THE NHL / STEVE SPRINGER : Gretzky: Why Not Send the Best to the Olympics?

One of pro sport’s superstars, he has set records, won titles and dominated his game. But the one prize beyond even his reach has been an Olympic gold medal.

He is . . . Magic Johnson?

Not this time. In this case, he is Wayne Gretzky.

Like Johnson, Gretzky has thought about playing in the Olympics.

“I just didn’t have the opportunity,” he said. “I would love to do it, but I doubt if I’ll ever get the chance.”

Johnson became enamored of the idea of competing in the Summer Olympics after watching the U.S. basketball team fail to win the gold medal at the 1988 Games. But Gretzky doesn’t see it on purely nationalistic terms.

“It would not be so much for myself. It would be great for hockey,” he said of the prospect of the NHL’s biggest names taking part in the Winter Olympics. “The best thing for the game would be an American-Canadian final.”

Don’t get the idea that young Wayne Gretzky lay awake nights dreaming of skating into the Olympics for the Canadians.

“I was more fixated by the NHL when I was young,” he said. “It wasn’t until I went to the Olympic Games in Calgary that I saw what a wonderful spectacle it is. It seems a lot bigger in person than it does on TV.”

Flooding the Olympics with NHL players is a lot harder than stocking the U.S. basketball squad with the NBA’s finest. The Summer Olympics are in the middle of the NBA’s off-season. The Winter Olympics come in the middle of the NHL season. Only fringe players from the league compete in the Olympics.

“It could be worked out,” Gretzky said. “You would have to shut the NHL down for a couple of weeks. But you would just start the season a week earlier and finish a week later. There are ways to do it.”

What bothers Gretzky about the Canadian Olympic hockey squad is the same thing that bothered Johnson about the U.S. Olympic basketball teams of the past. Why, both wondered, were their nations forced to compete largely with amateurs while many other countries have no such limitations?

While the United States was still able to excel before the rules were changed, the results have been far more severe for Canada. Although hockey is their national pastime, Canadians have not won an Olympic gold medal in that sport in 40 years.

“The Canadian people realize we’re not sending over our best players,” Gretzky said. “I think it’s kind of silly. If you’re not going to send your best, why spend the money? If you’re going to send a rocket to the moon, you want to know it’s going to get there. Why not send the best? That’s my feeling.”

Latest add Nicholls: Bernie Nicholls changes teams, but not his approach to controversy. Whether he is a King, a New York Ranger or an Edmonton Oiler, Nicholls has never been one to keep his thoughts to himself.

He made it plain from the moment he was traded from New York to Edmonton at the start of the season that he didn’t want to be merely another plank in General Manager Glen Sather’s rebuilding operation.

After sitting out two months to be with his wife during her pregnancy, Nicholls reluctantly reported to Edmonton. Through 27 games, he has 26 points (10 goals, 16 assists). But with the Oilers tied for fourth place in the Smyth Division, Nicholls says the responsibility has fallen unfairly on his shoulders and those of fellow forward Petr Klima.

“The Oilers could have won eight or nine Stanley Cups,” Nicholls told the Edmonton Sun. “Everyone knows that. Glen Sather traded away a dynasty for money. Don’t blame Petr and I. Management never stands up and takes the blame. It’s always the players, but management makes the deals. . . . (Sather) is starting to blame the players, and that’s not right. If he treated people like human beings like every other general manager, he’d still have a dynasty here.”

Said Sather: “I don’t think we’re blaming anybody. What I said was that maybe I should have sent Bernie to Cape Breton (an Edmonton farm team) because he hadn’t played in two months and his timing was not there. If I hadn’t made the deals I did, we’d be out of business. Everybody in hockey knows that.”

He knows all about saving: The Montreal Canadiens’ Patrick Roy, a two-time Vezina Trophy winner as the NHL’s best goalie, doesn’t limit his saves to the ice.

He saves hockey and baseball cards as well.

His prize possession is a complete set of 1951-52 NHL cards, given to him by his father. But that was only the beginning.

“I’m not one who collects in order to make money off them,” Roy said. “I like just to look at them.”

He has plenty to look at. Roy’s collection numbers about 60,000 cards.

Sign of the times: St. Louis Blue wing Brett Hull has always been cooperative when asked to sign an autograph. But he is under no delusions as to the purpose behind many of the requests.

“In my father’s day,” Hull said of his Hall of Fame father, Bobby, “kids had scraps of paper and a wrapped-up envelope for autographs. They didn’t have 7,000 cards as they do today.

“(Today) people pay kids to get autographs for them. I like doing things for kids, and it’s sad because sometimes you think: ‘Are you a kid here for an autograph or are you just here to pay your way through college?’ ”