For Once, L.A. Needs Shaking

I shoot pucks with Wayne Gretzky for $1 million a puck.

It’s all there in my book--”The King & I: Our Skating Addiction . . . My Cry For Help! I’ve Fallen On The Ice And I Can’t Get Up!”

Nah.

Let me start over.

I saw Luc Robitaille playing five-card stud at a poker club in Gardena until 2:30 Saturday afternoon.

Nah.

That won’t work, either.

Come on. Help me out here.

We need something to anger the Kings. Something to stir them up. Something to cheese them off. Something to make them so angry that they’ll take it out on those hosers from Montreal and carry off that big silver spittoon, the Stanley Cup.

Our rink rats need help.

They need a cause.

They need self-help that doesn’t come from some cassette tape.

They need Barry Melrose to throw an illegal stick at a referee--breaking Tom Webster’s old indoor javelin record of 60 feet 6 inches.

They need Barry to tell a referee or Jacques Demers to have another doughnut.

They need Jacques to say something about Barry Bon Jovi’s hair.

They need Mark Hardy to turn Mike Keane into human Windex again and wipe up the plexiglass with him.

They need Marty McSorley to wade into the Forum crowd and paste Mark Messier. No particular reason. Because he’s there.

They need Bruce McNall to offer his players a billion bucks apiece.

They need Rocket Ismail to step on somebody’s face.

They need Ronald Reagan to tell them to win one for Charlie Huddy.

They need Nancy Reagan to tell Ronald Reagan to tell them to win one for Charlie Huddy.

They need somebody up in Montreal to carry our star-spangled banner starside-down.

They need some Canadien to graze one of our movie stars with a puck. (They mess one hair on Michelle Pfeiffer’s head and I will personally cross-check Quebec halfway to the Yukon.)

They need one of those Toronto tabloids to run another of those Real Gretzky Kidnaped By Klingons, Replaced By Lifelike Duplicate From Ottawa headlines of theirs.

They need Jimmy Carson to come out of involuntary retirement or else replace him with Jay Leno.

They need everybody on the team to wear one of Kelly Hrudey’s Samurai Goalie banzai bandannas.

They need an ax or a pick to pluck that puck out from under Guy (I Do My Best Work On My Stomach) Carbonneau’s bellybutton.

They need somebody to stop enforcing Rule 53(z): “If at any point in an important game the Montreal Canadiens ever get truly desperate, make sure they get their way or else you’ll never work in this town again.”

They need Roy (Don’t Call Me Wah) Mlakar to repeat that adjective “gutless” that he used after Game 3 for league officials to hear.

They need Patrick (Don’t Call Me Roy) Roy to play in goal by himself without any help from Deputy Assistant Goalie Carbonneau.

They need Deion Sanders to throw a bucket of water on Nick Nickson.

They need one of those “Where is Gary Shuchuk When You Really Need Him?” overtime goals.

They need one of those “Quantum Leap” scenarios wherein Robitaille goes back through time into that breakaway during the third period of Saturday’s game and shoots that puck several millimeters farther to his right.

They need a little less pregame spectacle and a little more during-game spectacle.

They need Anthony Robbins to awaken the giants within, or, at the very least, the dodgers within.

They need a one-peat.

Wait. I know.

Let’s start that “Gretzky Hates L.A.” rumor again.

Yeah. Good one. I had to observe poor Janet Jones Gretzky on our flight last Friday from Canada as she sat there shaking her head over a copy of the Ottawa Sun with its three-inch World War III-like headline “Goodbye, L.A.?” and its accompanying story by Jane O’Hara that “confided a source familiar with the closely knit Gretzky clan”--possibly Wayne or Janet’s closely knit tailor or closely knit gardener--saying that the Gretzkys don’t want to raise their children here and that Wayne is considering a move to so-much-safer Toronto or Detroit.

That’s it!

I’ve got my angle.

Kings Better Win Now Because Wayne Is Outta Here.

There.

That should shake ‘em up.