'HOCKEY DAY' TURNS INTO A MINOR EVENT.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

In the last sunlight of the evening at the corner of 11th and Figueroa on Saturday, a wrist-pass away from the statue of Wayne Gretzky, sat the very picture of an L.A. hockey fan in troubled times.

He was from Michigan and wore a Chicago Blackhawks sweater but called himself a Kings rooter. He looked California cool in wraparound shades and a tiny hoop earring. He beamed with fatherly pride as he talked about his hockey-playing 16-year-old.

And he sounded apprehensive on a night when the Kings were supposed to be playing the Phoenix Coyotes at Staples Center, but the NHL lockout forced the hockey faithful to settle for the minor-league Manchester (N.H.) Monarchs and Utah Grizzlies.

``I want to see an NHL game, that's for sure,'' Bill Humphrey, a TV engineer who lives in Alta Loma, was saying from the edge of a planter near the ticket windows. ``The fans are definitely suffering. (Television) ratings are already low. If this goes on, fans are going to find something else to do. I worry about hockey in the United States.

``In the early part of the year, a lot of people haven't picked up on the fact hockey isn't here. But if they don't have hockey by Christmas, there's going to be trouble.''

It's Day 39 of the owners vs. players standoff with no end in sight. The sides haven't sat down to negotiate in all that time. The season was to have begun Oct. 13.

In the darkened arena, more than an hour before the Monarchs-Grizzlies faceoff, a man with a Stanley Cup playoff logo on his chest and a McDonald's bag on his lap sat and watched the Zamboni go round and round.

``I think it's a travesty there's a strike,'' said John Spiller, who came from Kittery, Maine, and is a bookkeeper in Canoga Park. ``The losers are the fans and all the people who work the concessions here.

``It blows. I love watching live hockey. (During the lockout) you're watching these old games on TV. You've got to watch live hockey. Basketball, you know who's going to shoot. Hockey, put 12 guys out there, who knows what's going to happen?''

Spiller was a Kings season-ticket holder for two seasons but didn't renew for this year when he saw the lockout coming.

``In Canada, in the North, where I grew up, it (hockey) will be missed,'' he said. ``Here, they'll find something else to occupy their time.''

Kings management had proclaimed Saturday ''Hockey Day in L.A.'' - you could buy a commemorative T-shirt for a princely sum - originally scheduling a triple-header of a youth game, the AHL Monarchs-Grizzlies game and Kings-Coyotes. The lockout reduced the occasion to a test of hockey fans' craving. Attendance of 10,074 was announced; it looked like half that.

Manchester, the Kings' top farm club, beat Utah, a Phoenix affiliate, 5-0, with defenseman Troy Milam scoring two power-play goals, and Adam Hauser stopping 20 shots.

In the mezzanine, a young man in a Czech Republic hockey jersey stood with a soda and a bowl of nachos and called it a bittersweet day.

``It's nice of Kings management to bring this game here, but it isn't the same,'' said Mike Slemp, a high school teacher from Simi Valley. ``I love hockey, I'll come to this game. But if they try to use replacement players (from the minor leagues), they'll lose fans. I don't think the NHL is big enough in the U.S. to (survive) a strike.''

Through the Staples Center doors came fans in Kings jerseys, Flyers jerseys and Ice Dogs jerseys. Ziggy Palffy jerseys, Rocket Richard jerseys and Hanson brothers jerseys. The uniforms of the exclusive club that is L.A. hockey fandom.

``People talk about L.A. as a big (sports) market,'' Slemp said. ``(For hockey) it's a small market. It'll take a long time to recover.''

On an evening when top-ranked USC was playing Washington at the Coliseum and the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals were opening the World Series on TV, a few thousand hockey fans took advantage of free admission for Kings season-ticket holders or paid $15.50 to $45.50 per seat to watch the finest practitioners of the sport they're likely to see in the city of Los Angeles this season.

Baseball, football and basketball lost parts of seasons to owner-player strife, and it was hard to feel sorry for the most vocal fans, whose attitude was a spiteful ``How could they let down so many people?''

Hockey loses part - or all - of this season to the owners' fight to control their own spending, and you sympathize with the few diehards, who wonder if their little corner of the sports world will ever be the same.