The Kings’ Good Fortune

When Luc Robitaille scored against the Detroit Red Wings recently--just another goal for a player who has scored plenty--his reaction said it all:

He leaped.

That’s a generous description, because we’re talking about a pads-laden hockey player who isn’t exactly a sky-walker.

“Every goal is like he’s just scored his first goal,” says Steve Duchesne, who shared rookie seasons with Robitaille long, long ago.

It was his 490th, and now he’s at 494 and counting--fast. He’s about to join the NHL’s 500 Club, which has only 26 members, and he’s still like a kid at Christmas every time he sees a flashing red light.

It’s what he does: score.

He’s lucky that way.

Like his first goal, the one that earned him his nickname.

“It was my first game in L.A., my first in the league and I was playing with Marcel [Dionne],” Robitaille says.

” . . . It was against St. Louis. [My] first shift, the puck was in the zone, and I can’t remember who the goalie was for St. Louis [Rick Wamsley], but he was behind the net and threw the puck around the boards and I was kind of forechecking. And Marcel blocked the puck at about the hash mark, by the circle, and I cut toward the net and nobody was there and I yelled ‘Marcel!’ and waved my arm and he sent me the puck and there was an empty net.

“That was my first shift, my first shot. That’s why Tiger Williams called me ‘Lucky.’ He said, ‘You’re lucky. Your first shift, you scored. You come to practice in a Mercedes. You live in the biggest house on the team [Robitaille lived with Dionne].’ It was Marcel’s Mercedes. I was driving with Marcel. I didn’t even have a car. I was driving to practice in a Mercedes, and Tiger said, ‘ . . . you’re lucky.’ ”

He’s still Lucky.

The Lexus is his, and so is the Lincoln Navigator. So are the millions of dollars, the home in Brentwood and the 494 goals and counting, all earned over a 13-year career. So are the miles upon miles, the trades to Pittsburgh and New York and then back to Los Angeles, where he figures he belongs. And the injuries. And the losses.

Especially the losses. Especially this season.

Lucky.

Uh . . .

“Lucky has earned everything he’s gotten,” says Jim Fox, now the Kings’ television analyst, then a winger and Robitaille’s conscience.

Every rookie’s conscience, actually.

“He hasn’t been lucky. You’ll see some goals and you’ll think he was lucky, but he’s paid his dues, he’s learned the game. And that’s what I appreciate from Luc. I never get the feeling from talking to him, from playing with him, from being around him that he’s taking this all for granted. I never get that feeling. I get the feeling that Luc knows he’s fortunate to be where he is and to truly understand that what he does is special.”

Fox helped teach him that. Forcefully.

“Jim Fox came up to me my first year in the league and said, ‘ . . . 20 years old,’ ” Robitaille says. “That was when he was playing on a bad knee. He said, ‘Let me tell you something,’ and he was mad. He said, ‘You’d better enjoy every moment because your career is going to be so . . . short that you won’t believe it.’ I still remember that day, and I look at him now and say, ‘You were so right. It’s amazing how quick it goes.’ It’s so fast you barely have time to blink, it’s so amazing.’ ”

One day you’re a French Canadian kid from Montreal, a late-blooming junior player with a chance to make a team in the NHL, in the league of the sainted Maurice Richard. You can play a game or two every year at the Montreal Forum, the equivalent of the Vatican when you’re a Canadian kid with French as your first language.

“When I was a kid, I would have done anything just to visit the Montreal Canadiens’ dressing room,” Robitaille says.

And you can escape your dad’s scrap yard. Avoid being a cop, which was an option. Or a gym teacher, which was another.

The next day you’re 32 and about to join a rather exclusive club, but you’re still the French Canadian kid, playing the kid’s game and being paid handsomely to do it.

Mentally, time has stood still. Physically, the clock is running--fast.

“Even when things are bad, you sometimes don’t realize how good things are,” Robitaille says. “You’re still living your dream. Even when things are at their worst, it’s still the greatest time of your life. You’re still doing something that millions of people would love to do.

“I’ve never taken the game for granted. Sometimes I’ve been disappointed and really gotten down on myself or down on the situation. And I’ve lost my confidence at some points and had a lot of sleepless nights, but I’ve never taken the game for granted. Never.”

The memories of what was are too vivid to be overshadowed by what is.

He was a throw-in with Canada’s team in the world junior championships, a playmaker who found that he could score. He was a ninth-round draft choice who came to the Kings with a surgeon’s touch with the stick and a plumber’s ability to skate.

