STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS : McSorley Carves Himself a New Niche in Hockey Lore : Game 2: His handy work creates a cloak-and-dagger tale that may come to be known as ‘stickgate.’

Marty McSorley was a busy man Thursday morning.

He got in a new shipment of sticks, six in all. But like most sticks, they needed some work.

That’s not unusual.

Sticks can come out of the factory with all kinds of small variations, some of them illegal by NHL standards.

McSorley made the alterations himself.

That is not unusual.

Hockey players love to spend time at the rink playing carpenter and welder, using saws and torches to mold a stick to their liking.

McSorley, however, failed to mold at least one stick to meet league requirements. As a result, he was penalized when the Montreal Canadiens called him on it, and it cost the Kings a victory.

That was unusual.

McSorley said it was the first time in his career that he had had such a call made on him.

“Every stick is different,” defenseman Rob Blake said. “Some are bigger and some are smaller. To win a Stanley Cup final game because of an illegal stick is kind of a joke.”

Blake said he had five sticks for Thursday night’s game. How many did he check beforehand?

“I don’t check any,” he said. “But I will from now on.”

McSorley said he knew there was a problem with the curvature on his new batch of sticks, but thought he had taken care of the problem.

“I used a torch to straighten them out,” he said. “But I guess I didn’t do that one.”

Still, McSorley concedes, he’s not as diligent about his sticks as he probably should be.

“Gretz (Wayne Gretzky) is the only guy who makes sure every stick is perfect,” McSorley said.

OK, so the stick was illegal. But how did Canadien Coach Jacques Demers know that?

He said one of his players simply spotted the illegality.

There was even some conjecture that the Canadiens had somehow broken into the Kings’ locker room in the wee hours of the night and measured all the sticks.

No way, insisted equipment manager Peter Millar, who said the club brings its own locks with it.

“If anyone had broken in,” he said, “I would have known it.”

Stickgate?

That’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. Rogie Vachon, an assistant to owner Bruce McNall, said he had a stick ruled illegal in Montreal in the 1970s when he was the Kings’ goalie.

The Kings managed to win that game.

“In those days,” Vachon said, “there was only a padlock on the locker-room door. There was a suspicion that someone from the office would come down and break the lock so the equipment could be measured.

“It happened not only here, but everywhere.”

McSorley, who will be automatically fined $200 by the league for the infraction, said the stick penalty wouldn’t have happened if he had not been forced to change sticks halfway through the period.

“My other stick got all beat up,” he said. “I think any other stick on the rack that I would have taken would have been OK.”

Would he give Demers credit for making a brilliant move?

“Boy, he’s a great coach, isn’t he?” McSorley said sarcastically. “How did he know I’d be out there with 1:45 to play. There might not have been a whistle. I might have gone off on a line change.

“I’m not going to stay up all night worrying about it. I made a mistake. I’m not avoiding responsibility. I’m just going to put on my gear and play.”