KING FOR A YEAR : Trade That Shook the NHL Benefited Gretzky, Team

On Aug. 9, 1988, Wayne Gretzky bid a tearful adieu to the people of Edmonton, choked out a few words that didn’t really explain why he had asked to be traded, climbed into Bruce McNall’s private plane and flew into what was then considered hockey oblivion.

Off to Los Angeles, of all places, in a stunning trade.

It changed the course of many lives, altered the balance of power in the National Hockey League, affected television contracts and bottom lines, has been reflected in many a player’s renegotiations and, McNall believes, will make Los Angeles a hockey town.

Somewhere over the Rockies, Gretzky dried his tears. He greeted his new life with a smile and with the hope that he would, someday, waltz with another Stanley Cup.

It was an amazingly quick transition, even for the Great One.

How long had he known it was coming? Was it really what he wanted?

Edmonton Oiler owner Peter Pocklington told reporters that day a year ago that Gretzky had asked to be traded to the Kings because he wanted to spend more time with his bride, Janet Jones, and that he had let Gretzky go with a heavy heart.

However, Gretzky later said that Janet was not behind the trade, that there was no cause for radio talk-show hosts in Canada to call her a Jezebel and liken her role in breaking up the champion Edmonton Oilers to Yoko Ono’s role in breaking up the Beatles.

And how about Gretzky’s tears? Were they real? Pocklington later said that they were phony. All for show.

That was no act, Gretzky says. And he is sure that anyone who has ever seen him try to act will agree.

“At that point in time, I felt like everyone else,” Gretzky said. “I couldn’t believe it was happening. It wasn’t as if we had just lost. We had just won the Stanley Cup for the fourth time in five years. I had had, arguably, my best playoff ever. I won the Conn Smythe, and, all of a sudden, I’m traded.

“It was kind of disbelief for everyone. That was my feeling more than anything else. To this day, I’m like . . . every other sports fan. To think, two years ago, that I would be playing in L.A.? It’s hard to comprehend.

“The thing that is funny about it all, I was very disappointed when I left Edmonton. I thought of all the great times and fun memories. And yet, on the way home, with Mr. McNall, it was like it had happened a year ago. It was 10 minutes ago. By then, I was ready to move on. I was really looking forward to L.A.

“It was time.”

What was behind the trade that sent Gretzky, Mike Krushelnyski and Marty McSorley to the Kings for Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas, three first-round draft picks and $15 million?

Business. It was simply business.

As Gretzky said so often in the months that followed: “Owners don’t do $15-million favors for wives.”

So what was Gretzky’s role in the trade that caused Pocklington to be hanged in effigy? And how does Gretzky feel after a year of living as a King?

It all started, Gretzky recalls, on the night that the Oilers won their fourth Stanley Cup. It was as if someone had a secret, he said, and as soon as the game was over, everyone wanted to be the first to tell him.

He was being shopped around.

Of course, he didn’t believe it. Merely another rumor. He went out and celebrated with his teammates.

But it started sounding pretty serious when he got a call at 8:30 the next morning from Vancouver.

“I was just getting home,” Gretzky said. “I hadn’t even been to bed yet. I was lying on my couch . . .

“It was a big surprise to get a call like that right after winning the Stanley Cup. . . . I thought I had played pretty well.”

Gretzky called Pocklington to ask what was going on and was told that the time had come to get a new contract signed.

The contract that Gretzky and the Oilers had, at that time, was going to leave Gretzky as an absolute free agent in 1991. Pocklington couldn’t let that happen.

The five-year contract had been signed hurriedly during the summer of 1987, when Pocklington was planning to offer public stock in the Oilers. Pocklington couldn’t do that with Gretzky under the long-term personal services contract that ran through ‘99--hence, Gretzky’s number--that they had signed when Pocklington bought Gretzky’s World Hockey Assn. team. Gretzky agreed to sign a five-year contract with the Oilers without haggling as long as he had the termination clause.

“I remember signing the contract knowing that I was going to be either re-done or traded within one or two years, so it wasn’t a surprise to me,” Gretzky said. “It came down to the fact that we couldn’t come to an agreement. My understanding was that if we couldn’t come to an agreement, he would have to move me. That’s when it came down to business.”