“He had excellent hands,” says Dionne. “His biggest drawback was his skating ability . . . but he’s found a way to compensate. He had a deceptive shot, but you could see that he was a pure goal scorer.”

It’s something you can’t teach, coaches say. There’s a sixth sense a scorer has that puts him in the right place at the right time, with the ability to take advantage of the opportunity.

Sunday in Chicago, a funny thing happened on his way from the penalty box to the bench. Robitaille had served two minutes for exchanging unpleasantries with the Blackhawks’ Doug Gilmour, and as he plodded across the ice, the puck was passed free by Jozef Stumpel. In the confusion, Robitaille found himself alone with the puck and with an unencumbered path to Blackhawk goalie Jocelyn Thibault.

Goal No. 494.

Lucky.

It’s a metaphor for a career, Robitaille says. It’s a metaphor for a lot of things.

“I believe that anything you want to do in life, you get a chance,” he says. “You get maybe two, three chances.

“But if you’re ready and willing to pay any price when that chance comes, I believe you can make it. When I got my chance [to make the King roster], I was really ready mentally and physically, and I was willing to pay the price more than anybody else who had the same chance at the same time.”

The price since, hockey-wise, has been high. He’s 32, with a family, a secure future well before his time, fame and a fair fortune. But there’s a void in his life. He didn’t realize it until he became older and played with Wayne Gretzky with the Kings and Mark Messier with the New York Rangers. Both are 500-goal scorers with championships on their resume.

Then he took a look at Dionne, also a member of the 500 Club, also with a void.

One Dionne can never fill. Robitaille still has a chance.

“I think the first five-six years, I wanted to show I belong in the league, to prove something,” Robitaille says. “I think I’m at a different point now.

“I really want to win. I realize I’ve been in the league 13 years and I haven’t done it. I haven’t won a Stanley Cup. I really know now that’s the ultimate. [Canada] won the World Championship and that was great. And the year [the Kings] went to the finals, that was great. But there’s nothing that compares, I know that now. . . . To me, that’s the ultimate.”

Gretzky and Messier have seen it, felt it, tasted it. Robitaille’s senses have gone unrequited.

His mind says it’s possible. It has to be, because without the goal, the game itself has to be enough. Each leap, each time the red light flashes has to be put into a championship context to make sense.

It’s why he gets so emotional, why he was crushed after a particularly ugly loss at Calgary in November.

Time is running out. The end is closer than the beginning, and to forestall that end, he has gotten in the best condition of his life.

“It will be really hard when I feel that it’s my last year and we haven’t won the damn championship yet,” he says. “I look at it now and say, ‘What have I got, five years left?’ Five years to win the championship. That’s not much. That’s the way I feel, the way I look at it.

“When we lose, it drives me crazy. I really believe we have the right base. If we could get in the playoffs, we could surprise some people. But we have to get there.”

The Kings are looking from a distance at eighth place in the West, the final playoff position. Robitaille is closer to Goal No. 500, to his 500th leap after the red light goes on.

He’s lucky that way.

And unlucky in the standings.

King Goals

Top 5 goal sources

Marcel Dionne: 550

Dave Taylor: 431

Luc Robitalle: 424

Bernie Nicolls: 327

Butch Goring: 275

Note: These are goals scored as Kings

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The NHL’s 500 Club

NHL players who have scored 500 goals or more, through Sunday’s games (*-- Indicates active player; teams listed are where players were when 500th goal was scored):

Name, Team Goals

*Wayne Gretzky, Edmonton 891

Gordie Howe, Detroit 801

Marcel Dionne, Kings 731

Phil Esposito, Boston 717

Mike Gartner, N.Y. Rangers 708

Mario Lemieux, Pittsburgh 613

Bobby Hull, Chicago 610

*Mark Messier, N.Y. Rangers 607

*Dino Ciccarelli, Detroit 607

Jari Kurri, Kings 601

*Steve Yzerman, Detroit 575

Mike Bossy, N.Y. Islanders 573

*Brett Hull, Dallas 563

Name, TeamGoals

Guy Lafleur, Montreal 560

John Bucyk, Boston 556

Michel Goulet, Chicago 548

Maurice Richard, Montreal 544

Stan Mikita, Chicago 541

Frank Mahovlich, Montreal 533

Dave Andreychuk, New Jersey 524

Bryan Trottier, N.Y. Islanders 524

Dale Hawerchuk, St. Louis 518

Gilbert Perreault, Buffalo 512

Jean Beliveau, Montreal 507

Joe Mullen, Pittsburgh 502

Lanny McDonald, Calgary 500