LOS ANGELES — If you've ever walked around the lower concourse of Staples Center, you know which doors not to use if you need some fresh air, so to speak.
The ones marked "NO RE-ENTRY." The signs are everywhere.
Actor Charlie Sheen chose not to heed the signs en route to a cigarette break during Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final series between the Los Angeles Kings and New Jersey Devils, and after being denied re-entry he had choice words for an arena security guard.
"What does common sense dictate?" Sheen asked the guard in what was the most benign of his responses in a nearly two-minute tirade caught on camera and reported by TMZ.
The Devils took to the team's Twitter feed to invite Sheen to Game 5 in Newark, NJ, on Saturday.
"We'll treat you w/courtesy&common sense @CharlieSheen come to the game tomorrow we have great staff & a smoking balcony," @NHLDevils tweeted Friday, including an image of a pair of Game 5 tickets, a cigar and a "Smoking Permitted" sign.
Devils fans shouldn't get their hopes up, though. Sheen told USA Today on Friday he's "never going to a hockey game again as long as I'm alive."
This, of course, comes from the man who once bought 2,615 left-field seats in 1996 for an Angels-Tigers game at then-Anaheim Stadium. According to Sports Illustrated, he shelled out $6,537.50 in an effort to not have to "crawl over the paying public" for a home run. Neither team homered in the game.
It's interesting that the Devils took the bait and jumped into the fray with their tweet, while the Kings' Twitter account, which has more than doubled its followers in the past two months with a sharp, witty social networking strategy, remained silent.
Even though the Kings remain one win from their first Stanley Cup, their Twitter handlers have already won the social networking battle by delivering a pair of tickets to Rainn Wilson, star of "The Office," encased in green jello (a tribute to a particular episode of the show). The Kings also used Twitter to poke fun at late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien. After O'Brien asserted in a tweet that LA isn't a hockey town, the Kings tweeted back: "Clearly, that joke wasn't meant for prime time" and "Aside from fist-pumping what else is there to do in NJ?"
Even those rankled by the Kings' chirpy and envelope-pushing tweets understand there's a social networking line of decency that, while blurry, should not be crossed. Especially Sheen, whose antics outside the Staples Center doors did not deserve to be rehashed or of being aligned with a team facing an opportunity to draw in new legions of hockey fans — and potential hockey families.
Sheen, of all people, said it best on Wednesday:
"It's about common sense, that's all."
