BIGGER: A record 30 teams; Record attendance; Scoring on rise; BETTER?: Violence still an issue; TV Ratings lag other sports; Labor unrest looms

Next season, an NHL owner can put this starting lineup on the ice: forwards John LeClair, Joe Sakic and Peter Bondra, defensemen Rob Blake and Chris Pronger and goalie Patrick Roy.

His first line shift can bring in Luc Robitaille, Jeremy Roenick and Donald Audette.

All it takes is money.

A lot of money, maybe $70 million or so, and that’s before you sign bodies for your checking line.

And it takes a willingness to spit in convention’s eye.

“Going out and saying, ‘I’m going to buy the best possible team I can from whatever’s out there’ has proven to be a pipe dream,” said Kevin Gilmore, the Kings’ assistant general manager in charge of their checkbook.

The immediate reference is last season’s New York Rangers, who spent $67 million on free agents but didn’t make the playoffs.

It’s why free agency opportunity in the NHL is a mirage for most players, and why one form of the NHL concept--restricted free agency--is one of sports’ great misnomers.

Hockey’s rules governing free agency seem almost draconian when compared to those of baseball, football and basketball, and are the players association’s greatest failing when it negotiated the collective bargaining agreement.

“In hockey, for the most part, free agents happen at 31 years old, and for most of the players, that’s past their prime,” Mighty Duck General Manager Pierre Gauthier said. “. . . So with most players [and teams], the risk is greater.”

And the reward usually smaller.

Major league baseball players can test their market value six years into their careers, and the average major league salary is $1.98 million.

Players in the NBA need only five years before they can call the shots, and the average NBA salary is $3.5 million.

NFL players must put in four years before they can enter the market. They command $1.04 million on average, even with the league’s salary cap.

In the NHL, players have an expression that goes back to their youth, a pond-hockey term meaning taking a chance to control of one’s destiny.

“I figured it was my one kick of the can,” Bob Corkum said of his adventures with free agency last season, at 31.

“I’m going to kick the can,” Theo Fleury said of turning down the Kings’ offer of a long-term contract two years ago that could have consummated a trade with Calgary.

The problem in the NHL is, all too often the can kicks back.

The average NHL salary is $1.49 million, “but it’s not a product of free agency,” Gilmore said.

Instead, it’s the product of some owners’ profligate spending, something that is becoming a thing of the NHL past under pressure from other owners less well-heeled, or at least less liberal-spending.

Fleury was a winner, and he earns $6 million a season with the Rangers.

Corkum’s plight is more common.

He was earning about $800,000 with the Phoenix Coyotes when he decided to kick the can. Besides, he had heard the Rangers had cast their eyes longingly toward him.

“When I heard I was going to New York, I worked hard, was in shape,” Corkum said.

And then Tim Taylor got the $1.45-million contract Corkum coveted.

“When New York didn’t happen, it was hard to keep going to the rink,” he said.

When the Kings found him, he was playing in a beer league in Boston and looked pretty good.

They signed him at midseason, for $700,000, prorated to compensate for the games he missed. And they got a center who admits he was out of shape.

“You hear something and you start to work harder, and then it doesn’t happen and you wonder why you’re working so hard,” Corkum said. “You realize that you might not like training camp, but when you don’t have it, you know why it exists. You need training camp.”

A year older, ages wiser, Corkum reported to camp this season after losing almost 20 pounds and has established himself as an integral part of this season’s Kings.

For every Fleury, there are a dozen Corkums and Garry Galleys.

Galley played for $1.9 million with the Kings last season and enjoyed a career renaissance. He wanted to stay with the Kings, and they wanted him, but at $750,000. He left Southern California and was on the outside looking in until the New York Islanders snapped him up for $850,000.

Freedom isn’t free, and even this year’s free-agent class--the best and deepest since the concept was created--will learn that.

None will be poorer, though their less-renowned contemporaries could suffer.

“Free agency works because you get an opportunity to play where you want,” insists Blake, who earns $5.2675 million from the Kings and has turned down a take-it-or-leave-it opportunity to earn $7.5 million. He wants market value in a market he helps to set, and he doesn’t want to play anywhere but Southern California anyway, though that will be understated in negotiations.

Bondra wants to play anywhere that Coach Ron Wilson’s defense-oriented system isn’t being used.

LeClair is earning an arbitration-awarded $7 million from Philadelphia and has turned down a five-year, $42-million deal to kick the can. Sakic is fed up in Colorado, even at $7.9 million a year. Ironically, a contract with a no-trade clause would probably keep him with the Avalanche.

There are opportunities elsewhere for each, but those opportunities are limited because perhaps 20 of the 30 NHL teams can’t afford them.

Pronger is a special case, because he will illustrate why part of the free-agent system--Group II, or restricted free agency--isn’t working the way it was set up.

The defenseman who won the Hart and Norris trophies with the St. Louis Blues will earn $5 million this season and, at only 26, has yet to peak.

After this season he will be a Group II free agent, which means St. Louis can keep him by matching any other team’s offer.

Pronger would be an asset anywhere, and there are teams that can afford him, even at the $11 million or so a season he wants.

But no team will offer, and not only because St. Louis owner Bob Laurie is a free-spending billionaire. Designed as a mitigating factor in the age 31 definition of unrestricted free agency, the Group II category was to be a way for players to ratchet up salaries, even when their rights are retained by their current clubs.

It worked that way for a while.

When the Rangers bid $21 million for Sakic--including a $15-million signing bonus--three years ago, Colorado sold part of the Pepsi Center to match it.

The market for scoring centers went up.

When Carolina bid $12 million three years ago for Detroit’s Sergei Fedorov if he put them in the conference semifinals, the Red Wings swallowed hard and kept him.

And the market went up even more.

And then the bids went away.

San Jose’s Owen Nolan scored 44 goals last season and got no offers.

Boston’s young Joe Thornton scored 23 and got no offers.

The Kings’ Jozef Stumpel handed out 41 assists. No offers.

Collusion? Agents believe so.

Owners say they all came up with the same idea at the same time.

So now, the only recourse for Group II players in negotiations is to withhold services, which is why Stumpel is out of the Kings’ camp.

And why the San Jose Sharks had eight unsigned players when camp opened and will probably start the season with at least three, including their captain, Nolan.

And why New Jersey will try to start its Stanley Cup defense without Jason Arnott and Scott Niedermayer.

“It’s a terrible system,” the Sharks’ Jeff Friesen said of the holdout-generating process. “It doesn’t help anyone. All it does is make the team have guys who have to catch up. Is it the best thing for the team? No. Is it the best thing for the player? No.

“The player has to sit and wait. ‘Oh, we’ll get it done in two days.’ The next thing you know, a month has passed and nothing is done. There needs to be something set up where there’s an easier way to get all the players in camp.”

For now, nothing different is on the horizon, and salaries continue to go up, but more slowly over the past couple of years because clubs have learned to work within the collective bargaining agreement. Unrestricted free agents are signed as role players and for lower salaries. Restricted free agents are told take it or leave it.

Team rosters change, but with few exceptions retain their marquee names.

“My observation in Southern California is that the fans have been mis-educated by the media, which has used the free-agent situation as a way to bash the club,” said Gauthier, who cut his NHL teeth in Ottawa. “They have created a misconception with fans.

“You’re not going to build a club with free agents. You build with the draft and with your system in developing players. But when you have a hole to fill, you can get a free agent, as long as it’s for the right reasons. Or you can trade to help build your club.”

It’s why center German Titov is a Duck and defenseman Mathieu Schneider is a King.

And why the marquee list available for next season--save for Blake and Robitaille--probably won’t be.