Muni Not to Blame This Time

EDMONTON, Canada —  A defenseman wearing No. 28 took another member of the Kings out of the lineup Monday night. This time, however, it wasn’t Craig Muni of the Edmonton Oilers who did the damage.

It was Steve Duchesne of the Kings, whose slap shot from the blue line with about three minutes to play in the first period inadvertently hit teammate Wayne Gretzky, opening a cut on Gretzky’s left ear that required about 25 stitches to close.

Gretzky skated off the ice with knees bent and head bowed, his helmet lying in the middle of the ice after being removed by Gretzky, who absorbed the blow while skating through the slot.

Sent to the locker room almost immediately, Gretzky never returned to the game, complaining to team physician Steve Lombardo of dizziness and a severe headache while his teammates played on, eventually losing, 4-3, in double overtime in Game 3 of the best-of-seven Smythe Division final playoff series.

Lombardo said that Gretzky also was hit by a stick earlier in the game, raising a welt behind his left ear.

But it was Duchesne’s shot, Lombardo said, that left the already crippled Kings without the NHL’s all-time playoff leader with 93 goals, 203 assists and 296 points.

Will he be able to return for Game 4 Wednesday night?

“It really depends on how he feels (today),” Lombardo said.

Lombardo said that Gretzky had also been examined by an Edmonton specialist who found no damage inside Gretzky’s ear. Gretzky reported no hearing loss.

With camera crews, team officials, reporters and a younger brother, Glen, waiting outside for word on his condition, Gretzky spent most of the second period in a first-aid room adjacent to the Kings’ locker room.

Curtains were brought out of the locker room to shield the area, but resourceful photographers climbed onto ladders to shoot over them.

Asked a cameraman for the Canadian Broadcasting Company: “Have you ever seen such commotion over a stitch in all your life?”

Finally, near the end of the second period, Gretzky emerged and made his way slowly down a hall leading to the locker room.

The Kings announced that he would not return to the game.

That fact, apparently, had been obvious to Gretzky.

Painfully obvious.

Lombardo said that Gretzky hadn’t asked about returning.

“It was pretty clear he knew that he wasn’t going to play anymore (Monday night),” Lombardo said.

Dick Chubey of the Edmonton Sun took exception when the Kings complained about hits by Muni during Game 2 that injured wingers Tomas Sandstrom and Bob Kudelski and took them out of the series.

“Craig Muni wears the black hat,” Chubey wrote. “He’s the dude 16,000 Southern California borderline loons, who know even less about hockey than Bruce McNall, love to hate. Muni’s the bad guy, who talks out of the side of his mouth. When the movie ends, he won’t be the chap who gets the girl.

“But this isn’t Hollywood . . .

“Fans with earrings and male anthem singers with pony tails may not understand, but there was a time, before goalies wore masks and skater’s helmets, that hitting on open ice was a regular happening.”

Chubey insisted that Muni had taken a bad rap from the Kings, who derided the “dirty tactics” of the Oiler defenseman.

But Muni, he wrote, hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

“It’s just one more city where they don’t like me,” Muni told Chubey.

Wrote Chubey: “And, a phony city at that!”

Actress Janet Jones, asked about the relationship between her husband, Gretzky, and Owner Bruce McNall of the Kings, told the Edmonton Sun: “They’re really cute together. They’re really youthful together. They’re having a great time.”