Kings, and fans, are three wins from altered reality
Before Anze Kopitar allowed his thoughts to spin back in time—should he go to his backhand, he wondered, like he had all those years ago in a shootout against Martin Brodeur—there had to be some kind of reckoning.
There had to be some soul sitting in a darkened home in say, Torrance, listening to the Los Angeles Kings on the radio, because that has always been the preferred method for SoCal hockey fans of a certain age dating all the way back to the 1970s, when the team could be found on a Christian FM station.
Throughout Wednesday night, as Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals plodded along, that person had plenty of time to ponder the zany turns it took to reach this juncture in late May. There had been so many early and middle Mays when the Kings somehow found a way to mess everything up, and those kind of memories don’t stay down.
The New Jersey Devils have hoisted Lord Stanley three times in the last 16 years. They’d be considered one of the greatest franchises in all of sports if they didn’t have the misfortune of playing in the shadow of the Yankees and the Giants.
That person, that Kings fan who still probably has a closetful of outdated purple—“Forum Blue,” it’s called—might have wondered why the Kings never veered close to being called “Great.” Mostly it’s a word that had been co-opted for years by the Lakers. As Wednesday’s dull first period dragged on, the mind slipped back to the glory day of 1982, to the Miracle on Manchester. Yes, that was plenty great, the way the Kings completed the largest comeback in NHL playoff history.
Down 5-0 against a stacked Edmonton Oilers team that included a young Wayne Gretzky, those Kings embarked on a stunning third-period blitz, finally winning the game 6-5 in overtime. Eventually those gritty Kings eliminated the Oilers to reach the second round, and everyone was convinced hockey had found its proper place in the desert.
When Gretzky broke a nation’s heart and was traded to the Kings, everyone waited for the sky to begin raining Cups, but that never happened. They was still some kind of fun, the Gretzky years, and the mind might have chewed on those memories as the Rock in Newark turned into a Russian sauna Wednesday night. Players from both teams had so much rest—too much, probably—and now the first period ended with each side shooting just five times. The Kings appeared to be skating in sand, their passes off, their shots awry.
The mind might have wondered how the Devils could be playing so nervously, making so many panicky turnovers. How many times did they miss the open net? Four? Five? Kings goalie Jonathan Quick grew up on this side of the country, over in Connecticut, and sometimes Quick drops so low to the ice, he practically melts into it. But even he was off. Still the Devils only got one bouncing puck past him.
“I think we outwork teams,” Quick would say. “Whoever wins this series is the one that outworks the other.”
Is this how this rare June ends for these Kings, a team that puttered into the playoffs as the eighth seed, that sliced Vancouver and then St. Louis and Phoenix with coldblooded ruthlessness, that shrugged at a midseason coaching change and will now follow Darryl Sutter to the moon if he asks? Could it possibly end with Jeff Carter—a player Devils fans despise nearly as much as any slug who wears Rangers gear—staying healthy for at least another week?
The long-suffering Kings fan might bite his lip as he thinks of the Kings’ stunning play on the road—nine straight after Wednesday’s 2-1 overtime victory, even if Sutter tried to downplay that marvel by saying, rather grouchily, “We won one on the road now. Season started today, tonight.”
The mind might have thought of turning on the TV, to see if any of the brilliant local California stations were reporting that the NBA’s Sacramento Kings had won the game, since it is so terribly hard to tell the two apart. The Kings’ creative marketers have even released a tongue-in-cheek infographic, to aid those dear media types still having trouble with hockey in Los Angeles extending to the summer.
All of this and so much more gained steam in the brain’s cortex as Kopitar picked up a no-look pass near the blue line from Justin Williams. Kopitar’s only 24, and the NHL's first player from Slovenia. But he’s been in his share of prime-time spots, and now here he was on a breakaway in OT, going one-on-one with the great Brodeur.
In open ice, with the Rock seriously dripping, and with most everyone expecting him to fire from afar, Kopitar’s own mind took over. He traveled back to that shootout in LA, to a time when he went backhand on Brodeur.
“Maybe he thought I was going to do it again. Tonight I just wanted to mix it up a little bit," Kopitar said.
Kopitar juked, Brodeur froze, and soon came a wrist shot off the center’s forehand. At 8 minutes and 13 seconds into overtime, the Kings won their first Final appearance since 1993.
"He's a world-class goaltender but I think I got the best of it tonight,” said Kopitar, grinning, sweating.
Three more games like this, and the mind will truly know what it means to boggle.
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