That’s the Way to Win Fans

Another day, another suspension. And NHL players’ names are appearing in police reports as often as game reports.

So it goes in the NHL, the meanest game on ice.

Where once there were snarls, there are taunts and an occasional epithet or throat-slitting gesture. Where once players slashed opponents on the back of the leg when the referee wasn’t looking, they’re clobbering one another over the helmet, taking two-handed swings from behind at unprotected heads and skewering opponents like shish kabob.

The 10-game suspension New Jersey defenseman Scott Niedermayer drew Tuesday for hitting Florida forward Peter Worrell over the head with his stick struck another sour note in a discordant tune. It came a day after San Jose’s Bryan Marchment was suspended three games for skewering Mighty Duck forward Paul Kariya--and both happened while Boston defenseman Marty McSorley is preparing to defend himself against an assault charge for having clubbed Vancouver’s Donald Brashear Feb. 21.

“It’s not war out there,” Duck defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky said.

He paused. “Well, sometimes it is war, but you can’t go out and hurt somebody intentionally. That’s just stupid,” he said.

Daryl Evans, the Kings’ radio commentator, believes the chase for bigger paychecks spurs players to cross the line between hard hits and dangerous ones.

“It’s meaner, more deliberate,” Evans said in comparing today’s NHL to his era, the 1980s. “There were worse agitators in the league years ago. Remember Ken Linseman? He’d get in your face, get under your skin. There were lots of pests. But Worrell was giving elbows [to Niedermayer before the incident]. It’s almost like guys are taking things more into their hands, like, ‘I’m going to take care of it now.’ ”

It doesn’t have to be that way. The Kings and Mighty Ducks proved that in the Ducks’ 5-2 victory before an announced crowd of 17,494 at Staples Center, the first of three games they will play in the last 20 days of the season.

Until the Kings’ Sean O’Donnell needlessly speared Vitaly Vishnevski with less than three minutes left and the outcome all but determined, they proved teams can play hard without being dirty, that it’s OK to hate the other team when that hatred is based, in part, on respect for the other team’s strengths. There was one fight, an assortment of thumping body checks and many of the good things about hockey.

“When I was in Quebec, we had a rivalry with Montreal that carried over to the beer, because one team was owned by O’Keefe and the other by Molson,” Duck General Manager Pierre Gauthier said of his scouting days with the Nordiques. “It was a war, but it wasn’t a stupid war. We had Dale Hunter, but it was a competitive war. It was for bragging rights.

“Our rivalry with the Kings is there, and I think what makes it good is the fans. They’re pretty fanatic about it. The game last week in Anaheim [a 2-2 tie last Wednesday] was one of the best games in years for me. It was outstanding from a competitive and fan point of view.”

The Kings gave their fans little to cheer about Tuesday until Glen Murray’s second-period goal, a determined effort with Duck defenseman Ruslan Salei bearhugging him. The intensity escalated, befitting the Ducks’ push to make the playoffs and the Kings’ efforts to keep a seemingly sure berth from slipping out of their grasp.

Rarely have the Ducks and Kings been so closely matched so late in the season. One seems to be in a slump and the other on a roll, one headed for the playoffs and the other to vacation. They are five points apart but are meeting in the middle, with the Kings in an 0-3-1-1 slide and the Ducks on a 3-0-1 streak.

“These are two pretty skilled teams here,” King Coach Andy Murray said. “One team could win all three games. We could split and tie one. It will be a battle.”

A battle, not a battlefield.

“It has nothing to do with violence. It’s a competitive rivalry,” Gauthier said. “It’s about winning and losing games. . . . Nobody is thinking about hurting anybody. We’re trying to win for our lives.”

So are the Kings, whose coach told his players not to go headhunting when Duck defenseman Vishnevski was on the ice. Last Wednesday Vishnevski’s check on King right wing Ziggy Palffy left Palffy with a sprained shoulder, but the Kings judged it a clean hit.

Except for O’Donnell, the Kings were smart enough not to seek vigilante justice Tuesday.

“I wasn’t very happy with the incident at the end,” Andy Murray said. “I’m disappointed in the fact he would even jab at a guy with his stick.”

Before that, the only hint the Kings hadn’t forgotten came when Luc Robitaille had already gotten a penalty for elbowing Kevin Haller in the second period and shoved Vishnevski for good measure.

“We talked about Vishnevski [Tuesday],” Andy Murray said. “We said he’s a hard-nosed kid, a little reckless, so keep your head up. If you get a chance during the course of the game and have a chance to hit him hard, fine, but let’s not go out of our way to seek revenge.”

The best revenge is exacted on the scoreboard, not the injured list. The Kings and Ducks may have both suffered indignities, but it was the Ducks who triumphed in the end.