The League’s Greatest Mess?

This should have been the NHL’s finest hour, time to celebrate its rebirth after a crippling lockout and to preen in front of a global audience.

Instead, a gambling ring that police in New Jersey say has ensnared about a dozen NHL players and club executives -- and has involved Wayne Gretzky at least tangentially -- was the talk of the hockey world four days before the puck will drop in the opening game of the men’s Olympic hockey tournament.

The Teflon skin that has always deflected any criticism aimed at him has been pierced. The issue that will dominate the Olympic hockey tournament won’t be whether the Czechs can again ride goaltender Dominik Hasek to gold, or even whether the chairs in the dorm rooms of U.S. players will again be so light that they’ll magically fly out the window, as they did at Nagano in 1998.

The question will be how much did Gretzky know about the alleged involvement of his wife, Janet Jones, in the multimillion-dollar gambling operation that was, according to police, financed by his friend and Phoenix Coyote assistant coach, Rick Tocchet, and when did he know it?

Four years ago at Salt Lake City, in his first stint as the Canadian team’s executive director, Gretzky cleverly drew attention away from his struggling squad by fabricating the notion of an anti-Canadian bias, creating an us-against-the-world mentality that united his players. His uncharacteristic outburst shifted scrutiny away from his players and on to him, giving the team a chance to regroup and go on to win the gold medal.

The attention he will get in Turin will have distinctly more hostile overtones.

Two days after Gretzky said he knew nothing about the gambling ring, the Newark Star-Ledger and Associated Press reported that law enforcement officials have tapes of Gretzky discussing the operation with Tocchet and asking how Jones could avoid being implicated. Gretzky has not addressed that apparent contradiction, and he will have to face that soon.

As of Friday, he still planned to travel here after the NHL plays its final games on Sunday and takes a 17-day break. He will be accompanied by his wife -- a trip that was planned long ago, a Coyote spokesman said -- and one of their five children, 15-year-old Ty. If Jones wanted to avoid media scrutiny, she surely wouldn’t go to Turin, where about 10,000 journalists are covering 2,500 athletes.

No one has found evidence that Gretzky placed a bet with Tocchet or that Jones or any of the players linked to the ring have bet on hockey games. Jones, who, according to one report, bet $500,000 over several months, issued a non-denial denial on Thursday in which she said she hadn’t placed any bets for her husband. She didn’t say she hadn’t placed bets for herself.

The relationship between sports and betting has always been uneasy. The integrity of what unfolds on the field of play is supposed to be paramount, allowing games to unfold according to the dictates of physical and mental strength and not according to how much money has been passed under the table. There are few elements in sports that remain sacred, but the credibility of every professional league rests on that tenet. The fan who pays good money -- and usually too much of it -- to see a game wants to believe that the outcome hasn’t been predetermined, and that must be so.

Yet, there is also a symbiotic relationship between sports and gambling. Provincial lotteries put money in the coffers of the Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks. And the Penguins’ best hope of staying in Pittsburgh rests on allying with one of the companies that’s vying for permission to build a casino and would fund the construction of a new arena in exchange for the right to the only state license to operate a casino within the city.

It is not illegal to bet in most states. Jones said she’d never known her husband to bet on anything other than “the occasional horse race.” He’s allowed the same fun everyone else has.

But he’s not like everyone else. Nearly seven years after his retirement, he’s probably the most recognized name in hockey, a tribute to him and a condemnation of the NHL’s inability to promote and market its players. However, the reputation he built over decades of exemplary behavior on and off the ice could be threatened.

There are many frightening aspects to this case. There have been whispers that more current and former NHL players will be implicated, and that the gambling ring Tocchet allegedly helped run reportedly had ties to an organized crime family in New Jersey. The worst may be yet to come. That’s why the implications of this investigation are grave and can’t be written off as just a couple of the boys betting a few bucks on a Sunday afternoon football game.

Say it ain’t so, Wayne. Or the NHL, for once through no fault of its own, will face a crisis from which it may never recover.