The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Across Canada, it still stands as a 'where were you when?' moment. Twenty-five years ago last week, on Aug. 9, 1988, Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, was shipped to the Los Angeles Kings. In return for Gretzky and friends Marty McSorley and Mike Krushelnyski, the Edmonton Oilers picked up Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas, three first-rounders and $15 million in cash. For millions of Canadian hockey fans, the sight of Gretzky dabbing away tears at that infamous press conference was surreal. How could this have happened? All too often, The Trade, as it has become known, has been portrayed in simplistic terms as a tale of good (Gretzky) and bad (then-Oilers owner Peter Pocklington). Gretzky was the good guy, the proud Canadian who wanted nothing more than to keep playing in one of Canada's great cities, a city where he had helped build a modern dynasty. Pocklington was the bad guy. He was rich and greedy and all too willing to essentially auction off a national treasure in order to pad his already-deep pockets. Was it really that simple? We can say with '99' per cent accuracy that it was not. There can be no denying the fact that Gretzky, for all his tears, was done with the Oilers once his contract was up. A tiny market like Edmonton was never going to be able to afford the world's greatest player as salaries climbed. The Oilers already had several superstars with growing paycheques _ think Messier, Kurri, Anderson and Fuhr _ and by 1988 had smashed into some hard economic realities. Indeed, within a few years after The Trade, the question wasn't so much whether the Oilers would return to their glory days, but whether they would survive in the NHL at all. The Kings knew what kind of situation the Oilers were facing. And they knew that Gretzky, now married to actress Janet Jones, was spending part of his summers in L.A. Desperate to land a big-name player and put L.A. on the hockey map, the Kings made Pocklington a stunning offer that would have been difficult for any of us to refuse. The $15 million in cash, Pocklington has acknowledged, sealed the deal. Call off According to an account on NHL.com, and other sources, Pocklington gave Gretzky a chance to call off the trade moments before it was announced to the world. Gretzky said no. Upon his touching down in L.A., Gretzky set off a barrage of hockeymania never before seen south of the border. And it was entirely warranted. Gretzky had just led the young Oilers to four Stanley Cups in nine seasons, the team's first nine seasons in the NHL. He had topped the NHL scoring race seven times. He had four 200-plus-point seasons, a feat no one before or since has accomplished even once. And Gretzky was literally games away from leapfrogging over his idol, Gordie Howe, to become the league's all-time leading scorer. No. 99 proved to be the perfect ambassador to sell hockey to Americans who traditionally flocked to games involving hoops, bats or yard lines. The interest he sparked opened the door for the NHL to expand into once-unthinkable markets, some of which worked (San Jose) and others which failed miserably (Phoenix). Yet Gretzky never won another Stanley Cup. The closest he came was when the Kings went to the 1993 Final and lost to the Montreal Canadiens (Patrick Roy, actually). The Oilers didn't exactly shrivel up and die, capturing one more Cup in 1990 thanks to Bill Ranford's heroics in net. Yet some say Gretzky's ascent as hockey's first true U.S.-based superstar led to the salary escalation that nearly killed the Oilers (and did kill other teams). Twenty-five years later, the sting of the Gretzky trade has diminished, in large part because we can now accept that had it not happened in 1988, it would have happened some other year.
