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The greatest hockey player of all time traded at 27?
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00:24Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame
00:26A series that takes a fresh look at sports personalities who are remembered largely for their mistakes, controversial moments, or
00:33questionable decisions.
00:34In 1988, an international incident occurred when the Edmonton Oilers shipped National Treasurer Wayne Gretzky across the border to Los
00:42Angeles.
00:43President Reagan instantly became a hockey fan, and the Canadian Parliament was in an uproar.
00:48Before we lay out our defense of the Oilers, let's revisit some of the fallout from the most significant trade
00:53in NHL history.
00:57The Edmonton Oilers have agreed to trade Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles.
01:03To learn while the press conference is going on that they were breaking into national soap operas, you know, and
01:10TV was indicative of how big a story it became.
01:13I was watching it, I was like, I couldn't believe it. I was in mourning.
01:23It's the biggest trade in sports history. He wasn't a rookie, he wasn't over the hill. He was in his
01:30prime. He had set records that no one in any team sport had ever set.
01:40There's been nothing like him, or nothing like him before that, that there was that much of a build-up
01:45of what a player had come in.
01:47It started when he was about seven or eight years old, and I think he was playing in some league
01:53in Ontario, and scored over 300 goals.
01:56People would sell out rinks to see Wayne Gretzky when he was 11, 12 years old in Canada.
02:02He was featured on Hockey Night in Canada at 11. He had a one-hour telecast about him and only
02:08him at 13.
02:09He says, I'm just a person who's spent every moment, every waking moment, having people watch what I do.
02:16In 1979, when the NHL absorbed four WHA franchises, the Edmonton Oilers' Wayne Gretzky, at 18, began a spectacular journey
02:27into sports history.
02:29Cuts in front of his teammate. Gretzky scores!
02:32The Patrick in the first period!
02:35From day one, he started to amaze us. You're on the bench looking at each other, just shaking their heads,
02:41wondering, you know, how did he pull that one off?
02:43His agility was far superior to other players. His shot was probably one of the best shots in the league.
02:51His passing, obviously, was uncanny.
02:53Here's Wayne Gretzky, behind the back pass to Curry. It's 50, a goal! It's 39 days!
03:00I played on a line with two other guys, and our assignment was to shut him down.
03:03We would get to the bench, and we would find ourselves arguing.
03:06Gretzky eludes Dupont.
03:08You had him. No, you had him. I handed him off to you.
03:11Score!
03:13Gretzky, go!
03:20I was playing on a great team. I was scoring a lot of goals, and we were winning every night.
03:25The Oilers have won the Stanley Cup!
03:30We had the best team in the history of the NHL.
03:33It was like a highlight film every game. You're standing up, watching things going on, and this is unbelievable.
03:38After nine seasons in the NHL, the 27-year-old Phenomenon had collected eight MVP awards and set season records
03:45of 215 points and 92 goals.
03:49His impact on the sport and his country was unprecedented.
03:54It was just beyond belief that someday in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, which at the time was realistically a pimple on
04:01the prairie, that the greatest hockey player in the world and the most entertaining team in the history of hockey
04:06would all happen here.
04:08Edmonton, Edmonton, seemed like his hometown because that was their son in a sense, you know, where everybody in that
04:14city loved him.
04:15The city of Edmonton took Wayne Gretzky to its civic bosom. He gave that city an identity that it will
04:24probably retain forever.
04:25To Canadians, Wayne is much more than hockey. Wayne is an icon. He's a national symbol.
04:31The Canadians are very proud of him as an ambassador for the Maple Leaf to the entire world.
04:37Well, you just have to look at the front of the building. There's a statue out there of Wayne. He
04:41was probably more recognized than the prime ministers in this country.
04:44Wayne Gretzky, for the fourth time in five years, hoisted over his head.
04:49I always tell everybody that if we could have kept Wayne and that team together, we'd have won another four
04:53or five trophies for sure.
04:55Canada was feeling pretty good about itself. We're a small country, but we've got the Edmonton Oilers and Wayne Gretzky
05:00is the greatest player in the world.
05:02Edmonton, I think, will win the Stanley Cup five more years. All of a sudden...
05:05Wayne Gretzky is going to leave the Edmonton Oilers to go and play hockey for the Los Angeles Kings.
05:11In return for Gretzky, the Oilers, who two and a half months earlier had won the Stanley Cup, received two
05:17players, three first-round draft picks and $15 million.
05:22But to most of Canada, there could be no compensation for the loss of their hero.
05:27It was absolute emotional mayhem. Millions of people, in the United States as well, but all through Canada, watched that
05:36press conference.
