Illegal stick didn't cost Kings the series, but it's the turning point everyone will remember

IT WAS LIKE one big wound, the Los Angeles Kings' dressing room, and when you walked into it, you could feel the hurt.

There was Tony Granato, hard-nosed the previous three hours, soft-spoken now. ‘I've never had to swallow a loss like this playing hockey, or any other sport,” he whispered, and his forlorn expression said the same thing, only with more emphasis.

There was Luc Robitaille, who always looks 12 years old and happy, only this time he looked much older and sadder, slumped on a bench with a beer in one hand. “Even though it's gonna be a short summer,” he said, “it's gonna seem long.”

There was Tomas Sandstrom, huddled in the far corner with some Scandinavian journalists, looking stunned. There was Charlie Huddy and Mike Donnelly and Corey Millen, all emerging from long, long showers. There was Kelly Hrudey, already dressed and Wayne Gretzky, already gone.

And then there was Marty McSorley.

Perhaps no King will have a longer summer than McSorley. No King will lament more over what might have been.

No King will ponder how the Stanley Cup final would have gone had the Kings brought home a 2-0 lead from Montreal.

It was McSorley's stick, found to be illegal, which cost the Kings a 6-on-4 advantage, which eventually cost them Game 2 and a 2-0 edge.

The Kings did not — repeat, did not — lose this series because of Marty McSorley's stick.

They lost three straight overtime games. They lost two of them at home. They squandered opportunity after opportunity in just about every game against the relentless Montreal Canadiens. They submitted their worst effort of the final last night at the Forum, absorbing a 4-1 drubbing in their last game of a miraculous postseason.

But when fans look back on this series, they won't remember all that. They won't remember Patrick Roy's brilliance. They won't recall the electrifying and ultimately crushing overtime period in Game 4 in Los Angeles. They won't remember John LeClair from a chocolate eclair.
They'll remember the Marty McSorley stick incident as the turning point in a series that was going L.A.'s way and made an abrupt U-turn.

McSorley knows it. He knows it isn't his fault the Kings' names won't be inscribed on that gaudy goblet. Yet he also knows the folklore of sports. He knows that legendary incidents are impossible to erase from memories.

He knows that there are as many stick blades with illegal bends in them during the NHL playoffs as there are Canadians with French surnames.

And he knows he'll never hear the end of it.

“Whether it's fair or not, I'm not gonna carry that around,” he said, after scoring the only Kings' goal of the night.

“I know what happened. I'm not gonna kid anybody. I'm nobody's fool. Certainly, it didn't help our hockey club. But what do I say? What do I do?

“I'm not fearful of anything. I'm responsible for what I do. But I'm gonna take everything in stride and try to be a better player for it. That's all I can do.”

There were times when McSorley became irritated with the stick inquiries yesterday, snapping at reporters and at one point ignoring a query with a sharp “Next question.”

He also refused to talk about his own status as a free agent, saying only that he was “proud to be an L.A. King.”

As McSorley spoke, you could see a speck of red in the corner of his right eye. It was the last remnant of a shiner he got when he fought Wendel Clark in Game 1 of the Toronto series.

It was a reminder of McSorley's role in these playoffs. In that Game 1, the evening was already lost, so McSorley took a run at Doug Gilmour, knocking the Leafs' star to the ice. Clark came running to defend Gilmour and the two fought.

McSorley had jump-started his teammates, inflamed the Leafs and set the tone for what would become a brutal seven-game affair.

In the final, McSorley also established the tone. But it wouldn't turn out in the Kings' favor.

McSorley's bad stick will live in the memory of L.A. sports fans like the Gerald Henderson swipe of a Lakers' crosscourt pass in Game 2 of the 1984 NBA final. You can't say that was the reason the Lakers lost. But you can say that things were never the same afterward.

There was more than just McSorley's stick to moan about. The Kings were asked repeatedly about turning points, and they offered candidates.

“The first game in L.A., when they scored right away in overtime,” Robitaille said. “We outplayed them in the second and third period and they still won. That was the series right there.”

“You gotta look at Game 4,” McSorley said. “If we could have put the puck in the net in Game 4, we could have tied it at 2-2. If we could have won Game 3, we'd be up, 2-1. We were there. We were there both times.”

“That fourth game,” Hrudey said. “We went right after it and then they scored that overtime goal.”

But overtimes and fluky goals and thrilling periods have a way of melting into one big block of hockey recollections. People won't remember the score of Game 2. They won't recall Hrudey's sparkling efforts in defeat. They won't be able to remember any of the starless Canadiens, save for Roy.

But fair or unfair, they'll remember Marty McSorley and The Stick That Saved Montreal. “The season's still not over in my heart right now,” McSorley said.

It may never be.

By MICHAEL VENTRE
MONTREAL/The Los Angeles Daily News