The shock he felt when Vancouver called him was, largely, the result of the timing. He hadn’t expected to be getting calls the morning after the championship game, and certainly not before Pocklington had tried to get him signed.

As the negotiations unfolded in the next few weeks, Gretzky came to understand that he was in control when it came to the teams bidding for him.

“They felt that it would be best for everyone that I wasn’t unhappy where I was going,” Gretzky said. “That’s when I knew I could control my destiny.

“I did ask to go to Detroit or Los Angeles.”

Detroit, near Gretzky’s hometown of Brantford, Ontario, had always been his sentimental favorite. Los Angeles meant Janet and lots of business opportunities.

“I knew when they were asking $15 million, the teams got narrowed down real quick,” Gretzky said. “There were only two or three teams I could really end up with with that kind of a price tag. Detroit, New York and L.A. are about it.”

Vancouver offered Gretzky a lot of money, but he didn’t see what he had to gain by going “an hour and a half west of Edmonton.” The money, he said, didn’t matter. He killed the deal right away.

“I just said no,” Gretzky said.

And Detroit didn’t show Pocklington the kind of interest that Los Angeles showed.

“That was when Bruce called me and told me that he had permission to talk to me,” Gretzky said.

The negotiations between McNall and Pocklington went on for weeks.

“The Jimmy Carson part held up things at least two weeks,” McNall said. “At different times I thought maybe we could keep him. I thought they wanted to do the deal so badly, that I had a chance.

“But when (the story) started to leak, the opportunity of keeping him was less. The press, up there, began to get the story out and the response was coming in so strong it was almost an impossible thing. (The Oilers) were starting to get cold feet. So the Carson thing, we lost that.”

McNall offered Pocklington a reported $5 million to keep Carson out of the deal. McNall also offered more draft picks.

“I tried everything, but they were just adamant about it,” he said.

At least he managed to hold onto Luc Robitaille. In the beginning, Edmonton had been asking for both Robitaille and Carson.

McNall said he told the players in question what was going on.

“Jimmy knew it. Luc knew it,” he said. “They understood that if we were going to do this deal, we were going to have to give up something.”

Meanwhile, Pocklington was trying to keep McSorley.

“I know that Glen Sather (Edmonton’s coach and general manager) was not for the deal,” McNall said. “He was never real supportive of the idea. I didn’t really speak with him. He had resigned himself to doing it. But, again, he was adamant about not wanting Marty McSorley to be a part of the deal.

“I was very concerned that, somehow, (the deal) was going to be messed up. . . .

“Pocklington was under a lot of pressure from all sides. I thought he was going to reconsider and say, ‘Well, that’s it.’ He’s the kind of guy who just might say, ‘Forget about it.’ ”

And Gretzky?

“It was a tough time because we were spending May and June getting ready for our (July 16) wedding,” Gretzky said.

“It was a tough wedding because we had to try to satisfy not only friends and family, we had to satisfy fans, try to satisfy the media. We tried to make it accommodating for everyone. It was hard. We were working almost full-time on the wedding. My wife was pregnant. It was an emotional time.

“The official date that I was traded was when we got the telex, about a week before it was announced. It wasn’t supposed to be announced until about a week later than it was, but somehow it leaked out.”

Actually, McNall had called Gretzky while he was still on his honeymoon to tell him that the trade had been agreed upon. And McNall took the Gretzkys and some other friends out to dinner to celebrate in Los Angeles weeks before the Aug. 9 announcement.

Still, McNall says he feared that a last-second glitch would negate the agreements.

“I didn’t really believe it was going to happen until late the night before, I guess, Aug. 8, because we had gone around so often and it was so big, it’s almost unrealistic to think that something like that is going to take place,” he said. “I came to the point where, actually, I think the day of Aug. 8, I didn’t really think it was going to happen at all.

“So that night I said to Peter, ‘Look, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to have to happen right now. If it’s not, fine. But it’s going to have to happen.’ I thought if it continued to muddle on, especially the pressure of the press, with all the rumors, it would create such a huge stir up in Edmonton that it wouldn’t happen.

“I felt the more we kept it dragging, the worse it would get. I thought we had to move on it now. I said, ‘If you don’t want the $15 million, fine.’ That’s tough for a guy to say no to. So he said, ‘Fine.’ I called Wayne and got that press conference thing set up real fast.”

