned. A finalist for the Hart Trophy for the NHL’s most valuable player, he has been one of the best two-way centers in the league for years, but he didn’t get a great deal of attention until the Flames traded him to Toronto in January of 1992.

This season, he shouldered more of an offensive load, getting a career-high 127 points. In the playoffs, he is the second-leading scorer behind Gretzky, with six goals and 21 points.

Who will stop Gilmour?

“You don’t stop Doug Gilmour,” Melrose said. “You just try to contain him, like we did with (Pavel) Bure. He’s a unique player, a talented man who has a lot of courage. Maybe we’ll put Gretz out there.”

Actually, the Russian rookie, King defenseman Alexei Zhitnik, might be designated. Zhitnik drove Bure to distraction and kept him in check, so the importance of the Gilmour assignment would hardly faze him.

Melrose vs. Burns--They might not have appreciated him in Montreal, but Burns can coach. The Kings know this because they approached him about becoming their general manager/coach last spring after Tom Webster was fired.

While Melrose had fun in the first two rounds, calling Dave King and Pat Quinn “geniuses,” he made no such remarks about Burns, confining himself to respectful comments.

Burns is not given to long speeches, but his players listen closely to every word. “Whatever he says always hits the point,” said Toronto center Mike Krushelnyski, the former King who has had his own revival under Burns.

“He said on Saturday: ‘Being this close, gentlemen, you may never get another chance like this.’ ”

You could say the Kings are almost in the same position. Except they have to beat their childhood idols, the Maple Leafs.

Playoff Notes

King Coach Barry Melrose was irritated by the Vancouver media during the Smythe final and he brought them up again at his first news conference in Toronto on Sunday. “There’s a lot of guys in Vancouver, a lot of your colleagues with egg on their face,” Melrose said. “Guys who said we were supposed to lose in four straight. We play a very hard style of hockey. I’m sorry if it bothers some of the purist in you that feel we should win 2-1. We play very hard and very physical.”

There are two other links between the Maple Leafs and the Kings. Wayne Gretzky used to be the boss of Toronto Coach Pat Burns, hiring him to coach his junior team in Hull, Quebec. Burns coached there for four seasons before leaving for Sherbrooke of the American Hockey League in 1987-88. Luc Robitaille played junior hockey for Burns Hull. Maple Leaf assistant coach Mike Murphy coached the Kings for parts of two seasons, replacing Pat Quinn in the 1986-87. He was fired 27 games into the next season, going 7-16-4. . . . Gretzky was asked about the turning point for him after he returned to the Kings’ lineup after sitting out the first 39 games because of a herniated disk. He mentioned two instances, one a morale-boosting dinner with Melrose and assistant coach Cap Raeder in Quebec City in February, and when he spoke out during the team’s travel problems during the Eastern blizzard in mid-March.