STANLEY CUP FINALS : Things Appear OK Now

MONTREAL —  OK. You listen, yes? Alexei Zhitnik is telling a story. And Alex sprinkles most of the English sentences he speaks with the word, OK. Same way Ronald Reagan began so many of his with, “Well. . . .”

Alex is the King from Kiev. He is the kid, 20 years old, who is emerging as the star-is-born rookie defensemen on a team full of over-30, established NHL stars.

His native tongue is Russian. He is from the Ukraine. His family is still there, following the North American hockey news from afar.

OK?

Go, Alex.

“OK. So you remember I am getting hurt in Toronto game, yes?”

Yes, we remember. Everybody on the Kings remembers.

Rammed into the boards at Maple Leaf Gardens during Game 5, Zhitnik crumpled into a heap and lay motionless. Doctors told him to take the rest of the night off. Instead, he skated to the bench and sat there wearing a wet towel draped across his head like a sheik’s veil.

“I tell doctors that I am OK, but, you know doctors, they say no.”

Yeah. Those doctors.

“My head hurts much, though. And my eyes, oh!”

OK, so go ahead with your story, Alex.

“OK! So my family back in Ukraine, they get most of news about me from newspaper--next day, maybe two. Games not on television there. OK, maybe sometimes on TV they show the high . . . the high . . . what you call them?”

Highlights?

“Highlights, yes. OK, but mostly I telephone to tell what happen to me, or they read newspaper.

“OK. I come to hotel, you should see messages:

“ ‘Alex, call home! Call home, Alex!’

“I am worried because, you know, maybe something back home is not well, yes? So, OK, I call home.

“I say, ‘What is wrong?’

“And they say, ‘What is wrong? That is why we call you! ‘ Ha!”

Update for Zhitnik family:

Alex feels fine. Never better. No aftereffects. He says to tell you he will fly home to Ukraine soon after the hockey season is over, maybe a week. He is coming home for the summer. He says tell his friends to get their cottage by the seaside ready. Then he will tell them all about his American hockey adventure.

Zhitnik played in the Olympic Games for his country. For a “Unified” team. But his country broke up.

“Life is very different for me since perestroika ,” he says.

Then he grins and says, “But look at me. Now I am playing here.”

He and his family are involved in an ever-changing world. Back home in Ukraine, the great issue is what to do with 176 nuclear missiles and 1,000 warheads inherited after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Many wish to surrender them. No nation has ever given up its nuclear weapons. Many fear the Russians want them back.

“OK, is crazy time for everybody,” Zhitnik says.

Ukraine’s athletes go their own way and try to mind their own business. Andrei Medvedev plays tennis in the French Open. Alexei Zhitnik plays hockey in the United States and Canada.

And all they know back home is what they see in their newspaper.

“They know who Wayne Gretzky is, OK, sure. And Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey. I think they know Stanley Cup is dream of all players in NHL. Me, I know nothing of Los Angeles Kings except I hear they are like 11th-place or 12th-place team most of time, yes?”

Unfortunately.

But the Kings were wise enough to choose Zhitnik, a 5-foot-10, 178-pounder who buzzes around like a bumblebee, in the fourth round of the 1991 draft. You could pick players from anywhere and everywhere. So they did.

Were they in for a surprise.

“This kid is playing hockey like you can’t believe,” King assistant coach Cap Raeder said. “He’s all over the ice out there.”

Perpetual motion. That’s what he is. Wayne Gretzky spotted Alex the other day and said, “There goes the Energizer bunny.”

Brian Engblom, a former Montreal defenseman turned radio analyst, said of Zhitnik during Tuesday’s 4-1 King victory, “He’s only 20, and he’s got all kinds of skills and toughness. You can hit him all night and he’ll still be coming at you.”

Some of the older Kings have adopted him. Young punks often cause resentment. Not so with Zhitnik. When he went down against Toronto, you should have seen the fists shaken by the Kings who swore revenge.

“You mess with little Alex, you mess with us,” Marty McSorley said.

Rob Blake, often his shift partner, said, “He’s becoming more and more popular on the team and in Los Angeles. I don’t know a player in the league who’s improving any faster than Alex.”

Including his English?

“Hey, pretty soon he’ll have his own radio show,” Blake says, nudging Zhitnik, who was sitting beside him.

“OK, OK, I talk about Rob Blake,” Alex replies.

OK. Go, Alex.

“OK,” he says and begins another story.