STANLEY CUP FINALS : He Has Been a Cut Above : Kings: Melrose is more than a haircut. He is a quotable leader who has taken the heat off his players.

Barry Melrose, the hair apparent to Pat Riley, is having breakfast the morning after his most impressive coaching triumph, answering questions about . . . what else?

From Jimmy Johnson to Riley to Bill Clinton to Melrose, it’s the year of the haircut.

What would Clinton’s Beverly Hills hairdresser, Christophe, say if he saw Melrose’s unfashionable locks? His long shag hasn’t spawned great legions of imitators--actually, only one, King defenseman Rene Chapdelaine--yet Melrose has been interviewed about his hair on national TV and a full page in the Toronto Sun was devoted to him with various makeovers, all done by photo imaging.

There was Melrose with a Bart Simpson crown, as Elvis and a punk rocker, and finally, as Canadian media celebrity Don Cherry’s dog, Blue. Wayne Gretzky, nearly giggling, rushed into the hotel’s dining room to show Melrose the picture page on Saturday, the morning of Game 7.

Is this the Stanley Cup playoffs or a remake of “Shampoo?”

“You know, most of the people who don’t like my hair--they’re bald,” Melrose said, smiling.

Said Cindy Melrose: “He spends more time on his hair than I do.”

Cindy Melrose actually got her husband to blush with that last remark earlier in the season. Those were the days when the Stanley Cup finals in Los Angeles seemed like a pipe dream. And it was long before the Kings became the hottest team in Hollywood, with Barry and Cindy Melrose becoming the natural successors to Pat and Chris Riley.

You might say Barry Melrose is living the life of Riley.

“I’d love to be compared to Pat Riley,” he said. “He’s a great coach, who never got his due as a coach in L.A. Then he goes to New York and New York wins.

“If I can be compared to him, I’d be very happy.”

His suits might not be from Riley’s closet, but there are plenty of other valid comparisons--youth, success, motivational techniques and the Forum as a career launching pad.

Melrose, 36, never shrank from the spotlight during the playoffs. If anything, he is the one flipping the switch. One day, he is trading insults with Toronto Coach Pat Burns and Cherry, then he is exchanging insights with Roy Firestone on ESPN.

He was the rookie NHL coach who puffed out his cheeks at the respected veteran, mocking Burns’ weight during a Game 1 melee, causing the Toronto coach to flip out. Later, Melrose said he could have pulled out a more deadly insult, saying: “I could have said, ‘Have another doughnut.’ ”

Some other Melrose quotes this season:

--”I’m not a resort kind of guy, I’m a gulag kind of guy,” he said when asked whether the team would stay in Banff, Canada, during the first round of the playoffs.

--”I thought he was trying to order a hot dog,” Melrose said of Burns’ attempt to reach the Kings’ bench.

--”It’s not so long in dog years,” he said of the Kings finally getting past the second round after 26 years.

His audience is expanding, going hand in hand with the Kings’ success. It worked in the Kings’ favor after Game 1 of the Campbell Conference finals when he deflected the attention from Gretzky and his teammates. Almost no one was asking why the Kings lost the opener. The Canadian media was fascinated by Burns vs. Melrose.

“There was a tremendous amount of pressure put on the King players, myself included, and a lot of negative press,” defenseman Marty McSorley said. “It was almost like a zoo in Toronto. Barry made himself the focus of all the insults and everything that was being printed and said. All the signs out there in the rink didn’t have anything to do with the players. It had everything to do with Barry Melrose.

“That let us sit back and play. He took responsibility, and it deflected attention from us.”

Said King owner Bruce McNall: “I knew he was a good coach, but I didn’t realize how good he is with the media. That’s important in L.A., instead of having someone mumble all the usual cliches. He says what he thinks.

“I love it. That’s why I have to catch up with you. I have to ask reporters: ‘What do I need to be prepared for?’ ”

In Toronto, Melrose even surpassed McSorley as the No. 1 villain, an amazing feat when you consider he once played for the Maple Leafs. Even his friends who are connected with the Maple Leafs’ organization were becoming unnerved by him.

