25th Anniversary of "The Trade": The Day Wayne Gretzky Became an L.A. King

[hockeyfan1]

It was exactly 25 years ago this August 9th, 1988, when Wayne Gretzky, dubbed "The Great One" for being quite possibly one of the greatest sports figures of our time, was traded from the Edmonton Oilers, a team he helped to win the Stanley Cup three years in a row, to the Los Angeles Kings.

It was an unforeseen event, as it left a nation in disbelief, an Oilers fanbase in anger, and fans of the L.A. Kings delighted.  While there had been rumours all of throughout that summer of Gretzky being part of a trade package, no one, not even "The Great One" himself thought any such thing was ever going to happen.

The fact is not only that it came to fruition, and not only 'shaking'  the hockey world, but it may very well have been what the NHL needed to boost it's brand in both California as well as the United States as a whole.  It may also have saved the L.A. Kings franchise in terms of attendance, publicity, and the enormous clamour that suddenly made hockey the "in" thing.  Gretzky's impact was going to make it's mark like never before seen. 

Hockey Night in California one could certainly say, and, hockey 'revival' (interest) in the rest of America it sure became.

Below are some links with stories showing timelines & histories going down memory lane...

http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/52963-The-Wayne-Gretzky-Trade-25-years-on-an-oral-history.html

http://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/wayne-gretzky-the-trade/


I would like to ask, where were many of you on the day of "The Trade", and what was your initial reaction?

 

[Corn Flake]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[pmrules]

I don't get the fanfare around this anniversary of the trade.  I know why the trade went down...Building the game in the US...  Peter Puck needing the cash...greatest player in the game.  I get it.  But what I don't get is this whole..."Canada" traded Gretzky to the U.S. theme and the tears shed in Edmonton 25 years later.  As a Leaf and a Canadian, I didn't care that Gretzky got traded - I'm pretty sure people in Calgary were ecstatic not having to face him as often. 

And you know what Edmonton?  Get over it, because you won a cup without him 2 years later...and, he never won a cup again.  Truth be told he shouldn't have even made it to the finals the one time that he did after that (damn you Kerry Fraser! Sorry - had to throw that in there!).   

 

[Boston Leaf]

Gretzky was as important to hockey as anyone ever. But I couldn't and can't stand him.. Variety of reasons..

 

[ZBBM]

What I don't get is the overheated commentary that this somehow is a major event in Canadian history.  Seriously?

 

[Leafaholic99]

One thing I've always wondered is if he had a NTC, because of the quote " I told Mess I'd never do this" if he didn't have a NTC he didn't have a say in being traded.

 

[LittleHockeyFan]

didn't care then. don't care now. i still think it's because that's what janet wanted??..

 

[Deebo]

One thing I've always wondered is if he had a NTC, because of the quote " I told Mess I'd never do this" if he didn't have a NTC he didn't have a say in being traded.

I'm not sure NTCs existed back then.

 

[dappleganger]

One thing I've always wondered is if he had a NTC, because of the quote " I told Mess I'd never do this" if he didn't have a NTC he didn't have a say in being traded.

The quote, "I promised Mess I wouldn't do this.." was in reference to him breaking down and crying during the press conference not in accepting a trade.

Gretz didn't have a no trade clause.

 

[OldTimeHockey]

One thing I've always wondered is if he had a NTC, because of the quote " I told Mess I'd never do this" if he didn't have a NTC he didn't have a say in being traded.

The quote, "I promised Mess I wouldn't do this.." was in reference to him breaking down and crying during the press conference not in accepting a trade.

Gretz didn't have a no trade clause.

Beat me to it.

 

[maplesyrup]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

For the most part, yeah - but it still is one of those events where I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard.

I don't have a lot of those 25+ years old any more.  :-\ 

 

[Kin]

I kind of have to call shenanigans on the central premise here. For all of the talk of what Gretzky did to "build" hockey in the United States it's not like he really even built the actual team he was playing on into one that had any kind of grip on the market it was in. The Kings experienced a spike in popularity because they had a really good team and Gretzky was one of the best players in the league(although I think it's safe to say he'd been surpassed by Lemieux at that point) with marquee value but once Gretzky was gone the Kings were just another team and in the middle of the pack attendance wise. Hockey became so popular in southern California that recently LA papers wouldn't even spring to send a beat writer on the Road to cover King's games and local TV stations mistake their logo for the basketball team that plays in Sacramento. The Kings are still often described as being the 8th or 9th biggest team in the market behind the Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers, Angels, UCLA Football and Basketball, USC Football and, I don't know, the Los Angeles Ladies Fencing Club.

Likewise, I tend to think that there's a lot of misplaced "credit" here. Even if you want to argue that growing the sport into the South and Southwest has been successful for the league financially, and that's probably an uphill climb at this point, I mean...is that something to celebrate? On the ESPN blog right now discussing the trade these questions get asked regarding what might have happened absent the Gretzky trade:

What about franchises that sprouted in unlikely locales such as Anaheim, Phoenix, Nashville and Tampa?

Would there have been Stanley Cup parades in Anaheim, Carolina, Tampa or Los Angeles if Gretzky had not landed with the Kings on Aug. 9, 1988?

I mean, I can't be the only one who would answer those questions with "Who cares", can I? It may be beneficial to the interests of the owners financially but, quite frankly, the interests of the owners financially are usually at direct odds with my interest as a fan. Quite honestly, as a Maple Leafs fans, I'd have much preferred the league didn't go into those markets. I'd rather there weren't teams that lost money and led to the bogus rationale the League would then put forth for the multiple lockouts and the obnoxiously boring mandated parity that the Salary cap has brought. I appreciate that if you're a fan in some of those markets you're probably pretty grateful that the League chose to move in that direction but frankly me saying that I don't care about a team in Carolina seems no more self-interested than a fan in Carolina supporting the "Southern Strategy" and essentially not caring about teams in Hartford, Quebec City and Winnipeg. If we're going to talk about the effect of the change this had, I think it's pretty disingenuous not to lead off with the fact that a ton of hockey fans think it sucked.

