Ringmaster

It’s gold, with five diamonds, and heavy enough to sink your bait in any bass lake.

It’s on the third finger of Kelly Buchberger’s right hand when he decides it can serve a purpose. He has worn his latest Stanley Cup ring occasionally in the month or so he has been a King--a sort of show and tell.

And now it’s time for the show, a time when his experience can tell.

The playoffs.

“He’s got two Stanley Cups,” says center Bob Corkum, who like all but one of the rest of the Kings doesn’t have one. (Goalie Stephane Fiset earned one by backing up Patrick Roy at Colorado in 1996). “This is his time, playoff time.”

It’s the Kings’ time too, time for a change. When they open their first-round series at Detroit Thursday, they will be playing in the postseason for only the second time since they went to the Stanley Cup finals in 1993.

The only other time was a four-and-out series with St. Louis two seasons ago.

It’s why they traded with Atlanta for Buchberger, because if the playoffs are a path few Kings have been down, maybe it was best to get help from somebody who knows what’s at the end of the trail.

“Kelly, with two Stanley Cup rings, we were looking to him right away for some leadership,” Corkum says. “We wanted his experience and thoughts about what it takes to get to the playoffs and through the playoffs. No one else in the room has ever been through that.”

Teammates’ questions have been asked and answered, and there will be more questions and more answers this week. Lately, Coach Andy Murray has talked about the end of the regular season and how the intensity of the final 20 or so games rivals that of the playoffs. It’s a way to keep the Kings from being overwhelmed emotionally when they start playing at Detroit.

Actually, the differences between the playoffs and the 82 games the Kings have just finished are vast.

“It’s a totally different season,” Buchberger begins. “You’re going to see players do things you’ve never seen them do before.

“You’re going to see guys like Luc Robitaille blocking shots, taking a huge hit to get [the puck] out [of the defensive zone] so they don’t get a scoring chance.

“And you need that from everybody, because if you’re a young player, playing on the third or fourth line, and you see a guy like Luc or Muzz [Glen Murray] or Ziggy [Palffy] taking a hit or blocking a shot, sacrificing himself, [the impact] goes right down the line. You’re going to feed off that and the next thing you know, you’ve got 20 guys doing it. It’s those little things that are going to win you hockey games.”

Buchberger learned that early, when he came up to Edmonton from Nova Scotia of the AHL for the Oilers’ Stanley Cup championship run in 1987.

He was around for the regular season in 1987-88, when the Oilers won the Cup again, but didn’t play in the playoffs. In 1989-90, Buchberger was an integral part of the Cup-winning Oilers, with five assists in the 19 playoff games.

He earned his first ring with the Wayne Gretzky-Mark Messier Oilers, his second with the Messier Oilers. He was a prince in a dynasty of kings, and they taught him things he is trying to pass on to his new teammates.

“I was very fortunate to come in when I did, to play with the players I did when I was very young,” Buchberger says. “You can’t buy what they taught me. All you can do is watch and keep your mouth shut and your ears open. They taught me that the team came first. Who got the points, who scored in the playoffs, as long as we won, you didn’t care. As long as everybody worked hard and put in an honest effort every night, nothing else mattered.”

It’s a message he has preached since he walked into the Kings’ dressing room March 14, having come over from Atlanta with Nelson Emerson for Donald Audette and Frantisek Kaberle.

The Kings had coveted Buchberger since the NHL rumor mill had him available about a month earlier, but it was only at the last minute, when the trade was expanded to include Emerson and Kaberle, that it was consummated.

“We wanted his experience and leadership,” says Dave Taylor, the Kings’ general manager and senior vice president who engineered the trade. “He’s an honest player, one who works hard, and he has been with a couple of teams that won the Stanley Cup. Those guys, for five or six years, were the best team in the NHL.

“But there’s no pretense with Kelly. You know what you’re getting when you get him.”

A team with a leadership structure already in place was getting another leader, a character guy with grit. But this was a leader with a resume, one who didn’t walk in expecting a salute.

“You can’t come in and start shooting your mouth off, or players aren’t going to accept you,” Buchberger says. “I’ve seen that happen many times.

