This Is Just the Place for L.A. to Let the Good Times Roll

We’re not the Big Apple, but we sure had the Big Deal on Wednesday night. The city that loves glitz and glitter, especially its own, turned out in style when they turned on the lights for the first sports event in Staples Center.

They opened the doors to this $400-million wonder in downtown Wonderland at 6:30 p.m., and the cell phones, mink wraps, evening gowns and silk suits strolled on in. The Kings were playing the Boston Bruins in a National Hockey League game, but many in this crowd thought the blue line was what people in the cheap seats rode to get here.

It was an L.A. Opening, an event at which people don’t come to see as much as to be seen. But that’s OK, even expected in a city that has made a huge sign on the side of a hill a national monument.

What was good news for the NHL and the sport in this city was that, for every Tiffany necklace and $1,000 suit, there were a dozen Robitaille and Palffy sweaters. The real fans were here too with their 10-year-olds, here to pay homage in this home opener to veteran Luc and newcomer Ziggy. This may be a place where the first impression is that they kind of used the regular seats as background for the luxury suites, much like an artist putting in the sky after his sea and sailboat is finished, but plenty of Joe Sixpacks found their way in.

They, not the bluebloods, will be what sustains this sport and this franchise on all those Thursday nights in February when the Buffalo Sabres are in town.

Staples Center, which attracted a crowd of 18,118 that represented the largest hockey crowd in California, deserved all the predictable hyperbole it triggered.

Longtime King broadcaster Bob Miller called it a “magnificent building,” and he was right.

Staples Center President Tim Leiweke called it “a mecca for the entertainment capital of the world,” and he was right.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, getting his first real look at the completed Staples Center, called it “spectacular,” and he was right.

For a city recently jilted by the National Football League, there was some psychological healing going on Wednesday night. It was an answer of sorts to NFL doubters, a bold statement made by the production of a 950,000-square-foot facility in 18 months, and with amenities that make this a plush carpet, cherrywood kind of place.

The shiny walls and the City View Grill and the LA Gear store and the great wide concourses and the wide variety of concession stands and the Fox Sports Sky Box restaurant and the smiling ushers and the warm night all could be seen as a symbolic Take-That-NFL-Owners.

The very nature of the sport dictates that hockey needs something special going for it in Los Angeles.

Think about it. It was 90 degrees in Santa Monica on Wednesday--so much for those ocean breezes. So what happens that night? They open the home hockey schedule.

If you have spent any substantial amount of time around hockey in the East or Midwest, you are likely to be jolted by your first experience with the sport here. Before Staples Center, the Kings played at the “Fabulous Forum,” a place where the biggest star on a given night was named Jack Nicholson, and he never got out of his chair. It was a place where concession stands served quiche and cabernet. Try that in Detroit. It was not unheard of for some of the King players to list, in their press guide bios, under hobby, “surfing.”

Remember, this is a sport born and raised in Canada, where ice is used for more than martinis. It is a sport of gloves and earmuffs, of putting rubber things over your shoes so you don’t slip or freeze. It is played with the most passion in cities where it hurts a little just to live in the winter, cities such as Green Bay, about which Jim Murray once wrote: “It is a place where evening wear is mackinaws.”

The Kings have been here for 33 seasons, and there have been some good times--Marcel Dionne and Charlie Simmer and Dave Taylor and the Miracle on Manchester and, of course, Wayne Gretzky. But for the most part, it has been a struggle, a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. Indeed, a cold-weather sport trying to capture the imagination of a population of surfer dudes: “Hey, man. I like the skates and the sticks and stuff, but I gotta catch a wave.”

The closest the Kings have gotten to a Stanley Cup was 1993, and even that had a Hollywood kind of ending, disastrous in this case. They went to Montreal in the finals, beat the vaunted Canadiens in the first game and had them on the ropes in the final period of Game 2, with the next two scheduled for Los Angeles. It was heady stuff, giddy times, until defenseman Marty McSorley was caught with a stick curved more than the allowable amount, giving Montreal a power play that got it back in the game and back on track to an eventual 4-1 series victory.

Wednesday night’s game started with the lights off, lots of loud bangs and music and plenty of showtime razzle and dazzle for the introductions. It’s the only thing they did wrong all night. They should have started with complete silence, followed by a Boy Scout coming out on the ice and burning McSorley’s curved stick. Call it a hockey exorcism.

The hope is that it won’t be needed, that the Taj Mahal on Figueroa will be enough for the Kings to put much of the past behind them, to let their bygones be long gone. New digs, new successes.

That certainly is the hope of the men most responsible for building the building, Ed Roski Jr. and Phil Anschutz.

Roski was in his box Wednesday night, enjoying the moment and correctly feeling the satisfaction of his achievement. Anschutz was sitting with Bettman, rinkside behind the glass, feeling the same things Roski was, but feeling them off the record.

On the ice, the Kings battled the Bruins into overtime and got a 2-2 tie.

There were thrills and spills and drama and action. It was a proper christening for Staples Center, and a good time was had by all, especially since neither McSorley, nor his stick, was anywhere in evidence.