In truth, just about every spectator sport experienced huge gains in the 80's and 90's and I think the trend of attributing that to the specific players who were playing it at the time(they way they do with Jordan, Bird and Magic in the NBA or Ripken, Sosa, McGwire in baseball) as opposed to just a boom in the industry in general owing to various economic and social developments kind of fails the smell test. If Gretzky had chosen to be dealt to Detroit, as he mentions as an option in the 30 for 30, would the NHL have decided not to expand into the Southwest? Would it have been a failure? How much more of a failure could the expansions into places like Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix be?

I was just a kid at the time and I can't speak to the effect it had on the nation, although I think that's being pretty overblown, but I think when we look back on it with the help of time I can't help but think that just about everything that's said about it from a hockey standpoint doesn't shake out.

 

[OldTimeHockey]

Leave it to Nik to write a novel on something that should mean so bloody little to all of us. Thanks teach!  :

 

[brothert]

The only reason I remember the Gretzky trade was because I was sitting with my dad after supper watching the news when my dad got all angry about the bs press conferences.  "What is this ****?" he said and my dad hardly swore.

And 25 years later this crap has hijacked the news again.  Other 25 year anniversaries that are being celebrated this week:
Burma's student uprisings that lead to democracy for that country.
Iran made 30000 people disappear.......

 

[Kin]

Leave it to Nik to write a novel on something that should mean so bloody little to all of us. Thanks teach!  :

No problem. I agree that the trade itself, and sort of arbitrarily mentioning the anniversary of it, is largely meaningless but I do think that the push into the south and southwest is sort of going to be the eternal question about where the league is now and where it could be. Ultimately it's going to be the conversation that's had about Bettman's tenure as commissioner even if it's misleading to attribute that decision, or decisions I suppose, to Bettman the way that people do.

In a strictly hockey sense I don't think there's much to make of it, like I said, Lemieux was the better player at the time and aside from your typical sort of US-Canada kerfuffle I don't know that it ultimately meant much on the ice. However it does get tied into the larger question of the NHL's evolution through the 90's and I think that remains a fairly interesting conversation, particularly in a case like we're seeing here where the narrative of it is being shaped as almost uniformly positive when I think that the opposite position is far more prevalent among the rank and file of hockey fans.

 

[hockeyfan1]

For the skeptics who still don't understand Gretzky's impact on hockey...far greater than that of Lemieux et al for reasons that they couldn't do but the name Gretzky could...below is NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's view...

..."It was obviously something that, in the annals of sports, was one of those seminal events that gets a tremendous amount of attention because of its import and impact."

It also turned out to be a great move for hockey in the United States, which benefited from expansion and an infusion of players at the youth level.

"People paid attention to hockey in places where they might not have focused on it as much, and it was clear there was a great deal of interest in the game," Bettman said. "Wayne's presence in L.A. was the catalyst for that."

Gretzky's impact was felt beyond Los Angeles. The league added a second California team in 1991 with the expansion San Jose Sharks and a third in 1993 with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks.

Bettman became commissioner several months before the Mighty Ducks and Florida Panthers debuted and the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas and in the midst of the Tampa Bay Lightning's first season. The league's expansion across the Sunbelt continued under Bettman's watch, due in no small part to the Gretzky trade.

"It was the reaction of people to the game," Bettman said of the cause and effect. "Wayne's presence in L.A. and the success the Kings had demonstrated that hockey had credibility in so-called newer or non-traditional markets".

Gretzky was never able to lead the Kings to a Stanley Cup. In 2012, they became the fifth team in a "non-traditional market" to do so, joining the Stars, Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes and Ducks.

Small-market teams aren't immune to financial difficulties like what the Oilers dealt with leading to the trade. But no longer can owners get $15 million for a player like Peter Pocklington did from Bruce McNall for Gretzky.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=429408.

 

[jdh1]

For me Kerry Fraser is all I need to remember about no.99 being in LA. HE was quick to call penalties on the Leafs the whole series long.And when Gretsky commited the high stick at a crucial time in the game,Fraser supposedly was looking the other way.

 

[Kin]

For the skeptics who still don't understand Gretzky's impact on hockey...far greater than that of Lemieux et al for reasons that they couldn't do but the name Gretzky could...below is NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's view...

Leaving aside the jumbled phrasing are you seriously trying to present Gary Bettman as someone whose opinion of the Southern Strategy, its success and its contribution to the good of the game is in anyway impartial?

 

[hockeyfan1]

For the skeptics who still don't understand Gretzky's impact on hockey...far greater than that of Lemieux et al for reasons that they couldn't do but the name Gretzky could...below is NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's view...

Leaving aside the jumbled phrasing are you seriously trying to present Gary Bettman as someone whose opinion of the Southern Strategy, its success and its contribution to the good of the game is in anyway impartial?

I was merely trying to showcase Bettman's view, as he saw (or sees) it.  That is all.  Whether anyone agrees with it or not,  that is up to them to decide.

 

[moon111]

For me Kerry Fraser is all I need to remember about no.99 being in LA. HE was quick to call penalties on the Leafs the whole series long.And when Gretsky commited the high stick at a crucial time in the game,Fraser supposedly was looking the other way.

I thought I heard it was the Leafs actually had the best offer on the table.  But because of ownership's money problems, the Leafs turned down the deal, leading L.A. to land Gretzky.  Now I don't know what they would of been giving up, but the Leafs were a very good team back then.  Would Gretzky been the difference to winning the Cup over Montreal in 1993?