Edmonton's Saddest Hockey Day—The Gretzky Trade

Today ask any player in the NHL about trades, and they will tell you that anyone could be moved, no matter how popular or important he is to his team.

Why do modern players think this way? They all point to August 9, 1988—the day that the Oilers traded Wayne Gretzky, proving that no NHL player is untouchable.

At the end of the 1987-88 season, there was no reason to believe that Edmonton’s own version of Camelot would soon end. Gretzky had just raised the Stanley Cup over his head to conclude another banner season. The Oilers won their fourth Cup in five seasons, and Gretzky had wowed the League with a 149-point campaign despite missing 16 regular-season games to injury.

In July, he married actress Janet Jones in an extravagant wedding, and Oilers fans believed that hockey’s new royal couple would make Alberta their permanent home.

However, soon after the marriage, there were rumors that Oilers’ owner Peter Pocklington was facing financial difficulties.  Nelson Skalbania, the man who had sold Gretzky’s contract to Pocklington in 1978, knew of the difficulties and worked on brokering a deal that would send Gretzky to the Winnipeg Jets.

As the Jets continued to work out a deal, coin-dealer-turned-millionaire Bruce McNall, the new owner of the Los Angeles Kings, made the cash-strapped Pocklington an offer for Gretzky's services.  In a deal that would send a needed $15 million USD to Pocklington, McNall bought the Oilers franchise player.

On August 9, 1988, in a tear-filled press conference at Edmonton’s Petroleum Club, Gretzky bid goodbye to Edmonton. The Oilers traded Gretzky, Marty McSorley and Mike Krushelnyski to the Kings in exchange for rising American star Jimmy Carson, Martin Gélinas, three first round draft picks and the cash that pretty well every hockey fan in Edmonton saw as blood money.

Gretzky and his new team returned to Edmonton on October 20, 1988, and the Great One scored on his first shift. That spring, Gretzky and the Kings eliminated the Oilers from the playoffs. On October 15, 1989, Gretzky made his most heroic return visit of all. In front of cheering fans at Northlands Coliseum, he broke Gordie Howe’s NHL all-time points record by scoring his 1,850th and 1,851st point.

After he retired from the game in 1999, Gretzky admitted that every Edmonton homecoming was difficult.

"It was the only place I dreaded playing as an opponent," he said during his jersey retirement ceremony in 1999.

While Gretzky transformed the Kings into a contender, leading them to an appearance in the Stanley Cup final in 1993, he would never win another Cup again. As the Kings’ fortunes waned, they traded Gretzky to the St. Louis Blues in 1996. Later, McNall went to prison for fraud offences, officially ending the golden age of hockey in Los Angeles.

There were many lasting effects of the Gretzky trade. In a city that loves celebrities, Gretzky became a name that equalled the stars of basketball’s Los Angeles Lakers or baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers. Games at L.A.’s Fabulous Forum became the hottest ticket in town, and the rise of the Great One in a major American market spurred NHL expansion throughout the Sun Belt. When Gretzky was traded, the NHL was a 21-team league that had little exposure south of the Mason-Dixon line. By the 21st century, the League bloomed to 30 teams with franchises throughout California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina.

Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Jets, the team that lost the Gretzky lottery to the Kings, fell victim to small-market economics. In 1996, the team played its last game in Winnipeg and moved south to Arizona, where it would become the Phoenix Coyotes. Ironically, on June 2, 2000, Gretzky became a managing partner of that franchise.

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