His Love for Kings Could Mean Losing Neighbors

Tom & Aida, our odd, but really strange next-door neighbors, have been acting a little more peculiar than they normally do.

Aida is still dusting her car every day and Tom continues to play Ping-Pong with himself in the garage--bragging that no one can return his serve, but now they’ve begun to build a barrier of trash between the two houses.

They’re also talking about moving, which means they might be taking down the Christmas decorations any day now.

Obviously something has changed, because usually Tom & Aida are waiting in front of their house to bother us when we get home, but ever since I started talking Kings with them and our chances of winning the Stanley Cup, they’ve disappeared.

This makes them no different from the readers of this column since I started writing about hockey. But it does seem a little extreme to pick up and move because you don’t want to live in the same neighborhood as a King fan.

I understand the concern about property values dropping, because there’s no question a man or woman walking around in a King sweater is an eyesore. But I’m a sportswriter with the obligation not to be biased, so I can’t appear in public looking tacky, obnoxious and goofy. I can only sleep in my King sweater in the privacy of my own home, changing the number on the back of my jersey every so often to give the wife a thrill.

I DON’T want Tom & Aida to move, of course, because like an old, worn-out lumpy couch, we’ve broken them in and they’re too old now to throw noisy parties. But that will mean no longer rooting for the Kings, and I don’t know if I can do that.

When I got to the Kings’ practice facility Monday morning, and walked up to Jason “Shaq” Allison, right away he could tell there was something wrong.

“Now what?” he said. I mentioned Tom & Aida, and got the same kind of puzzled look that Andy Murray must get when he tells Allison to try to score.

Now I congratulated Allison on getting lucky the other day in Colorado and scoring, but then mentioned my concern about his sense of direction after watching Monday’s practice. One of his shots shattered the protective glass on the side of the rink--30 to 40 yards from the net--which would be like watching Denver kicker Jason Elam take aim at the goal posts and then boot the ball into the press box.

“I was aiming at the reporters,” Allison said, and so I told him to picture columnist Bill Plaschke playing goalie for the Avalanche.

As you know, I’ve been trying to get Allison, whom Murray likens to Shaq, to score more. Apparently I’m not alone. “Shaq scored 25 last night,” teased the Kings’ Craig Johnson while I stood there talking to Allison.

“Shaq knows how to put it into the net,” I told Johnson for Allison’s benefit, and Allison shot back, “That’s all he can do.”

OK, so he was off target again, but I think I got him really fired up.

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I DON’T think the fact Allison had the Kings’ first penalty of the game had anything to do with our morning discussion, but he did seem irritated.

Allison’s physical play, as it would turn out, would kind of dictate the Avs’ terms of surrender, and I guess I’m going to have to figure out another way to really irritate him at this morning’s warmup for tonight’s game.

The first period ended 1-1, and if you were watching the game on TV you might have missed it. The Kings passed out 19,000 stealth purple-and-silver pompons to their fans. Every other hockey arena has an intimidating backdrop of 19,000 agitated fans waving white pompons, but in Staples Center--take my word for it, the fans were waving as hard as they could.

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IN THE second period the fans in Section 207 were promised hot Krispy Kremes if Adam Deadmarsh scored. You can imagine how relieved they must have been to learn the doughnuts didn’t depend on Allison scoring a goal.

Allison and I, however, have been working on his game. I made a manager out of Jim Tracy and a hitter out of Eric Karros, so Allison was easy.

I had him scoring 43 seconds into the second period--which would prove to be the game-winner, and didn’t even mind when he passed off to Ziggy Palffy to give the Kings a 3-1 advantage. I don’t expect him to score every goal.

(By the way, I’ll probably need a vacation before trying to make a hitter out of Tim Salmon, but I have that on my list.)

Now after our guys scored, the crowd began chanting, “Patrick,” to make fun of the Avalanche goalie. And I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to everyone for misspelling his name earlier. I thought everyone was saying, “Waugh,” but I’m told his correct name is “Patrick Rwah.”

Waugh, Rwah or whatever, he isn’t that good. Our guy is much better, and he doesn’t have to contend with Allison, who has to please me, and Palffy, who keeps getting fed the puck by Allison. All in all, I think we make a good team.

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I’M HAPPY to report center Ian Laperriere took no shots at his own goalie in this game. That’s how much the Kings improved from Saturday to Monday night.

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TODAY’S LAST word comes in an e-mail from Dan Kelly:

“If a reader needs to correct your spelling of Patrick Roy because you’re too busy eating pretzels rather than looking at the stat sheet and seeing how his name should be spelled, you just made yourself look really stupid by printing an e-mail that points out how dumb you are.”

What do you think is going to happen when I print your e-mail?

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T.J. Simers can be reached at [email protected]