A Great Day for King Fans

Thanks, Wayne. We needed that.

Wayne Gretzky, the last action hero, will skate again this season for our Stanley Cup finalist--oooh, don’t you still love saying that?--L.A. Kings. This means we now have the best of both worlds, a legitimate shot at a championship led by the premier player in his sport as well as a spanking new expansion club that will slip and slide and slap shot its way into your hearts.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of these Los Angeles losses. We lost Bo Jackson. We lost Magic Johnson. We lost Marcus Allen. We lost Fernando Valenzuela. We lost Mike Scioscia. We lost Byron Scott. We lost Paul Coffey. We lost Wally Joyner. We lost Kevin Greene. We lost Charles Smith. We lost Tommy Maddox. We lost Eric Dickerson. We lost Jim Abbott. We lost Ken Norman. We lost Curtis Conway. We lost Pat Riley, Mike Dunleavy, Larry Brown. The last exodus I saw like this, Charlton Heston wore sandals.

So, good news.

Somebody finally stayed.

In what could be Gretzky’s greatest move, he didn’t.

Viva Los Angeles. Hooray for hockey wood. I did not care to spend this winter watching the Kings rebuilding. I want to spend this winter watching the Mighty Ducks building. I want to see the Kings pick up where they left off, winning faceoffs before faces from Michelle Pfeiffer’s to Nancy Reagan’s. But if the Kings go south, so might their fans. We’ll end up with standing room only at Duck-Canuck games.

Our fans are hot for hockey now. Once upon a time, friends of mine didn’t know Gordie Howe from Goldie Hawn. They didn’t know Jari Kurri from Hare Krishna. But now they want tickets. King tickets. Duck ducats. We are talking hockey in August, if you can believe that. Training camps open in a couple of weeks, if you can believe that.

Yet without Gretzky, and potentially without Marty McSorley, a squad that had just hit its stride would have begun to backpedal. Ninety-nine subtracted from ‘93-94 could have left the Kings with next to nothing.

Don’t forget, the Kings did not have all that peachy a season until Gretzky got back in the game. This was a third-place team that got hot in the playoffs, remember. This was a team that, when Gretzky was disabled, absorbed some of the most embarrassing defeats in the organization’s history--10-2 defeats on home ice, lopsided defeats by expansion teams, defeats that had loyal King fans in a bad, bad mood.

So, chill out. Don’t you feel better now?

The news this week that management had hung onto valuable puzzle pieces such as Warren Rychel, Pat Conacher and Gary Shuchuk would have been far less newsworthy had the Kings lost numbers 99 and 33 on your scorecards. St. Louis had just dangled a cool 10 mil, or some such sum, in front of McSorley, who knows a good check when he sees one. And mum had been the word from Gretzky, who hadn’t been heard from since downtown Montreal was burning.

Late Wednesday night, 99 committed. One more season, minimum. Provided his back doesn’t act up, of course. Says Gretzky’s agent: “We don’t want to speculate past that.” No multiyear commitment is worth a hill of mini-beans unless a man is walking erect and not stooped over like some cave dweller.

I don’t mind. One more season is all we wanted from Wayne, coming on the heels of that Cup chase. It’s so close now, we can smell it. Barry Melrose’s cupboard would not have been bare, but any coach who gets stripped of Gretzky, McSorley and Coffey in one year’s time could be forgiven if he hid inside a penalty box and never came out, except for doughnuts. Even Anthony Robbins would tell Melrose: “Hey, don’t look at me, man.”

Gretzky still has a number of records to break. There’s . . . let’s see . . . there’s, uh . . . well, there must be a couple. I’m pretty sure there’s the Most Goals Ever Scored on a Thursday record. And there’s the Most Times Saw Net Come Unhinged record. And, of course, he will soon be in position to break the Subject of Most False Rumors in Canadian Newspapers record, previously held by Margaret Trudeau.

Gretz had a good-bad year. Family, good. Back, bad. Playoffs, good. Finals, bad. Things went right, things went wrong. Even a joke backfired. I was there the day he said: “Ninety percent of this game is 50% mental.” It was a gag. He said it that way deliberately. But it has been quoted and repeated as a malaprop worthy of Yogi Berra, to whom that quote is usually attributed. That’s the trouble with jokes. Ninety percent of them work out, but 20% don’t.

Anyway, I’m glad that he isn’t leaving us.

About time somebody didn’t.

* ANALYSIS

Wayne Gretzky decided to return to the Kings for at least another year after weighing several factors--though his contract wasn’t a major consideration. C4