05:38I promised Mess I wouldn't do this. And inside, wept with him.
05:45It's my 22nd wedding anniversary today, and then a catastrophe like this. It's just unbelievable. I'm really shook up. I
05:53could stand here and cry.
05:57He was an oiler, and he would always be an oiler. And he'd done so much for that team, for
06:02people.
06:02He was married. Uh... Let's see... Four Stanley Cups with Gretzky. One since none in the last 35 years.
06:14I think the Oilers should have kept him.
06:18...would never have suspected that he would ever be traded.
06:21Here in Canada, they have to stop the Parliament, and then they made a motion to, uh...
06:27...to say, can we do something to keep Gretzky in Canada?
06:31Mr. Speaker, I just simply want to say that we're sad to see him leave Canada and go to, uh,
06:35Los Angeles.
06:37There were protests everywhere.
06:39I'll tell you that, that if you were on the wrong side of that issue, you couldn't have been elected
06:43dog catcher.
06:44Are you guys going to keep going to Oilers games this season?
06:47No, never again. Never go to an Oilers game.
06:49L.A. fan, no. L.A. all the way.
06:51Peter Pocklington was public enemy number one, the owner of the Oilers, because he basically sold Wayne.
06:57He sold out Edmonton. First coffee, now Gretzky.
07:00This is for you, Gretz. You're the best, buddy.
07:03I'm sure Peter had lots of sleepless nights, but he was vilified forever and ever and ever.
07:07And that will be on probably Peter's epitaph. I traded Wayne Gretzky.
07:12All hell broke loose in Edmonton. I had a few death threats. I had eggs thrown at the house.
07:19People have long memories, especially when you trade their icon.
07:24People in Edmonton held to bitterness for years and years and years.
07:27In fact, Mark Messier wouldn't talk to the media for a couple of months after.
07:31He was so mad at the Oilers for trading.
07:33How could he trade the, you know, obviously the greatest player to ever play the game out of Edmonton?
07:39It was hard. It was really hard for a lot of us for a long time.
07:42You cannot be forgotten. Something's got to be done. There's got to be justice.
07:45With the Oilers. When he got a Stanley Cup with the, um, what's it? The New York Rangers.
07:53He got the last lap.
07:57Okay, you've seen the heartbreak and anger that resonated throughout.
08:00Now, here are the top five reasons you can't blame Edmonton for trading Gretzky.
08:04But first, we have a few that didn't make the short list.
08:07Here are the best of the rest.
08:10The power of love.
08:13The trade occurred August 9th, 1988,
08:1624 days after Gretzky married Hollywood starlet Janet Jones.
08:21I think he's being steered by someone that's, um, sort of dominant.
08:26That blonde Jezebel.
08:27That charlatan from L.A.
08:29That Mickey Mouse, two-bit actress.
08:32His poor wife Janet Jones was, uh, was cast in the role of some sort of Mata Hari,
08:38dragging our, our boy off to Tinseltown because she wanted to make a go of her career.
08:44The place she wanted to be was Los Angeles,
08:46and I think that had some influence on Wayne.
08:50No small consideration was the frenzied celebration of their marriage.
08:55I don't know how it was at your wedding,
08:57but Gretz had to accept free beer from both the huge Canadian beer companies
09:03because they both so wanted to be represented at Gretz's wedding.
09:06So he had free beer from Olsen and free beer from Labatt's, you know?
09:10And he had to go, he actually had to call a press conference to dispel rumors
09:15about how many sequins were on her dress and, you know, how much the garter belt cost.
09:20I mean, it was crazy.
09:21Everybody has their hoopla quotient, and I think that would have exceeded mine.
09:25That was the royal wedding in Canada.
09:27It's as close as Canada will ever get to doing something like marrying off French Charles.
09:34Another best of the rest.
09:35The NHL was ecstatic.
09:37The league's most popular star was now playing for a major franchise that was floundering.
09:43The trade was clearly a wise one
09:46because anything that helped hockey to that extent had to be good also for the Oilers.
09:51Wayne Gretzky could do more for the game of hockey in Los Angeles
09:54than he could for the game of hockey in Canada.
09:56At that point in time, hockey really needed something major in the United States.
10:01Something had to happen to kickstart it.
10:04And as it turned out, Gretzky's appearance in Los Angeles really did that.
10:08Hockey was perceived as a cold-weather Northeastern sport.
10:12When Wayne Gretzky went to Los Angeles,
10:15the NHL was perceived more coast-to-coast,
10:19more national in the United States than had ever been before.
10:23His 40 goals in his final season with the Oilers
10:26were well below his average of 68 for the previous eight years.
