[Amazin69]

(I really should have written up all of these prequels in advance, shouldn't I? Oh, well…)

Summer, 1991.

Finally, the Kings had a season where everything seemed to click. Daniel Berthiaume had come over in a trade for failed 1st-round pick Craig Duncanson, and provided a solid goaltending partnership with Hrudey. (Berthiaume was available cheaply because of an incident in Winnipeg where he allegedly swore at a young autograph-seeker; he apologized, then took back the apology and blamed it on Jets management. Flipped to Minnesota at midseason as a consequence, he had barely played behind John Casey and the North Stars had little interest in keeping him. But the Kings had a need to fill.) A trade with Buffalo brought over the useful Mike Donnelly in exchange for Illka Sinisalo, who had been nothing more than filler.

More controversial was the early-season disposal of Krushelnyski, playoff heroics and friendship with Gretzky aside, for depth center John McIntyre, but the presence of Jay Miller (part of the Carpenter-Kasper trade) made him superfluous as an enforcer, and with Granato moving Tonelli down to the 3rd line and Donnelly filling in on the 4th, there really wasn’t space available on the left wing. (Yes, Tonelli had seen his numbers drop after posting consecutive 31-goal seasons, but that was a consequence of being moved off of Gretzky’s line, of course.) On the other side, Taylor was back at full health after missing a chunk of the previous season, and returned to form. Center remained a bit of a concern, as Todd Elik (who had flourished after taking the place of Nicholls, even leading the team in playoff scoring) seemed to be suffering from the sophomore jinx and the likes of Kasper and McIntyre were never offensive threats.

But it was on the backline where things were coming together. Duchesne and McSorley were meshing well as the top pair and Blake was flourishing under Robinson’s guidance as the #2 coupling. The team had adapted to Webster’s system and got off to a flying 16-5-1 start before hitting their worst “skid” of the season, an 0-4-4 stretch. But even that wasn’t so bad, and the Kings rebounded, ripping off a pair of 7-game winning streaks later in the year, one in January and one in February.

The Kings finished with 102 points, winning the division for the first (and still only!) time in their history. Gretzky won the scoring trophy, and had the longest assists streak. McSorley led the league in plus-minus, and Taylor won the Masterton for his return from his injuries. Everything looked good.

And yet it nearly came crashing down right away in the playoffs. Once again, the Kings had home ice stolen from them in Game 1, losing to Vancouver, and they needed an overtime win in Game 2 to even head north at 1-1. They lost Game 3 (also in OT) to fall behind, but then pulled out the win in Game 4 to reclaim the advantage and two more wins put them into the (dreaded?) 2nd round.

It was Edmonton, once again. Messier and the defending champions had finished 20 points behind Calgary in the regular season, but had won the “Battle of Alberta” in the opening round nonetheless, dousing the Flames in seven games. This time the Kings won the opener, in OT, but then lost the longest game in their history when Edmonton’s Petr Klima beat Hrudey in double OT in Game 2. A move back to Edmonton saw the Oilers win another 2OT game (this tie with Esa Tikkanen tallying the game-winner) and then the Oilers held serve again to go up 3-1. While the Kings staved off elimination by taking Game 5 at home, it only delayed the inevitable, as Craig MacTavish (still hatless) put home the series-winning goal in OT of Game 6, sending the Kings home after playing 6 OT periods in six games, to no avail.

And so ended the Kings’ only reign as division champions. For the 2nd straight season, Messier had knocked Gretzky out of the playoffs. The fact that the Oilers were exhausted and got wiped out by a North Stars team that had finished 7th in the West (in only 5 games) was thin consolation, indeed.

Summer, 1992.

One step forward, two steps back.

Having come so close, Gretzky was convinced that the team only needed a little more to get past Edmonton. (Little did he know that Pocklington, still losing money, would be holding a fire sale come training camp.) So he convinced McNall to make a trade for Jari Kurri, who had spent 1990-1991 playing in Italy when Pocklington had refused to meet his salary demands. The three-way deal with Philadelphia cost the team the services of Duchesne and Kasper, as well as a 4th-round pick, but it was hard to argue against acquiring a future Hall of Famer. (To say nothing of Jeff “Father of Jakob” Chychrun, who joined Brian “Father of Matt” Benning and Scott “Uncle of Nick” Bjugstad on the genetically-useful depth chart, not that the Kings knew that then…) Still, the Kings would struggle without their Power-Play QB and their best checking center, it turned out.

Another nostalgic trade urged by “GM Gretzky” brought in Charlie Huddy, who the Oilers had left unprotected in the expansion/dispersal draft. (The owners of the Minnesota North Stars had wanted to move the team to San Jose, but instead the league expanded and let them take half the North Stars’ players to stock the new San Jose Sharks, then held a draft to restock the depleted teams. Of course, this ripped the heart out of the North Stars team that had made such an unlikely run to the finals and as the league didn’t get a commitment from the new owners to keeping the team in Minnesota, either, it was only two more years until the Twin Cities ended up abandoned, anyhow, so one wonders why the NHL couldn’t have just let them move to San Jose in the first place, but…) The Kings traded Elik for Huddy and two other scraps the “No Stars” had garnered in the draft, replacement center Randy Gilhen and depth forward Jim Thomson (whom Minnesota had taken from the Kings in the first place), as well as a 4th rounder to replace one sent away in the Kurri trade.