“[The Kings] have had success this year, and the reason is that they’ve stuck together and believed in one another. We want to carry that into the playoffs. Obviously, when there’s something that needs to be said, you say it, but you don’t want to embarrass anybody.”

Actually, acceptance came early. The Kings are a hungry team, one with a history of underachievement that it is trying to dispel. It’s a team that has viewed the playoffs from afar, or at least as far as a television screen. Every playoff goal viewed on a TV screen is a knife in the gut of a player who covets the experience more than his next paycheck.

A player who can help alleviate the pain is one who has no trouble with teammates who have hurt so often.

“I’m a big believer that we all bring different things to the table,” says defenseman Mattias Norstrom. “I think guys lead in different ways, depending on what kind of personality they have.

“Rob [Blake], for instance, is a huge leader for us, but he’s not the most vocal guy. He leads by example on the ice. He’ll take charge during a game with a big hit that might give us a jump-start.

“We have guys like Kelly who will lead by example on the ice, by working hard, but he’ll also stand up and talk. I think you can have several leaders chipping in.”

It’s the approach Buchberger took after a talk with Andy Murray upon reporting to the Kings: Speak softly and carry a big hockey stick.

He scored the goal in a 1-1 tie with San Jose March 29 and the goal that tied the Mighty Ducks in a game the Kings eventually won, 2-1, to clinch a playoff berth April 1.

The goals were important but superfluous to his being accepted.

“His record gives him automatic credibility, and I think he had it before [the goals],” says Murray, who coached Buchberger with the Canadian national team in the World Championships and lobbied hard with Taylor to make the trade.

The credibility is worn on the right hand. The ring’s the thing.

“When you’re a leader or a type of player like he is, you fit into a team,” says Blake, the Kings’ quiet captain. “He doesn’t expect to be the guy doing all the talking. He finds his little nook and fits right in it. He’s so glad to get here and be in the playoffs, and that’s when a guy like that shines is in the playoffs.”

It was far from where Buchberger expected to be. He was the Thrashers’ first captain after being taken in the expansion draft, and he spent most of the season trying to do something he is unaccustomed to--score goals. Atlanta had few scorers, and more was asked of Buchberger. He was also asked to take a role in developing the Thrashers’ young players and selling hockey in a city where circumstances prevented the game from taking root there the first time with the Flames.

He did all that dutifully and well enough that, when he was traded to the Kings, Atlanta did not name a replacement captain.

But the playoffs aren’t even a distant dream for the Thrashers, who took their expansion role to an extreme, losing 61 games.

There still is hockey to play for Buchberger, however.

He will play it with a line that was fashioned in the final two weeks of the season--himself, Corkum and Dan Bylsma. It’s a checking line that will see a lot of Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov and the rest of the high-powered Red Wings.

If you want a number, it’s the third line. But funny things happen in the playoffs.

“You know that Luc Robitaille will get special attention,” says Taylor. “Sometimes the third and fourth lines come through for you.”

It’s part of the no-pecking-order approach to postseason play.

“Forget the regular season,” says Blake. “Forget the points, the goals, whatever. When you go into the playoffs, you’ve got to win. It doesn’t matter how you do it.”

Blake’s experience includes a trip to the Stanley Cup finals in 1993, the Kings’ high-water mark as a franchise.

Buchberger has gone one better.

“When it came time for the playoffs, everybody was treated the same,” Buchberger says, calling forth some pleasant memories at Edmonton. “It didn’t matter if a guy had 100 points that year or a guy had 20 points, everybody was treated equally. When you come into the playoffs, sometimes your third and fourth lines are your better lines.”

In this case, one of them is the most experienced line. It has a winger who has a ring. Make that two rings.

And whose quest is for a third.

Kings vs. Detroit Red Wings

Best-of-seven series

GOOD TO GO

Kings’ winger Ziggy Palffy was cleared to play in Thursday’s first-round playoff opener at Detroit, but he might not recognize one of his linemates. Page 8

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THEY SEEM FAMILIAR

Even if you can’t tell the difference between the red line and the blue line, you probably know something about the Detroit Red Wings. Call it the osmosis effect. Page 8

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PLAYOFF CAPSULE

Helene Elliott’s analysis.

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