Goodbye for Gretzky, Hello to Mediocrity for L.A.

Wayne Gretzky stepped to the podium at the news conference announcing his trade from the Kings to the St. Louis Blues and leaned toward the microphone, not sure it was functioning.

“Hello, hello,” he said.

No, goodbye, goodbye.

Goodbye to Wayne Gretzky. Goodbye to the best player ever to wear a King uniform--or any other in hockey--and goodbye to all hopes of seeing the Kings rise above the mediocrity they have so tightly embraced for so many years.

They were not winning games this season with Wayne Gretzky in their lineup. But instead of keeping their best asset and building around him, they chose to trade him for a junior prospect, Roman Vopat, and forwards Craig Johnson and Patrice Tardif, who had been only moderately successful on a team that is starved for offense.

As for the 1997 first-round draft pick they will get from the Blues, a pick Coach Larry Robinson proclaimed “could be another Wayne Gretzky,” predicting the future is an inexact science. The Kings’ shabby track record with first-round draft picks over the years hardly spurs optimism that that player--or the player they take with the 1996 fifth-round choice they also got--will remind anyone of Gretzky, unless it’s Keith Gretzky, Wayne’s younger brother.

And if Gretzky helps improve the Blues’ fortunes, that pick automatically becomes less valuable because it will be later in the draft.

Yet, Bob Sanderman, who represents club owners Edward P. Roski Jr. and Philip Anschutz, endorsed the deal as made by General Manager Sam McMaster. He said he backs the entire management team, including club president Rogie Vachon, and he intends to give McMaster a personal endorsement in the form of negotiating to renew McMaster’s contract after it expires at season’s end.

McMaster, who traded defenseman Alex Zhitnik last season to fill a goaltending need that didn’t exist, who traded the most prolific scorer in NHL history for a mid-range first-round pick, a 19-year-old who is playing junior hockey and two unproven and virtually unknown forwards, who traded Rick Tocchet’s soaring spirit and sore back for Kevin Stevens’ $15 million back aches, gets to keep making more trades like that.

It doesn’t seem like a good way to keep fans coming to the Forum. Or to bring back the ones whose seats this season have been empty in silent protest of recent mismanagement and bungling on the ice and off.

“We have a great deal of confidence in the hockey operations group and we are fully supportive of their program to build this team into a contender,” Sanderman said. “This is a trade we as owners were involved in from the beginning and we support it, albeit it with a tear of sadness. There’s a time to sow and a time to reap.

“What we are doing is not easy for us, but it is the right thing for the team in the next few years. We will not be working with a star, albeit one in the later part of his career, but we are putting five players into our organization. I just ask our fans to look carefully at what we are doing and have patience. This is not an easy task, but it is one we are determined to accomplish.”

How much more patience must King fans show?

McMaster, Sanderman and company are asking them to show a lot more patience, perhaps more than is reasonable. The Kings, 18-31-15 and ninth in the weak Western Conference, will not be winners for years, despite Gretzky’s assertion that the Kings will soon become contenders. He was being polite. He said all the right things. It was not the time to gloat.

“I think they’re really going to jump into the free agent market. I don’t think it’s going to take a long time,” he said. “Mr. Roski is going to go out and do the best to put a winning team together for Larry [Robinson, the Kings’ coach]. Larry is very patient and all the guys here are great. That’s the hard part, leaving the guys . . .

“After the conversation we had today, I felt it was probably best for the Kings, the city and the fans that we head in this direction.”

He said he had no quarrel with the Kings’ inability to significantly improve themselves. Although in Stevens they landed the 50-goal scorer Gretzky had said would be essential to the Kings’ potential success, they did not acquire the offensive-oriented defenseman he also thought necessary. Funny, but only Monday the New Jersey Devils acquired offensive-minded defenseman Phil Housley from the Calgary Flames.

Even if Gretzky didn’t like the deals the Kings have made--or lamented the ones they hadn’t made--he wasn’t likely to say so.

“I think they [the Kings] have done everything they can to improve this team. They made a nice trade the other day to get Shane Churla,” he said. “They’re doing everything they can to win. No one has the recipe for success. No one knows for sure.”

The Kings don’t seem to have the recipe in their file this season. They’re 0-6-3 as they prepare to face the Tampa Bay Lighting tonight at the Forum in their first game AG (After Gretzky). If they weren’t winning with him and his $6.45 million salary in the lineup, why keep him around?

“In one respect [the Kings’ record] made this whole thing a little easier to do,” Sanderman said. “The team had not been playing well and even when the team plays well, as in [Monday] night in Winnipeg, the bounces go against us.

“If we haven’t been winning with the group we have now, we have to make some changes and rectify that.”

The timing of the trade is curious, given that Anschutz and Roski are expected to announce, perhaps as soon as later this week, a deal to begin construction of a $220 million arena for the Kings and the Lakers. Sources say they are close to striking a deal with the City of Los Angeles that will see the city loan $50 million toward the deal, which is projected to be downtown near the Convention Center. It’s believed Laker owner Jerry Buss will get $40 million to take the Lakers to the new building.

Will Roman Vopat sell tickets? Will people buy suites to see Craig Johnson? They might have been lured in to see Gretzky’s final season, to see the last vestiges of glamour and a glamorous team.

“Obviously, the offer made to Wayne was with the intention of having him work with us toward filling the new arena,” said Sanderman, who said the Kings’ owners are still looking at four potential sites. “That may have been one of the reasons Wayne left. He realizes he probably won’t be playing in September, 1999 [the hoped-for opening date].

“Our whole plan is to build toward opening this arena. We put the right players under the general manager and hockey staff we have today with the intention of growing them into winners in the new arena. Hopefully, they will be winners before that. We hope they will celebrate their second Stanley Cup in the new arena.”

Without Gretzky, the old arena will look that much shabbier. However, Gretzky insisted he leaves a strong team and a strong sport.

“This trade was probably good for both of us,” Gretzky said. “It was good for me and it was good for the Kings. They got what they wanted.”

If they wanted mediocrity, that’s what they got--and what they’re likely to have for years to come.