I'm alone on the right wing, bearing in on the goalie. It's just me, the puck and my hockey stick.

I effortlessly glide to my left and, at the last second, flip a backhand shot over an outstretched glove into the net. Goal.

It's my second of the game. I've got an assist, too. We're up, 5-1.

And I can't even ice skate.

Of course, this game of hockey isn't being played on ice.

This is roller hockey, L.A. style. You put on rollerblades, you grab your hockey stick and you take to the rink.

It's the newest, hottest sport in Southern California, a place which has given America numerous cultural icons: among them the Hollywood sign, the motion picture, Magic Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

But in the Los Angeles basin, where I grew up, it's also a little disconcerting. Watching hockey played in the streets, parking lots and park rinks of L.A. is, I imagine, more than a little bit like finding a polar bear on the surface of the sun.

These kinds of things aren't supposed to happen.

When the Los Angeles Kings advanced to the Stanley Cup finals last month, this touched off...well, riots isn't the word to use...but a lot of, shall we say, good-natured celebration in the Southland.

Roller hockey, as it's called, was already a growth industry. But the Kings' breathless playoff victories have made it a retail bonanza. In Pasadena, my hometown, sporting goods stores reported record sales of sticks, pads and blades. Many removed the baseball and basket-ball equipment from store windows and replaced it with hockey pucks and jerseys.

Being a fully equipped roller hockey player is expensive. Roller blades run at least $100, all the pads will cost you $50 easy, and even a cheap wood stick is 20 bucks.

But kids who save up, or beg their parents, love this stuff. I used to coach Little League baseball in Pasadena, and, as a result, I am well acquainted with more than 100 fairly athletic children ages nine to 14. So I decided to run a test.

I asked 30 young ballplayers, in casual conversations about curve balls and batting averages, if they owned or had access to roller blades and a hockey stick. The response was unanimously in the affirmative, though I got a few polite answers of "yes." Most were shocked at my question. "You've been at Harvard too long, coach," said a former second baseman. "Having all that stuff is a given around here."

Hockey even seems to have invaded the local vocabulary. My ballplayers have always yelled invectives at umpires, usually "jerk" or "you suck." Now a bad ump, like a bad hockey goalie, is "a sieve."