10:30Being a fan, I didn't know whether I wanted to miss the excitement of seeing Wayne on the ice.
10:36But I also thought, he's got to start running out of gas one of these games.
10:40Here's a kid that weighed 170 pounds soaking wet.
10:42If you got into an arm wrestling competition,
10:45you could probably drag a couple of girls out of the stands that would beat him.
10:48After missing just eight games in his first eight NHL seasons,
10:52Gretzky did not play in 16 contests in his last year with Edmonton.
10:58The greatest player in the sports history was going to run out of juice in a season he turned 27
11:07in.
11:09That's your thinking process?
11:19At the end of the year, I finished at 170 pounds.
11:22The day I got traded, I was 151 pounds.
11:25I had a lot of pressure on me, a lot of stress.
11:28Nobody's skinnier than Wayne Gretzky.
11:30How is this guy going to last to you?
11:33At the time that he was traded, I don't think, you know, he had had some injury problems.
11:39Had I been the owner of the hockey team and was afraid of him being injured,
11:44it would be a good business decision to get for him all that we can get.
11:50One reason down, four to go.
11:52Here's reason number four.
11:53We had such a collection of great players that the city wasn't big enough
11:57because they couldn't afford to keep that team.
11:59If we had been in New York or Montreal or Toronto or L.A. or Chicago,
12:04that team would have stuck together for another six, seven years.
12:07I grew up in Canada with the exchange rate, with their tax situation.
12:14It's a very difficult thing.
12:15I couldn't blame Poglinton.
12:17He had to do something.
12:19At one point, there were 39 different investors
12:22trying to run that many championships.
12:24The financial burden on a team to pay them all gets to be difficult.
12:29I don't think I could blame the Oilers on this.
12:32It was probably for them a good business decision,
12:34something that I probably emotionally couldn't have done myself in that same position.
12:39Edmonton's a small place.
12:40He had to trade Paul Coffey, he wanted too much money before Gretzky.
12:43And then Gretzky left, and then Messier left, and then Curry left, and Grant Fury left.
12:48All those great players, because they couldn't afford it.
12:50It was the start of hockey becoming like baseball and like football.
12:54Money became a very important part of hockey.
12:59Reaganomics.
13:00One of the latest sports heroes in this country is a modest young man from Ontario named Wayne Gretzky.
13:07The aggressive economic policies fostered by the Reagan White House
13:11emboldened King's owner Bruce McNall to offer the cash-strapped Oilers a deal they couldn't refuse.
13:18Today's world, it wouldn't happen.
13:19The idea of selling a player is really pretty much gone now.
13:24Bruce McNall is the one that would bring everybody in.
13:26Everybody wanted to see Wayne.
13:27It was a circus.
13:29Would you have come to Los Angeles and played for the Kings had it not been for Bruce McNall?
13:33No, I probably would not have.
13:35He burst on the scene in the mid-80s, and it was thought,
13:39here's someone who loves hockey, and he's going to be the man who's going to make this league prosper.
13:44And the Gretzky purchase was the cornerstone of that.
13:47Bruce was king of Los Angeles.
13:49He was spending money.
13:51He was buying ancient coins.
13:53He was buying sports memorabilia for ridiculous prices.
13:58He was paying Wayne Gretzky all this money.
14:01Gretzky signed for $2.5 million annually over eight years.
14:06What few people knew was how the King's owner floated his impossible dream.
14:11Like I did most of everything else, I borrowed it.
14:14The chairman of the bank was a friend of mine, and I called him, and I said,
14:18there's a chance I can get Wayne Gretzky.
14:20And when the time came, I called him up, and I said,
14:22I need $15 million wired immediately to Peter Pockington and the Edmonton Oilers.
14:26I never even signed a document.
14:28Later on, I signed promissory notes and documents, but it was done that quickly.
14:32I was general manager of the Rangers.
14:33I could have got Gretzky.
14:35I had a deal done with Edmonton.
14:38I couldn't get the money from my ownership.
14:41Los Angeles was the center of the hockey universe.
14:44All these guys wanted to play with Wayne Gretzky and be overpaid by Bruce McNall.
14:49It was just astonishing because at that point, Bruce McNall was in his heyday,
14:54and we didn't know he was doing it with other people's money.
14:57McNall, who was already under siege by multiple lawsuits from creditors,
15:02sold the Kings in March of 1994.
15:05Eight months later, he paid the price of his overreaching.
15:08Former Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall pleaded guilty Wednesday
15:11to charges of bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy.
15:15It was all kind of fool's gold.
15:18He was borrowing from one bank to pay the other bank,
15:21then he was borrowing more money from another bank to pay that bank.
