Custody of Hockey Tickets Is Goal in Divorce Dispute : Sports: Kings are a hot team in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but the couple’s relationship grows ever icier as they face off over a season pass.

This divorce has all the grittiest elements of hockey and love--trash talk and cheap shots.

It began as a simple marital breakup. But then the Los Angeles Kings kept winning, all the way into the semifinals of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Suddenly, Isaac and Michele Safdeye were headed for divorce court to fight over their single season ticket.

On Friday, hours before the Kings took the ice against the Toronto Maple Leafs for the third game in a best-of-seven series, the Safdeyes faced off in Van Nuys court. During an emergency hearing in their month-old dissolution, their lawyers haggled over who got to go to that night’s game.

Isaac had the ticket--a loge seat in the corner of the Forum--and like a forward skating for the puck, Michele wanted it.

She just wanted to spite him, according to Isaac, a 33-year-old salesman who prides himself on being a longtime Kings fan.

He and a friend have shared a pair of season tickets for three years, or about three times as long as he and Michele have been married. She had never been a fan, he said, until she met him.

But Michele cried foul.

“Everybody thinks that only men like hockey but I enjoy it just as much as he does,” the 29-year-old accountant said. “Out of all sports, hockey is my favorite.”

So Michele wanted Isaac’s seat not only for last night’s game, but for all remaining playoff games. After all, she said, tickets are community property just like dishes or a bedroom set. And he had gone to every game during the first two playoff rounds.

“I should get to go to all the rest of them,” she said.

If it weren’t for hockey, the Safdeye dissolution might have been settled out of court, said Russell J. Nadel, Michele’s attorney. Instead, the case came to a showdown as tense as sudden-death overtime.

It has happened before.

Two years ago, actress Dyan Cannon had to split her Lakers season tickets with ex-husband Stan Fimberg when they divorced. Season tickets to games of football teams such as the Washington Redskins and the Denver Broncos, which sell out on a regular basis, are often the focus of feuds in divorces.

“It’s a very normal thing. But it’s a big emotional issue for the parties involved,” said James Hennenhoefer, vice chairman of the California State Bar’s family law section. “If the team sells out all its games, these tickets are golden and you have enormous battles.”

According to Scott Altman, an associate professor of law at USC, judges can choose one of several ways to resolve such dilemmas:

* The judge holds an informal auction with the two parties bidding. Whoever is willing to pay most gets the tickets.

* The court orders the tickets sold to an outside party and the profits are divided.

* The husband and wife are ordered to split the tickets, attending alternate games.

This sort of occurrence is much more common with a team such as the Pittsburgh Penguins, winner of the last two Stanley Cups. A recent article in the North Hills, Pa., News Record quoted a team official as saying that divorce cases affect season-ticket holdings several times every year.

“There was one where we had to physically keep the tickets here and parcel them out while the lawyers tried to resolve it,” the official was quoted as saying.

If there is anything unusual about the Safdeye case, it’s that the Kings are involved. For the last 25 years, the team has been knocked out of the playoffs by late May. Even the trade for Wayne Gretzky in 1988 did not produce the kind of fervor that has resulted from the team’s current playoff run.

Fittingly, the games against Toronto have been contentious, with players fighting and coaches trading insults across the ice. All of which has further incited the fans.

“This is a serious matter,” Nadel said. “It’s a hockey-crazy town right now.”

Last week, hundreds of people lined up to buy seats to the Kings-Maple Leafs series, which sold out in an hour. Ticket agencies have been peddling loge seats for up to $175 each.

Friday, the value of Isaac and Michele’s ticket appreciated with each minute their attorneys waited for the matter to be heard. Finally, in the midst of a busy day in Family Court, Commissioner Mina D. Fried called the lawyers into her chambers.

After nine minutes--less time than a player would spend in the penalty box for a major infraction--the conflict was resolved.

Isaac got the ticket to last night’s game. Michele gets to go Sunday. They will not go to any games together, perhaps because the National Hockey League is trying to cut down on fighting.

Instead, the two will alternate for as long as the Kings keep winning. And, the court decided, they will each sit with Isaac’s friend. He did not have a lawyer present.