McKenna Reacts to Incident

He’s a union member, and in this case it’s not the NHL Players Assn. The Kings’ Steve McKenna is part of the United Hockey Enforcers, one of whose brethren, Marty McSorley, was assessed a rest-of-the-season suspension for slashing Vancouver’s Donald Brashear with a stick to the head. They serve as a kind of league police force that enforces what they consider a code, and Coach Andy Murray believes they have a purpose.

“I call them a deterrent,” he said. “You know, like a nuclear deterrent. If one side has one, you’d better have one too.”

In the Kings’ case, it’s McKenna, and like everyone else, he has seen the incident.

“He took [the enforcer role] to an extreme,” said McKenna, who agreed that McSorley was completely out of order in his transgression and that he deserved the punishment.

Now, McKenna wonders how the fallout will affect his job.

“One thing to be concerned about is if they start trying to interpret what happens on the ice by what happens on the street,” he said, referring to the possibility that Vancouver’s judicial system might become involved in the incident. A fight on the ice, he maintained, is part of the game and nothing like a fight outside the arena.

More likely, it will result in an instant tightening of rules concerning on-ice decorum, then a gradual easing off.

Until the next time.

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The Kings made a minor league deal Wednesday, sending center Donald MacLean from Lowell of the AHL to St. Johns for center Craig Charron, a former roller hockey player with the Los Angeles Blades.

In doing so, the Kings gave up on MacLean, once a highly regarded prospect who wowed them in training camp in 1997, started the season with the team, then faltered.