15:24Chris McNall's fall from prominence to disgrace will be complete in eight weeks.
15:29McNall was sentenced yesterday on bank fraud charges.
15:32McNall served four and a half years of a six-year sentence,
15:36defrauding creditors of $236 million.
15:40He bought the Kings, he brought Wayne Gretzky,
15:42and everything came crashing down eventually.
15:45Since I get blamed for most everything anyway,
15:47I might as well take the hit for this one.
15:49But I guess I was primarily to blame for Wayne leaving Edmonton.
15:56Have we begun to change your mind yet?
15:58If not, take a look at reason number two.
16:02The Oilers succeeded without Gretzky,
16:05winning a fifth Stanley Cup in 1990
16:08while continuing to play for a packed house in Edmonton.
16:12About two years before he actually came here,
16:15I had a long talk with Peter Pocklington.
16:18There was an asset that could be moved with no loss of revenue in Edmonton.
16:25Hockey was so popular here and tickets were so hard to come by
16:28that, you know, the building was still going to be full.
16:32One of the things that was subsequently proven by the 1990 Stanley Cup victory
16:36didn't just have the best player in the world,
16:39they had the best team in the world.
16:41We were surprised that we could dominate like we did
16:44through the playoffs without the great one.
16:46What took a little sting out of it,
16:48the players that we got in return for Gretzky,
16:51in turn traded them away
16:53and ended up getting three key players for that 90 Stanley Cup team.
16:58The great part about that team
16:59was that it wasn't just Wayne Gretzky.
17:02Virtually all these guys are Hall of Famers,
17:04especially Messier, one of the all-time greats.
17:08You know, it validated Mark Messier and Harry Curry
17:10and Glenn Anderson and Kevin Lowe
17:14and all those other players who had been here all the time
17:17and didn't quite get the same publicity that Wayne did.
17:19We had something to prove.
17:20A lot of people wrote us off,
17:21but we still had a great team in that room
17:23and I think we wanted to go out and prove a lot of people wrong
17:26that we could still win and be able to win another Stanley Cup.
17:30He'd outgrown the province.
17:32He'd outgrown the country.
17:33He had to go somewhere huge.
17:37I think that kind of tickled him
17:38that he could come here,
17:40he could go out to a play,
17:41he could go to an amusement park with his kids
17:44and not be mobbed.
17:45Canadians are realistic.
17:46They understand that in some cases
17:47if you're really going to get to the top,
17:49you've got to do it in a larger pond.
17:51He needed a bigger stage to go to,
17:54which is why his views to Los Angeles
17:56and then eventually New York were so appropriate.
18:00Perhaps further impetus for Gretzky leaving
18:02was provided during a meeting with McNaul
18:05that fateful summer of 1988.
18:08I said, you know Wayne,
18:09there's some interest out there.
18:10I don't know if their teams are talking to or not at that time,
18:13but they are talking to us.
18:14I don't think he really believed that it was possible
18:17that Edmonton would entertain a trade for him.
18:20When he found out that Peter Pocklington
18:22was genuinely shopping him around,
18:25he took it very personal
18:26and ultimately said, you know,
18:30I'm going to take control of my own destiny.
18:32It was Wayne's decision to go to Los Angeles.
18:35Well, we actually went up there on August 9th of 88
18:38to Edmonton for the big press conference to announce it.
18:42Pocklington and Glenn Sather said to me,
18:44I need to speak to Wayne alone for a minute.
18:46And they said to Wayne,
18:48if you don't want to make this deal,
18:49we'll forget about it right now.
18:51Wayne said, no, I'm an L.A. King now.
18:54This was my own gut feeling.
18:56It was my decision.
18:57Wayne could have killed the trade had he wanted to.
19:01So the fact that he went to L.A.
19:04was something that was under his control.
19:07It was something that I felt would benefit myself
19:10and my family now.
19:12We need Los Angeles Kings in the NHL.
19:15And hopefully I can go down there and inspire
19:18and get some enthusiasm and a winning attitude
19:20that I don't think they've had in 20 years.
19:24Personally, I think he's kind of a traitor
19:26leaving the city after we've brought him up from nothing.
19:30Well, there you have it.
19:31The top five reasons you can't blame the Oilers
19:33for trading Wayne Gretzky.
19:34Maybe we changed your mind.
19:36Maybe we didn't.
19:36Either way,
19:37Kings fans are still waiting for their first Stanley Cup.
19:40I'm Brian Kenney.
19:41Thanks for joining us.
19:42Thanks for joining us.
19:43We'll be the next one.
19:44See you next week.
19:48Bye.
19:49Bye.
19:49You
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