Interview With Los Angeles Kings Legend Kelly Hrudey

There are many wonderful reasons why you are still loved and popular by Kings’ fans today. One thing that is still fondly remembered and still mimicked to this day, was your bandana.  When did your first get the idea of playing while wearing one?

It would’ve been during my days on Long Island. I always wore a headband when I played simply because I had long hair and I wore contacts and the sweat really bothered my eyes. I went through many different stages or different kinds of headbands, trying to find the most absorbent. Finally one day just out of frustration, I ripped up the t-shirt that we always wore, those white and blue t-shirts we wear underneath our equipment and lo and behold, I just tied it around my head and it was the most absorbent thing that I ever had! So I’m like, “Oh that’s kind of cool, that’ll work for me.”

And so I started doing it but never expecting that it was going to become like a trademark of mine. Over the course of time I really hated it but I was convinced by other family members to keep it for that very reason because it had kind of become my trademark. I thought the day I retired that I had thrown them all out but just recently about a week and a half ago, my wife and I went through a storage unit that we have back in Calgary and I found an old shaving kit and inside were eight of my headbands so it’s kind of cool now that I still had some left.

Nice! Well it sure was a hit in Hollywood.  Like no one was or looked cooler than you on that ice wearing the Silver and Black Kings’ jersey while wearing a bandana!

Thank you!

Was it a different bandana for every game or did you use the same one, say during a hot streak for the team or when you were on a roll as a superstitious thing?

No no, over the course of 10 years or so that I had it, I would’ve gone through hundreds, if not into the thousands of them. They just didn’t last very long, so I’d cut up t-shirts on a regular basis to make headbands out of them.

The 1992-93 season was one like a roller coaster for the Kings, full of highs and lows.  Could you take us back to that season and talk about the mindset of the team, especially after finding out that Gretzky was badly injured and may not ever return?

Well we were all surprised in training camp when we found out the extent of Wayne’s injury. So not only were we really worried about our season, we were worried about Wayne as there was even talk that his injury might be career ending so we were super worried for him. Nonetheless we got off to a fantastic start. We raced out of the gates and if I’m not mistaken, somewhere in November we were in first place, if not in our conference at least for sure in our division. Like we were fantastic! Then in early December, I started to feel my game kind of slipping, like really badly and typically when that happens you just dig in a little bit more, you work a little bit harder in practice and lo and behold you work your way out of it. Unfortunately my game continued to slide so much, so badly, we ended up calling up a guy from the minors named Rick Knickle. My slump lasted almost a full 2 months. I was very fortunate that I had Barry Melrose as my coach and coaching with Barry was Cap Raeder. And those two guys they really believed in me and they stuck with me. They got the help that I needed. I was able to at the end of January to start meeting with [motivational speaker] Anthony Robbins on a fairly regular basis. And with Anthony’s help and the support of Barry and Cap I was able to work my way out of it. There was still moments in February and March where I wasn’t as sharp as I needed to be but there also was lots of moments where I really truly knew that I was going to be a good goalie again. We went into the playoffs and we kind of limped into there.  We didn’t play well in the last few games of the regular season but nonetheless we were able to get into the playoffs.

Now with Wayne Gretzky back on the team and healthy again, you guys made “THE RUN” to the Stanley Cup final, which was something most Kings’ fans had been waiting forever for.  Could you please take us back to that memorable 1993 playoff run with the Kings?

We played a heck of a playoff series versus Calgary and Barry made the smart and brave decision of replacing me with Rob Stauber in game 4. Rob finished out the series and he was fantastic. Rob even started game 1 in Vancouver in a game in which we lost. Then I was able to get back in the net and continued right on until we lost in Montreal but it was a great run. We had some fantastic hockey. I personally think the best series that we ever had was versus the Canucks in the second round. Wayne thinks that we played our best hockey versus Toronto in the next round but I just thought because it was such a wide open series versus Vancouver that was just so fun to be a part of.

Speaking of that series against Toronto, as a Canadian Kings fan that lives near the Toronto area, I am still constantly getting chirped about that series and the “Gretzky high sticking Gilmour” incident and the Kerry Fraser non-call after it to this day. Could you take us back to that series and tell us what your take on the incident is?

It was an incredible series. I can’t recall which journalist in Toronto after game 5 … we stayed over in Toronto that night and I remember reading one of the Toronto newspapers and one of the columnists said that it looked like that Gretzky was playing with a piano strapped to his back.

That was Bob McKenzie.

Oh it was eh? That made me very happy. I can tell you that because I knew that Wayne would know of that comment and that he would ensure that didn’t happen or it didn’t look that way anymore. I mean Wayne was the best player on the ice in the next 2 games by miles. The high stick, I don’t recall much of it because I was at the other end and I was taught by Al Arbour that no matter what happens, you just keep playing and you don’t get bothered by a call whether it goes in your favor or against you. So for me, hey, there was no call on the play and we ended up scoring and I didn’t consider thinking about it one second after that. I know that a lot of people in and around Toronto bring that up to me often but to me it was a non issue.

The Kings then went on to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in franchise history against the Montreal Canadiens. What was your experience playing for the Cup and tell us in the end, what went wrong for the Kings?

One of the lasting memories I have of that would be kind of like going back to my childhood.  We all dream about being in the Stanley Cup finals and we all dream that it would’ve been in the Montreal Forum or Maple Leaf Gardens. Luckily for me, my experience was in fact in the Montreal Forum. I took the time really to experience that and drink that whole thing in, in the sense that just prior to stepping out on the ice for the start of the game I stopped. I just hesitated for a little bit before my skates touched the ice and looked around and I thought, “You know this is absolutely amazing! I’m going to be playing here in the forum and trying to win the Stanley Cup!”

That just gave me a huge adrenaline rush.  We ended up winning that game 4-1 and then we had a 2-1 lead with just under 2 minutes to go and Marty [McSorley] was called for an illegal stick.  I was really hopeful that they were gonna call me.

Really? Why is that?

Yeah, because I had an illegal stick during the morning skate and I would leave it on the bench in the hopes that someone would fall for that. And often, well not often but in every single game I started with an illegal stick and then at some point, whether it was in the second period or the start of the third, I changed to a legal stick just in case so that’s why I hoped that I was gonna get called because I knew my stick was legal. But in terms of the stick call on Marty, the way I view it as the goaltender, I was disappointed that I didn’t make the save on the shot that sent it into overtime.  That is what really bugged me. So I didn’t worry about the penalty or anything, very similar to the non call versus Toronto, I mean it was not a part of the way that I think but ultimately we ended up losing 3 in a row in overtime and if you do that it’s gonna be awfully difficult to win.  So it’s still to this day the worst memory that I have in my hockey career and one I suspect that will never change.

*(This video below about the 1993 Stanley Cup final is approximately 30 minutes long.)