“They took a dislike to me in this town,” Melrose said. “It was funny. I was going by Wendy Sittler on the way to the bench. We’re good friends and I played with her husband, Darryl. She said, ‘Barry, I’m having a lot of trouble convincing these women that you’re a good guy.’ I said, ‘I know, you’re going to keep trying, aren’t you?’ ”

The Kings’ victory over the Maple Leafs in Game 7 did not go down easy with the fans, who considered it their God-given right to play Montreal in an all-Canadian Stanley Cup final. Proper Canadian reserve was abandoned in and outside Maple Leaf Gardens. Spectators showered the ice with cups of soft drinks and beer. Rookie defenseman Alexei Zhitnik practiced his slap shot and knocked at least one cup into the stands. (“Was that bad?” he asked).

McNall’s limo was pelted with eggs and the crowd outside started rocking it back and forth. One fan hit Tony Granato’s brother in the face with an egg. Melrose, of course, was a prime target.

“I’ve been beat up by a lot of guys,” he said. “Being beaten up doesn’t scare me.”

At least the Melroses, disliked in Toronto, have formed a working truce with Canadian Broadcasting for the Cup final. Cherry, the bombastic former NHL coach, took apart Melrose and his haircut on national television during Hockey Night In Canada, deriding his playing ability with some vulgar terms during Game 2.

Cindy Melrose confronted Cherry in a Forum corridor when the series moved to Los Angeles. They exchanged insults and Cherry abruptly became a Cindy Melrose fan, praising her for “standing by her man.”

It was Cindy’s second media adventure. Earlier, she did a radio interview in Los Angeles and talked about “Fat Burns.” Barry said he did not want to know anything about the Cherry confrontation.

“Yeah, he likes my wife. He loves Cindy,” Melrose said.

“You know what’s she’s like. She could end up having her own open line show if we stay there much longer. Knowing her, it’d be: ‘Straight Talk With Cindy Melrose.’ ”

For Melrose, the only negative about the Cherry incident was that his parents, Jim and Norrie, were sitting at home in Kelvington, Saskatchewan, and watched the show while a television crew was filming them in their living room.

“My mum was very upset,” Melrose said. “I’m in the business and I understand. They don’t. That was the only thing that made me mad. I told Ron MacLean that he (Cherry) is lucky my dad is 65, not 45.”

Maybe Melrose’s perceived brashness and audacity offended Cherry and the folks in Toronto. Could Melrose be acting like an American?

He pleads guilty.

“I feel more American than Canadian,” he said. “I love America. I love the American way. I love the drive of the Americans. The aggressiveness. That’s how I am.”

Maple Leaf left wing Wendel Clark pointed out that his cousin Melrose now is more L.A. than Kelvington, saying he has changed and is good at presenting the image of the Kings’ coach.

Said Melrose: “I don’t think I’ve changed this year. I’ve definitely changed since I left home at 15. I had to change. My personality, growing up, wasn’t the personality that I have now. I couldn’t have the same personality. I was a shy kid, quiet. And it took me a long time to meet people. Sports was an outlet for me. Sports let me get out of myself.”

His time growing up on the farm helped form his character, however. To get his first pair of good skates, Melrose had to sell three 200-pound pigs for $67 when he was 13. “They were Tacks, the greatest skates in the world,” he said. “The day they came was the happiest of my life. I put them on and wore them around the house.”

On the farm, he also formed a lifelong aversion to chickens. Melrose refuses to eat chicken, scarred by a childhood memory.

“The roosters were mean on my farm,” he said. “I had to go into the henhouse and this big rooster was in front. I threw something at it, a stick, and the thing took off running after me.

“I was running like hell. It chased me and it would peck me on the butt. It was like “Psycho.” I thought I was in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.”

Thirty years later, Melrose is still running. No one, not Dave King, not Pat Quinn and not Pat Burns, has caught him yet. The only one left in the barnyard is Montreal Coach Jacques Demers.