STANLEY CUP FINALS : The O-Word Has Become Odious

I hate overtime.

I hate it like airplane food. I hate it like elevator music. I hate it like synchronized swimming. I hate it like snakes. I hate it like artificial turf. I hate it like polyester.

I hate it because that’s how UCLA lost that great NCAA basketball game to Michigan . . . in overtime.

I hate it because that’s how the Lakers lost that great NBA basketball game to Phoenix . . . in overtime.

And I hate it because the Montreal Canadiens keep killing the Kings . . . in overtime.

It happened again Monday night at the Forum, where Game 4 of these Sudden Death Syndrome Stanley Cup finals might very well have been “as exciting a hockey game as you’ll ever want to see,” to quote a very sad Tony Granato, but will go down in history as nothing more than another TKO in OT for L.A.

Come on, Montreal. Cut it out.

If you absolutely have to win this thing, go out and beat our boys in Game 5 by something like 10-0, because we can’t take much more of this.

After this 3-2 brain-drainer, Barry Melrose, the Kings’ coach, tried to immediately put it out of his mind. (Good luck.)

“The thing about sports is, the minute something is over, you (have to) forget it,” Melrose said. “If you dwell, you end up in the loony bin.”

But virtually everybody who was in the building Monday will dwell for hours, maybe weeks, maybe months on some of the close calls and near-misses that came during the overtime period, when the Kings threw everything at Montreal goaltender but the Great Western sink.

And now, all the Kings’ horses and all the Kings’ men have to put the Los Angeles hockey team together again.

“We can’t give up now,” Granato said.

I guess it’s not over until the overtime lady sings.

If the ending was terribly sad, the beginning was simply bad.

For some unknown reason, the Kings once again had a case of the opening-period yips.

Since these playoffs began, L.A. has scored 38 second-period goals to only 23 in the first period. The explanation? Please call our toll-free number soon and ask for a Mr. Melrose if you can come up with one. Either the younger Kings must be uptight, or the older Kings must be neglecting their stretching exercises.

Something else hurt, too. Dave Taylor and Charlie Huddy, the Los Angeles codgers, called in injured. Neither played.

Not many Kings of any age dropped by Mister Roy’s neighborhood during the first period. Their attack . . . uh, didn’t. Only four Kings--two of them defensemen--got off a shot during the first 20 minutes. Tomas Sandstrom had half of the team’s six shots. Brian Bellows and Benoit Brunet of the Canadiens had half a dozen all by themselves.

But, same as in Game 3, once the Zamboni left the ice, the zombies showed some life.

There was a completely different aggression from the Kings during the second period. They outshot Montreal by four. They kept Bellows and Brunet from taking one. They kept the pressure on Roy. They kept their composure after a 10-minute Marty McSorley misconduct rap. They killed penalties successfully and finally found their own power play, cashing in on one for the first time since Game 1.

The wake-up call last Saturday was Mark Hardy’s defender-bender on Mike Keane. This time, it was a second-effort goal from Mike Donnelly that followed a deft theft by Granato.

That got the Kings going. They out-hustled and out-muscled the Canadiens for the rest of the period. And, when McSorley converted a pinpoint pass from Gretzky into an equalizer, five seconds from the horn, Bruce McNall nearly had to telephone for a carpenter because the crowd noise practically blew off the roof.

Little did any of these noise-makers know that this would be the last goal of the game . . . until the last goal of the game.

The sudden-death goal.

The one in--I hate to even say the damned word--overtime.

If Game 5 ends up tied after three periods, couldn’t we please call it a tie and move on to Game 6?