Gretzky said: “Bruce called me where I was staying at (entertainer) Alan Thicke’s house at about 1:30 in the morning and told me that we had to be on a plane to Edmonton at 7 a.m.

“I knew that I would have to sit down and talk with them (Pocklington and Sather). It was one of the things that my wife and I had talked about. As I’ve said, they were kind enough to let me go to L.A., and I was very appreciative for that. But after some of the things that had been said and done, there was no way, I just wouldn’t have enjoyed myself playing hockey there.”

McNall was nervous about sending Gretzky into those meetings alone. After all, he had told Gretzky that if anything didn’t feel right at the last minute, he could pull out.

Gretzky said: “I never wavered. I knew that Mr. McNall was nervous when I went in there, but I wasn’t. I had no reason to think that anyone could talk me out of it. I think that by that point in time, I was way beyond coming back to Edmonton.”

“I think they traded me to L.A. thinking that (with this club) I wouldn’t come back to haunt them,” Gretzky said. “I think, in that, I was underestimated as a hockey player.”

The Kings’ record in their first year with Gretzky improved to 42-31-7. They went from 18th overall in the league to fourth, one point away from third place. They came from behind to knock the defending champion Oilers out of the playoffs before they lost to Calgary, which won the Stanley Cup.

The success was reflected at the box office, even before Gretzky had played a game.

The sellout for the Kings’ opener last season was the team’s first sellout of an opener. They went on to a record 25 sellouts and their average attendance increased from 11,667 to 14,875. And then they sold out all six playoff games.

The trade that was a business deal turned out to be good business for the Kings.

That’s why McNall thought, from the start, that it would be only fair to offer Gretzky a share of the franchise that he was about to turn around.

“He’s not just a hockey player,” McNall said. “For what he’s done for our team? He’s your partner.

“On one hand, he’s a player and he just wants to be a player. On the other hand, he’s also a good friend. He’s been there for us any time we needed him for anything.

“Obviously, selling a sport that has hit the way it’s hit here has demanded a lot of his time and his effort and a lot of his cooperation. We’ve become good friends.

“If Wayne Gretzky ever gets bored with this sport one day and decides not to play, until we’ve set up a tradition here, it could easily fall back to where it was before. So I treat him more like a partner.

“If the league had permitted it on his contract deal, I had talked to him about a part of the franchise. And Wayne didn’t want it. He just wants to be a player.

“But I was right in thinking that the value of the franchise would increase enormously as a result of him. There is no other real reason for it. We can all speculate about the change of colors and all the nice things we’ve done here. The organization has done more to help promote the Kings. And that’s certainly a percentage of it. But it’s not a very high percentage of it. I’d say 99% of it is Gretzky.”

McNall considers Gretzky the catalyst for all the things that followed.

“The Larry Robinsons and those kinds of things may not have happened,” McNall said. “It would be a different team and it might be going in a different direction.”

But what about the general perception that McNall and Gretzky are such close buddies that Gretzky, more than General Manager Rogie Vachon, calls the shots?

McNall said: “We do pal around. We do discuss things. But he will never volunteer something, like, ‘I think we should get this guy for that guy.’ Never once has that happened.

“But what I do do, and what Rogie does, more than I do, is to ask him, for example, ‘What do you think of Keith Crowder?’ Or, ‘Of the free agents available, who do you think will help our team the most?’ If Rogie didn’t do it, I’d be disappointed. And if I didn’t do it, I’d be crazy.

“My attitude is, use every asset you possibly can. I also ask other players, too.”

“In a way, you don’t want to have so many cooks you mess up the soup. But when you have the greatest player that ever lived, you’d be nuts not to use his knowledge of the game.”

And when they don’t all agree? McNall said he puts Gretzky’s call ahead of his own, but puts Vachon’s ahead of Gretzky’s.

As proof that Gretzky doesn’t always get what he wants, McNall points out: “If that was the case, every Edmonton player would be here, one way or the other. . . . He’s never in a situation where he asks that much. He just doesn’t do that. He doesn’t say, ‘You’ve got to go out and get (Jari) Kurri, any way you can.’

“If I go to him and say, ‘We can get Kurri for this that and the other thing, what do you think?’ he’ll be honest. We’ve asked things about players he was friendly with, deals that I thought, emotionally, he might want, and he’ll say, ‘No. That’s too much.’ ”

McNall values Vachon, he says, because Vachon knows how to follow protocol.