(This draft pick would prove the salvation in the trade, as the Kings, having already traded away their 1st and 3rd round picks, took a gamble and selected promising teenage Russian defenseman Alexei Zhitnik. Zhitnik’s talent was evident, as he had just earned promotion from Sokol Kiev to CSKA Moscow, but at the time it was uncertain whether the Soviet Union [still existing…for another two months] would let their most promising youth players head west, so it could have been a wasted pick.)

But the season started on a painful note, when Gretzky was knocked out of the Canada Cup by a vicious check into the boards from Team USA’s Gary Suter. Gretzky, who had missed some games in 1990 with back problems, started slowly, and so did the team. It hardly helped when Gretzky’s father, Walter, suffered a brain aneurysm and Wayne took a leave to be by his bedside. Even as Walter recovered, the stress was clearly taking its toll on Wayne, who recorded career-lows in goals and points and his fewest assists since his rookie season. He also continued to complain of rib pains, presumably from the Suter hit. Blake and Sandstrom also missed time due to injuries, Tonelli (feeling dispensable after the Kings had left him exposed in the draft) had departed via free agency, and Taylor and Robinson were showing their age and in decline.

Worst of all, Berthiaume had blown a tire and was suddenly useless, sporting a GAA of 4.04 and a sub-.900 save percentage. The Kings eventually dumped him on Boston for the ever-vague “future considerations”, leaving Hrudey without a viable partner to share the load. With Gretzky operating at a sub-par level and no juice from the backline (Benning got Duchesne’s minutes but couldn’t match his production; solid Finnish free agent Peter Ahola led the team in plus-minus, but was mostly unremarkable) the team muddled along, spending most of the season at .500 or slightly below.

What to do? To Gretzky, the solution was evident. The Pittsburgh Penguins were shopping Wayne’s old Oiler teammate, Paul Coffey, the highest-scoring defenseman in league history. Of course, sometimes the “defense” part of Coffey’s position was theoretical at best, with his having recorded a horrific -25 in 1990-91. But his stats had been better in the current season, despite being slowed by a hip injury, and there was no denying that he would fill the PP QB void. Besides, as Robinson told the Los Angeles Times, “Coffey can play defense…when he wants to.” (The Times was not exactly reassured by this.) So the Kings sent Benning, Chychrun, and a #1 pick to Pittsburgh for Coffey. (The Penguins made it a larger trade by packaging Benning and the pick with Mark Recchi to get Rick Tocchet and others from the Flyers. And with the space created by moving two defensemen for one, the Kings took a first look at young prospect Darryl Sydor.)

And surprise, surprise…it worked! The Kings almost immediately ripped off an eight-game winning streak, scoring at least four goals in every outing, and essentially locked up not only a playoff spot, but home ice in the first round. They then rested Coffey for the rest of the season, as well as Hrudey (the Kings had acquired veteran Steve Weeks from the Islanders to be a nominal backup…but he wasn’t much better than Berthiaume at this point), not particularly caring that the season-ending 3-7-1 coast left them only two points clear of the third-place Oilers. At least they had home ice. And Mark Messier was a Ranger now, safely in the other Conference.

And yet…it turned out to make no difference, after all. The Oilers stole game 1 in LA, the Kings retook home ice by winning game 4 in Edmonton, the Oilers re-retook the advantage by winning game 5 in LA, and finished the Kings off in six games. Coffey was Coffey, tying for the team lead in scoring (7 points) and posting the worst +/- on the team (-5; a dispirted Gretzky was second-worst at -3, Ahola led the team with a +4). The Kings surrendered between three and five goals in every game (GAA of 3.83), whereas they were held to 0, 1, and 2 goals by Edmonton’s Bill Ranford in three of their four defeats.

So, for the fourth straight season, the Kings had failed to get past the second round, this time not even reaching the second round. For the third year in a row, Gretzky’s Kings had been bounced from the playoffs by the Oilers, but not even the Oilers of Messier and company, rather Bernie Nicholls and Vincent Damphousse and Joe Murphy. Tom Webster was fired as coach, Robinson retired at the age of 42, and Gretzky, albeit only 30, was considering if he should do the same. Especially when he went on vacation with Granato, Coffey and their wives and felt such a strong pain in his side as the plane took off that he had to get permission to lie down in the aisle. He also felt the pain once the group got to Hawai'i, at dinner, but it passed both times, so he just put it down to a possible broken rib, and when the x-rays came back negative, got on with his summer.

And over that summer, Gretzky rediscovered his desire. The news that his wife, Janet, was pregnant with the couple’s third child lifted Gretzky’s spirits, and so did McNall’s hiring of Barry Melrose, coach of the Calder Cup-winning Adirondack Red Wings to lead the Kings. Maybe this next year would be different.

And then training camp started and on the morning of September 16th, Gretzky woke up with an even sharper pain in his chest. So strong that Gretzky was certain he was having a heart attack…