h 6 i hk i H ll dDi Glory Days Ice hockey in Hollywood During the 1960s it seemed like a crazy idea To Jack Kent Cooke it made perfect sense He had just bought basketball’s Los Angeles Lakers and wanted to own a second professional sports team Cooke got good news when the National Hockey League NHL decided to expand from six to 12 teams Los Angeles was awarded a club and Cooke named it the Kings They played their first season in 1967 68 The team’s first coach was Red Kelly one of the NHL’s d lik most respected stars in the 1950s and early 1960s The Kings built their team by picking unwanted players from the original six NHL clubs Their first pick was 38-year-old goalie Terry Sawchuk Bill Flett and Eddie Joyal led the offense while the defense was anchored by Bill White and Dale Rolfe Over the next few years the Kings added Ross Lonsberry Eddie Shack Butch Goring Juha Widing Bob Berry and Bob Pulford 6
By the mid-1970s the Kings had become a very competitive team Pulford was now L A s coach His star players were goalie Rogie Vachon and center Marcel Dionne Vachon had been the back-up goalie for the Montreal Canadiens Dionne had been one of the Detroit Red Wings best young players With Dionne finishing among the league’s scoring leaders every season the Kings made the playoffs nine years in a row In 1978 79 the Kings hired Berry as their coach He put Dionne on a line with Charlie Simmer and Dave Taylor The trio became known as the Triple Crown Line In 1980 81 all three scored 100 points goals plus assists No line in NHL history had ever done that During their six seasons together they averaged better than 280 points a year Dionne played for the Kings until 1987 when he was traded away By then a new group of stars had stepped into leadership roles Left wing Luc Robitaille was good for 40 to 50 goals a year Bernie Nicholls was one of the top all-around centers in the NHL Steve Duchesne LEFT Terry Sawchuk gave the Kings an experienced goalie in their first season ABOVE Marcel Dionne was the center on the Triple Crown Line 7
was a high-scoring defenseman Another center Jimmy Carson scored more than 90 goals before the age of 20 Despite all of this talent the Kings still lacked a leader who could make them a true championship contender That changed during the summer of 1988 The Kings traded for Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers In his first year in Los Angeles The Great One scored 54 goals and had 114 assists for 168 points He won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s Most Valuable Player MVP Four years later the Kings made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals They began the season without Gretzky who was recovering from a neck injury By the time he rejoined the club the Kings had come together under new coach Barry Melrose Robitaille led a group of goal-scorers that included Jari Kurri Tony Granato Tomas Sandstrom Mike Donnelly and Rob Blake Gretzky was back at full speed by playoff time He had 15 goals and 25 assists in the postseason to set team records The Kings defeated the Calgary Flames Vancouver Canucks and Toronto LEFT Wayne Gretzky led the Kings to the playoffs five seasons in a row ABOVE Luc Robitaille scored more than 500 goals in his career for the Kings 9
