It’s a Pain After a Great Game

TORONTO —  Hang on.

This thing isn’t over.

You might feel like it’s over. It isn’t. It might seem as if the Kings’ hockey season has come to a terrible, painful end. It hasn’t. If Tuesday’s Game 5 had ended the season, they wouldn’t be having a Game 6. This is check, not checkmate. The Kings are cornered, not captured.

Nobody could blame you for being depressed if you are. The Kings lie wounded. They took a shot to the heart. It was a backhand shot by Glenn Anderson of Toronto. It hurt. It hurt plenty. It beat them, 3-2, in overtime. It dug them into a deep Maple Leaf Gardens hole. But the first rule of life is still this: Don’t let anybody bury you until you are dead.

It was the kind of game that must have had TV viewers leaping from couches, kicking furniture and wailing with every shot. The game lasted 79 minutes 20 seconds and the overtime period alone was so nerve-jangling that there must have been at least a dozen shots prior to Anderson’s that came ever so close to being game-winners.

How lucky were the Maple Leafs to win it?

Ask their coach.

“We pulled a rabbit out of our hat,” Pat Burns said.

How unlucky were the Kings to lose it?

Ask their coach.

“We deserve better,” Barry Melrose said.

What makes this one hurt even worse than usual is that the Kings couldn’t have played much better.

How much does it hurt?

Ask their leader.

“Every loss is tough, but this one’s tougher because we played so well,” Wayne Gretzky said.

What can they do about it?

Ask their goalie.

“There’s no time for heartfelt emotions,” Kelly Hrudey said. “If you’re a moper or a complainer, it’s not going to help you come Thursday.”

This game was in the refrigerator. It was 2-zip, Kings. It was theirs for the taking. Toronto was having trouble even getting off a shot. After two periods, the Maple Leafs had 13 shots on goal. Their crowd got quieter by the minute. Hrudey, never more masterful in goal, had things under control.

Then, with 11:17 to play, the Kings got unlucky. Gary Shuchuk, with one goal already, came in on Toronto goalie Felix Potvin like a dive-bomber. But he was taken down on the play, perhaps illegally. Nothing was called. And, as the Maple Leafs turned back in the other direction, Shuchuk was late getting back. They converged on Hrudey, who got screened by his own man. Sylvain Lefebvre slipped one through, tying the score.

That one changed everything. Everyone in Ontario drew a deep breath, particularly the home team’s players. They were in big trouble and they knew it. Anderson knew it as much as anybody. He had one strategy on his mind as the game moved along, so much depending on every play, every pass, every bounce.

What was that strategy?

Ask him.

“Just get a shot on net . . . and hope you get lucky,” Anderson recalled.

This is the guy who won five Stanley Cups with Edmonton. This the guy who played beside Gretz and the rest. This is the one Oiler who didn’t become a King. And now Anderson is a guy who has recorded a popular song called “The Leafs Are the Best,” available at Toronto stores and arena concession stands.

He opened the overtime with a slap shot right on target. Hrudey stuck out his left skate to deflect it. After that it became your-turn, their-turn, your-turn, their-turn. Maple Leaf fans looked for Doug Gilmour to do some of his usual sleight of hand, but this wasn’t Gilmour’s night. Back in L.A., others waited for Gretzky to pull another rabbit out of his helmet, but on offense this night, the great one more or less did a vanishing act.

Corey Millen got Potvin in his sights. The goalie blocked it with his left pad, then sprang onto it like a soldier onto a grenade. Back the other way: Mike Foligno fired a slap shot from 30 feet. Hrudey took it with his stick. Back the other way: Tony Granato unleashed one of his three overtime shots. Potvin just did get a piece of it.

Nine minutes gone in overtime now: Foligno and the Kings’ Warren Rychel take matching unsportsmanlike-conduct penalties. It was amazing at this point anybody on the ice still had enough energy to engage in unsportsmanlike conduct. Unfortunately for L.A., one man who did was Lefebvre. He rammed into Alex Zhitnik, leaving the King rookie in a heap along the boards, knocked out of the game for good.

His team missed him. Gilmour began circling Hrudey’s cage like a buzzard, around and around. When Wendel Clark’s slapper squirted away from Hrudey’s pads, only a quick whistle prevented a Maple Leaf from pouncing on the rebound.

Three minutes later, Foligno fired away again; he got off four overtime shots. But Hrudey was up to it. Rychel came back to rake a backhand that missed inches wide of the post. When Jari Kurri poked at the rebound, Potvin smothered it, spread-eagled. He also stopped a feeble broken-stick shot by Pat Conacher, L.A.’s 40th of the game.

Donnelly hit the side of the net. Then he tried again, point-blank. No luck. Kurri’s pass leaked through the crease and Potvin belly-flopped onto it. Rob Blake broomed another one toward him; nothing doing.

Suddenly there were but 65 seconds remaining in the overtime and the natives were getting restless, angry at not getting a call, chanting “We want a ref! We want a ref!” and hurling half-full cola containers onto the ice, leaving a brown stain all around Hrudey. It was through this stain, 25 seconds later, that a puck backhanded by Anderson somehow seeped through Hrudey’s legs like a croquet ball through a hoop, ending one of the most exciting games of the season, and one of the Kings’ most maddening losses.

Oh, how it hurt.

“I don’t think you go into degrees of hurt,” Hrudey said. “A win is always sweet and a loss is always bitter.”

This one was bitter and life-threatening.

But not necessarily fatal.