Maybe slight tangent for me:
Late 1987: Family moved to Santa Clarita.
1988: I'm old enough to get the basic concept of sports. The Broncos/Redskins Super Bowl was the first sporting event that I recall watching. I didn't know any of the players, but could grasp that the team with the blue helmets was trying to score more than the team with the burgundy ones.
Meanwhile the Lakers and Dodgers conveniently win championships. The Kings acquire that Gretzky fella but it'd be a couple years before hockey would get on my radar. Even the Clippers won the draft lottery which sparked my interest in the draft. I've forever associated the NBA Draft with the beginning of summer vacation. Even though I don't really follow basketball nowadays, the NBA Draft still makes me smile.
1990: The first hockey game I can remember was the Kings knocking off the defending champion Flames in double OT. If my memory serves me correctly, my family had done a day trip to Orange County and we were listening to the game to the radio. We got home just in time to Mike Krushelnyski score.
1991: I distinctly recall an older kid at my school wearing a Bulls jackets as they were playing the Lakers in the NBA Finals. To that point not cheering for the home team was a foreign concept. My favorite baseball player was former Angel Chili Davis (switch hitter with power fascinated me as a kid) and he had signed with Minnesota earlier that year. So I decided to cheer on the Twins that postseason and they conveniently won the World Series.
(I just got back from a pleasant weekend in Minneapolis to watch Angels/Twins and Chargers/Vikings. I'm unofficially racing a buddy to get to every MLB park and I hadn't seen Target Field.)
1993: Kings make the SCF. Hockey is the new hotness in the school yard.
1994: I had switched schools and all the cool kids were into hockey. To that point I really only knew the Kings roster. They were talking up Pavel Bure guy and I needed to get up to speed. I learned about the other teams thanks to NHLPA '93 on SNES.
I met Gretzky in Vegas once and I thanked him for getting me into hockey. He pointed to my Devils shirt and asked how that happened. I explained that when the Kings missed the playoffs in 1994, everybody at my school picked temporary teams to cheer for. Most of the cool kids jumped on the Sharks bandwagon and I wanted to be different.
I vaguely recall watching this Sabres/Devils 4OT 0-0 marathon. This had been Hasek's breakout season. In NHLPA '93, Hasek was Ed Belfour's backup in Chicago. The Blackhawks were the most fun team to play thanks to Jeremy Roenick (that Swingers scene would blow my mind years later) and I'd often swap in Hasek in net.
But I was fascinated by that Brodeur guy who wasn't in the video game. This was the tail end of my baseball card collecting days so I definitely overvalued rookies. The Devils had an entertaining run but were knocked off by the Messier Rangers; The Messier Oilers had knocked out the Kings in 1990+1991 so I already didn't like him.
The Kings missed the playoffs in 1995, so I decided to jump on the Devils bandwagon one more time. They conveniently won the Cup. The other kids started to accuse me of being a frontrunner as they remembered my temporary allegiance to the Twins a few years earlier. So in an effort to show them up, I've overcompensated as a Devils fan for 25+ years.
Meanwhile Sam McMaster traded away most of the Kings core. I looked it up a few years back and I think Rob Blake was the only guy on the 1993 playoff and 1996 Opening Night rosters.
But I kept the Kings as my 'local' team even though the Ducks were geographically closer after I moved to San Diego. Kings were fun to follow post-lockout since building up a roster from the ground up appealed to the prospect nerd in me.