“There’s an old style in hockey that says a GM does a certain job,” McNall said. “Players, coaches, even owners to a certain extent, don’t violate that area. A coach does a certain job. And those areas are inviolate. I don’t believe in that. I’ll listen to the press sometimes if I have to. I’ll listen to a fan. It doesn’t matter. I get input from all directions. . . . I listen.

“But Rogie’s authority is not in any way affected by it. I would have a personal problem with a GM who had to be so forceful and arrogant about his personal views of how things ought to be run that he didn’t listen to anyone, whether it be an owner or whether it be Wayne Gretzky.

“Again, realistically, who’s going to win that battle, if there was such a battle? I don’t know how many GMs in this league sell tickets. I don’t know how many owners sell tickets when you really come down to it.

“So, the idea that Wayne runs the show, you’d be right to view things that way from the point of view that his influence is always going to be great.”

Gretzky is hoping that, in the coming season, the focus will shift away from him, at least a bit, as new issues draw the spotlight away from the trade.

Last year, Mario Lemieux of Pittsburgh and Steve Yzerman of Detroit helped shift some of the attention. So did the big year that Gretzky’s new teammate, Bernie Nicholls, had.

Gretzky says that this season, the addition of some Soviet stars will capture the attention of a lot of NHL fans. And in Los Angeles, Gretzky will be glad to share center stage with Nicholls again. And with Larry Robinson, who has joined the Kings from the Montreal Canadiens.

First, of course, Gretzky will have to deal with the flood of attention that will come with breaking the league scoring record, currently held by his idol, Gordie Howe. He needs 14 points to break Howe’s mark of 1,850 points.

McNall is hoping that the record goes in one of the first four games, so that it happens in the Forum for King fans.

Gretzky says he would love to do it in Los Angeles, but he thinks it might be more realistic to expect to see it in the sixth game, which happens to be in Edmonton.

But if form holds, it’s sure to happen early in the season.

“It was perfect last year, when I needed 182 points,” Gretzky said. “It was so far away that no one really talked about it. Now, with 14 to go, it’s so close. It will happen relatively quickly. We won’t still be talking about it in November, December and January.”

Gretzky is also hoping that the Kings, as a contending team, will be worth some attention.

“I always said that this is a sports city, and any time you have a sports city, give them something they like, and they’ll support it,” Gretzky said.

“People used to say to me, ‘You’re going down there and it’s a basketball town. They have the Lakers.’ Sure, they have the Lakers, and it’s great to watch the champions. But I always tell people, ‘There’s another (pro basketball) team in town and they’re only drawing 6,000. If it’s such a great basketball town, why are they only drawing 6,000?’

“People want to see winners. They come to watch and be entertained, see a team win. I knew if the Kings could put a winning atmosphere here and a positive attitude, we would do well.

“I think our team is much better right now than what we finished with. . . . Just five or six more wins than we had last year would be a big improvement.

“Keith Crowder will help us a lot. He’ll give us a very solid checking line. . . . Larry (Robinson) will prove invaluable. He played well in the playoffs last year, and I’m sure he’ll play the same way for us. More important, he’ll be like a playing coach for our young defensemen. The two Swedish players that we signed, who have not been talked about, are going to help.

“We didn’t have the depth Calgary had last year, but we stayed with them pretty well. . . . Rogie and Mr. McNall are the ones who spent the summer working, making sure the right people are here. . . . I think the team that comes out of this division will have as good a chance as any for the Stanley Cup.”

But the Kings need to have that kind of a chance every year to develop fans. And the Kings need to have fans who are coming to see hockey, not just one player.

“We’re trying to build something that lasts,” Gretzky said. “We don’t want to have another season like last year and then two years from now drop back down. We want to build a foundation, build a following. Parents bringing their kids to games now, I hope 20 years from now, those kids will being bringing their kids. We need to build a relationship with the fans.

“It’s amazing how teams change year to year.”

Like how the Kings changed between the playoffs of 1988 and the playoffs of 1989.

“I knew it was going to be tough year (last year), because it was a new thing and an exciting time for everyone,” Gretzky said. “It’s part of the game that you accept. Obviously, it’s going to be a lot easier for me this year.”