Southland Hockey Needs More Than One Miracle

So Canada’s deputy prime minister, Sheila Copps, complains that Hollywood is dumping its culture on her country. Perhaps she doesn’t realize her country is exacting its revenge, dumping a sport on Southern California that has produced two of the NHL’s most depressed and depressing teams.

If the playoffs started today, neither the Kings nor the Ducks would be in them. With a favorable schedule, the Ducks should finish as one of the conference’s eight best teams. But the sad fact is that not even the Kings and Ducks combined would be a serious contender for Lord Stanley’s Cup.

They would have two stars in Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne, three good goaltenders in Guy Hebert, Stephane Fiset and Byron Dafoe and two respected coaches in Larry Robinson and Ron Wilson. Robinson would have to play, though. He was the kind of defender both teams need.

Intent, however, upon accentuating the positive, I went to the Forum on Monday afternoon in search of another miracle on Manchester.

Here’s the good news:

Three seasons from now, the Kings might no longer be playing on Manchester but in a magnificent, 21st century arena in downtown L.A.

Although contracts between the team and the city haven’t been completed, the Kings are holding a luncheon Thursday to announce that their vision of the future is focused on the area adjacent to the Convention Center.

Their vision a year ago proved 20-20. They saw a Wayne Gretzky of February, 1997 who, however magical he might remain with the puck, would not be a consistent scoring threat. As of Monday, he had not scored in 20 consecutive games for the New York Rangers.

If the Kings are as wise in the coming draft, they will have a team deserving of a new arena by the 1999-2000 season. They moved closer to the No. 1 choice with Monday’s 2-1 loss to Dallas.

Meantime, King management is considering ticket price cuts for next season because of concerns about the 10% decline in attendance. Apparently, too many former hockey fans are seeing those movies Copps doesn’t want in Canada instead of going to the Forum.

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Eddie Olczyk claimed a horse named Pedernales last weekend at Santa Anita for $20,000. After all, they do call it the Sport of Kings. . . .

Talking smack Monday on XTRA for a vacationing Jim Rome was guest host Eric Karros, who proved he was worthy. He ripped the Dodgers for losing six playoff games in a row, Michael Jordan for his baseball follies and Delino DeShields on general principle. . . .

A year ago today, UCLA pitcher Tom Jacquez’s season was interrupted by an emergency appendectomy. This season, he’s 3-0 with a 1.86 ERA. . . .

Appearing today at the Pond of Anaheim’s Newsmakers Luncheon are coaches George Horton of Cal State Fullerton baseball and John Robinson of USC football. . . .

The controversy over Michael Weiss’ not-quite-quad at the U.S. figure skating championships is hardly surprising. A quadruple toe jump, performed by Canadian Kurt Browning and Russian Alexei Urmanov but never by a U.S. skater, isn’t easy to identify. . . .

When Brian Boitano was experimenting with one 10 years ago, his coach, Linda Leaver, offered to help judges by holding up a sign saying, “Here’s the quad.” . . .

I was partial to Weiss because of the Carlos Santana music he chose for his long program. . . .

Last music note: Averaging 17.5 points, 13.5 rebounds and 5.8 blocks for Nordhoff High in Ojai is 7-foot Danish center Chris Christofferson. . . .

The Doak Walker Award for college running backs, like the John Wooden Award for college basketball players, is supposed to take academics into consideration. Last season’s winner was Byron Hanspard of Texas Tech. . . .

Doak Walker probably hasn’t seen a “student-athlete” with goose eggs on his report card since his old high school teammate, Bobby Layne.

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Thirteen years after winning the John Wooden Award, Michael Jordan finally got a chance to offer an appropriate thank you. Unable to attend the ceremony in 1984 while a student at North Carolina, he taped a three-minute tribute to Wooden during the Chicago Bulls’ recent visit to Los Angeles.

The video will be shown at the Biltmore Hotel during this year’s Wooden Award ceremony on April 4, when the honoree, presumably, will be another ACC star, Wake Forest’s Tim Duncan.

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While wondering if Dick Vermeil has been burned out yet by Lawrence Phillips, I was thinking: the new tennis stadium at Flushing Meadow should be named for Arthur Ashe, I gain new respect for NBA referees when I watch college games, let’s see Jerry West get the Lakers out of this one.