Kings Show What Hockey Can Be in L.A.

The real estate guy showed up, left his Denver home and everything, so we hope the Kings’ absentee owner now understands.

What happened at the Staples Center Monday night, that’s real estate.

A spot in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. A corner in the club record books. A piece of a city’s heart.

Philip Anschutz, were you watching?

The Kings came back again. They defeated the mighty Detroit Red Wings again. Mayors of Hockeytown again.

The house was filled again. Folks wearing oversized hockey sweaters in 70-degree temperatures again. Ordinary people dressed in purple hair and crowns again.

Everyone shouting about the forgotten sport, again and again and again.

The Kings advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in eight years with a playoff-clinching 3-2 overtime victory in Game 6 on a splendid Adam Deadmarsh rebound goal that symbolized one thing.

If excellence is the only issue, this is what can happen to hockey in Southern California.

It can make people take off their shirts and paint black cats on their bellies, all in honor of a goalie many of them didn’t even know three months ago.

It can make them chant, “Go, Kings, Go” like they were saying, “Hello.”

It can turn a long night into a joyous one with black pompons scattered on the ice and players dancing on skates and thousands who wouldn’t go home.

“It’s amazing how excited this town is,” Luc Robitaille said late Monday. “I’m having so much fun, it’s awesome.”

It can make us care.

And it should make us care.

The three-hour party that rocked Staples Center was no miracle on ice.

The big-market, big-money-owned Kings should win a first-round playoff series. They should fill an 18,000-seat building.

This is what they should expect.

This is what Anschutz and his real estate people should remember this summer when facing contract battles with the likes of Robitaille and Felix Potvin.

Hopefully those battles won’t be as ugly as past ones with Rob Blake and Jozef Stumpel. Hopefully this series will show the people who run the Kings that excellence not only works, but is worth it.

The man who scored the tying and winning goals Monday--Adam Deadmarsh--was acquired in the trade for Blake. This does not mean that trading away heroes to save money is always a good idea.

The Kings were rescued from the Blake trade not by the players acquired for him, but by a player signed from the scrap heap at the same time.

That’s Potvin, and his 26 saves Monday helped improve his record to 17-7-5 since arriving just before Blake left in mid-February.

The Kings got lucky with Potvin, who was in the process of being sent to the minors when he was acquired.

“He stabilized the whole team,” Robitaille said.

The rescue was assisted by Coach Andy Murray. This was not luck. The coach may be the most important--and smartest--King signing since Wayne Gretzky.

While others seem to think it’s a big deal for the Kings just to make the playoffs, Murray has expected more, and those expectations resulted in the franchise’s first playoff series victory after it lost the first two games.

“To most people on the outside, this is somewhat of a miracle, but not to us,” Murray said before the game. “There is no better feeling in life than to do something that people think you can’t do.”

Murray set the stage for Monday night’s party with an interesting morning video.

Was it “Rocky” or “Remember The Titans”?

Try clips of the Kings six worst plays in their 3-2 victory in Game 5.

“We didn’t show any of our goals, we showed only what we needed to work on,” Murray said. “When Ziggy [Palffy] scores we expect him to score. There is no need to show that.”

After showing their mistakes, Murray then showed them a clip of Palffy’s body block of Nicklas Lidstrom’s shot in Game 5.

“A guy paying the price to get it done,” Murray said.

He then told them, they had worked hard for the right to the great opportunity that awaited them later Monday.

“I said, ‘You’ve earned the right to play this game,’ ” Murray recalled.

After Stu Grimson’s unsportsmanlike conduct penalty led to two Red Wing goals, the Kings again earned it by coming back.

Since being pushed to the back pages after the Blake trade, haven’t they always come back?

The tying goal, at 10:17 of the third period, was typical Kings. Mattias Norstom stuck his stick through a defender to get the puck to Stumpel in front of the net. Stumpel lunged around Jiri Fischer to bang the puck off goalie Chris Osgood’s pads.

Then Deadmarsh showed up to knock the rebound into the net, tying the score and setting up his overtime goal.

While the players danced for the fans afterward, one was reminded of a story told earlier by Ian Laperriere.

He said he was walking to the grocery store Monday morning--yes, hockey players in this town still walk to the grocery store--when a car slowed beside him.

“Somebody actually rolled down their electric window and shouted, ‘Good luck tonight!’ ” Laperriere said. “People have stopped me before. But never like that.”

This is what happens when hockey works. This never should be such a great surprise again.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.