Shuchuk Weaves His Magic : Hockey: The Canucks’ nemesis scores with less than a minute to play, lifting the Kings, 6-5. Gretzky hits a homer.

And a tiny player shall lead the Kings.

That seems to have been the plan the last two games for the Kings, who are getting big goals from their smaller players, seemingly ruining Coach Barry Melrose’s argument for bigger personnel.

Tuesday, it was 5-foot-11 forward Gary Shuchuk who converted a centering pass from Luc Robitaille with 54 seconds remaining to give the Kings a 6-5 victory over Vancouver before a sellout crowd of 16,005 at the Forum on Tuesday night.

The game before, it was 5-8 Pat Conacher scoring twice against the Mighty Ducks.

As for Shuchuk, it was his first goal in 23 games this season. He seems to save his very best for the Canucks; the biggest goal in his career came in double overtime of Game 5 against the Canucks in the Smythe Division finals last spring.

“You’ve got to fall in love with a guy like that,” King Coach Barry Melrose said. “A guy like him, he always scores big goals.”

Said Shuchuk: “It was a char-acter-builder. They say Vancouver is one of the biggest teams and L.A. is the smallest. We match-ed them tonight, and I think we have more talent than they do.”

The Kings’ Rob Blake had four assists and Wayne Gretzky added one goal and two assists. Gretzky had gone six games without an assist, the longest such streak in his 15-year career.

It is the first time since the first week of November that the Kings (14-20-2) have won consecutive games.

“I think we’re sort of out of the recession,” Melrose said. “The buyers are optimistic.”

Twice the Kings rallied from a two-goal deficit. The second time came in the third period, behind Gretzky. Gretzky started the comeback at 5:22 of the third with an unusual power-play goal.

Blake missed a shot wide and Gretzky misfired, hitting Robitaille’s back. The puck sailed back to Gretzky, who swatted it out of the air, waist high. Gretzky was about 30 feet from the edge of the right circle and batted it by a surprised goaltender Kirk McLean.

“I just hit it as hard and as straight as I could,” Gretzky said.

It must have been his batting practice with the Angels, not his golfing ability. “I’m not a good golfer,” he said.

A little more than three minutes later, Gretzky struck again, setting up Dave Taylor at 8:41 on a two on one.

Earlier, it had appeared that two penalties would cost the Kings. Within a 55-second span in the second period, King defense-man Tim Watters and Conacher were each assessed game mis-conducts for high-sticking majors.

Watters was thrown out at 18:14 for clipping Dixon Ward, and Conacher was ejected for high-sticking Cliff Ronning seconds after Ronning had elbowed him. In between the two incidents, the Canucks scored on the major pen-alty to take a 5-3 lead at 18:47.

King Notes

Owner Bruce McNall attempted to halt the infighting between his front office and coaches on Monday, holding a lengthy summit meeting between the various factions at the Forum. Among those at the meeting were McNall, team president Roy Mlakar, General Manager Nick Beverley, Coach Barry Melrose and assistant coach Cap Raeder.

“I was trying to keep the panic level down,” McNall said. “I feel we’re on the right track. We talked about everything, we had good harmony. My issue is that it takes two to rattle things. If anyone is to blame, you have to go to the top. It’s my issue at the end of the day.” McNall said the issue of whether to trade Jimmy Carson needs to be settled soon.

Said Beverley: “We cleared the air and now we’ll carry on and try to get some wins. We went through a lot of things.” He declined to specify which issues were covered in the meeting, saying: “It’s internal and it’s going to stay internal.”

Right wing Tony Granato has skated on consecutive days, starting Monday. Tuesday, he skated for about 40 minutes and said his back is improving. Granato has sat out seven games--including six in a row--because of an inflamed disk in his lower back. “So far, so good,” he said.

Left wing Dan Currie was sent back to the Kings’ minor league team in Phoenix on Tuesday. Currie had one goal and one assist in five games with the Kings. . . . The other scratches were center Carson and defenseman Mark Hardy. Carson has been scratched from two consecutive games.