A Brash Splash, Talking Trash

And for his first shift, newest King Jeremy Roenick will be throwing out the ceremonial first pitch tonight at a major league baseball game.

In, um, Anaheim.

Across the street from the, shhhh, Mighty Ducks.

“I can see them trying to do a lot of good things in Anaheim,” Roenick said. “I still think we’ll kick their ass.”

*

From the Great One to the Garish One.

For the first time since Wayne Gretzky, the city’s nice little hockey club has acquired a player who can tower over the team, beat his chest, make lots of noise, and cause the room to roar with laughter and nervousness.

Meet Jeremy Roenick.

Kong King.

“I get going, I get riled, I’ll defend myself, my teammates, my game,” he said.

Upon joining the Kings in a trade with the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday, Roenick got going and got riled, all right.

He ripped the Ducks, tweaked his coach, imitated a teammate, played general manager and lounge act, then ripped the Ducks again.

Thank goodness for the new salary cap, which forced Philadelphia to trade him and allowed the Kings to grab him, even if it’s only for one season, which is all this human set of jumper cables should require.

“This guy is Showtime, this guy is Magic Johnson,” Luc Robitaille said with a laugh. “Man, this year is going to be so much fun.”

Fun, and perhaps formidable, considering Roenick, 35, is that rare talent who backs up his penchant to talk smack with an ability to, well, smack.

He showed up at the team’s training facility like an expert gardener coming upon a dying lawn.

A nine-time All-Star joining a locker room of mostly anonymous kids.

A tough veteran center climbing into a rink that doesn’t have one.

A guy averaging almost exactly a point a game for 16 seasons inserted into a stat sheet lacking scoring. A melodrama among mechanics.

Given his age, he’s Karl Malone when he joined the Lakers. Given his mouth, he’s Gary Sheffield when he joined the Dodgers.

Given his strut when he walked into the room Thursday, he’s exactly what the Kings need, which is exactly what he wants.

“I think I fit in very well in L.A.” Roenick said. “I’m an L.A. kind of guy.”

He is truly a hockey player straight from Hollywood, showing up in faded jeans, a black T-shirt, scars curling around his jaw, nose tilted on his face, smile as wide as the pavement in front of Grauman’s.

And, oh yeah, a mess of sort-of blond hair that is part star, part seaweed.

“This is L.A.,” he said. “So I tinted it.”

This is L.A., so, while the Ducks acquired a better player Thursday in Scott Niedermayer, the Kings acquired a more important one in Roenick.

In this brash new NHL world, they need to sell entertainment, and that is what he does.

“I get diarrhea of the mouth quite often,” he said.

That’s nothing compared to the way he can still run his game. Two years ago he flamboyantly led the Flyers to within a blink of the Stanley Cup finals only weeks after suffering a broken jaw and concussion.

“I’m passionate about everything,” he said.

Especially, he said, the fans.

At least when he’s not ripping them.

Roenick is most famous recently for his response to a question about fans who were turned off by the yearlong lockout.

“We’re going to try to make it better for everybody, period, end of subject,” he said at the time. “And if you don’t realize that, then don’t come. We don’t want you at the rink. We don’t want you in the stadium. We don’t want you to watch hockey.”

The quote made headlines everywhere. On Thursday, it made the news conference, when I asked him, so why don’t you want anyone to come to hockey games?

As usual, he didn’t back down from his words, but he did try to soften them.

“People who understand what I said, know what I said,” he said.

What?

“I hug a lot of fans, I love fans, I bring fans into the game,” he said. “I was making reference to certain people who have hatred and jealousy toward the pro athlete, to people who wouldn’t come to games in the first place.”

So what about King fans?

“Real hockey fans are important,” he said. “I would never tell them to stay away. If fans stay away, most of what I play for is out the window.”

The problem is, for the Kings to be successful, they have to attract the sort of casual fan that Roenick was probably ripping.

But, hey, whatever, boo him if you must, he says he’s used to taking as many shots as he gives.

“A lot of guys don’t like me in the first place,” he said. “They don’t like to play near me. They don’t like to be around me. But if people don’t appreciate you for who you are, then I don’t have time for them.”

Besides, he knows the importance of juicy quotes.

“My recognizability in the last three months has skyrocketed,” he said with a grin, and it soon became obvious why.

Discussing Robitaille’s excitement at the trade possibility, Roenick didn’t just talk about his friend, he imitated him.

“He said, ‘I’m calling them right now, I tell them to get you!’ ” Roenick said in a perfect Robitaille-French accent.

Roenick didn’t just talk about a conversation with doleful Coach Andy Murray, he hilariously described it.

“It was exhilarating,” he said. “I had to ask questions to get words out of him.”

You want to know the Kings’ remaining needs? Just ask.

“Hopefully we can get Ziggy Palffy signed,” he said. “We need one defensemen and one forward.”

You want to know how he will get along with another great talker and tough guy, teammate Sean Avery? Just ask again.

“I’m older, I’m more experienced, I’ve got more games, I get the mike first,” he said.

Finally, asked whether he wanted to amend his original quote about dominating the Ducks, he agreed.

This time, he added directions.

“We’re going to kick their ass up and down,” said Kong King, and look out below.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.