1988 was a great year to be a hockey fan.
Or, more specifically, an Edmonton Oilers hockey fan.
I was 19 years old and had watched every second of every Oilers playoff game in the previous six years, during which my team reached five Stanley Cup Finals and hoisted the chalice four times.
And while that would have done little to distinguish me from the 580,000 or so folks who were living in the northern Alberta outpost in those days, it was a pretty defining stamp in my hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y.—which, when it came to the NHL, put me smack dab in the middle of Sabres country.
But lest you think I was just an obnoxious college-age front-runner, think again.
I hopped on the Oilers bandwagon well before age 10, while pouring religiously through a 1977-78 Hockey News preseason magazine—which allocated some space at the back of the bus for the lingering franchises still toiling in the “Rebel League,” the World Hockey Association.
Being a rebellious sort even then, the inclusion of the upstart league and its unfamiliar cities and players appealed to my budding anti-establishment proclivities. And when I stumbled upon the page outlining the fortunes for something called the “Edmonton Oilers,” I was instantly hooked.
That’s the coolest sports name I’ve ever heard, I thought.
And from then on, I declared to no one in particular, they would be my team.
Of course, hard as it is to fathom these days, the flow of sports news 30-plus years ago from a city four times nearer the Yukon Territory than Madison Square Garden was, to say the least, spotty.
In fact, had it not been for the trusty magazine rack down the street at Marsh’s General Store, I might never had heard about the gangly 17-year-old kid the Oilers grabbed hold of when the Indianapolis Racers went belly-up just a few weeks into what turned out to be the WHA’s final season.
That kid was Wayne Douglas Gretzky.
And the day he slid on the No. 99 sweater for the first time, my life changed.
Suddenly, I was on the ground floor of the next big thing.
For the next decade, as he and his Albertan sidekicks took their act to NHL ice, my home-stitched 99 and I were in our local building—Buffalo’s since-razed Memorial Auditorium—imploring the masses to take notice of the team that would recast everything they thought they’d known about sticks and pucks.
By the time Aug. 8, 1988 came and went, the evidence was incontrovertible.
The Oilers skated faster than everyone else, passed crisper than everyone else and scored more than everyone else. And when it came to money time in the spring, well, no one really stood a chance. They’d won 16 of 18 playoff games in a march to Cup No. 4 a few months before, capped off by a decisive four-game sweep of a Boston Bruins team with Hall of Famers Ray Bourque and Cam Neely.
Gretzky was 27 years old, and after four titles in five years, the idea that he, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Co. would ultimately approach double-digit banners was more matter-of-fact than hyperbolic.
Then came Aug. 9, 1988.
Even now, as a husband, homeowner and father of a five-year-old whose middle name is also Douglas, I recall precisely where I was sitting—like my parents had when Elvis died—when I heard the pre-commercial sports tease on CNN’s Headline News that said “The Great One goes Hollywood.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” I thought, recalling that he’d married a C-list film star a few weeks earlier. “Gretz must be making a movie or something.”
But when the commercial ended and the highlights returned, a remake of Janet Jones’ American Anthem debacle would have been far better than what I actually saw.
Instead, there was press conference footage from Edmonton and California. Gretzky crying. Owner Peter Pocklington rationalizing. And in the final horrific frames, the greatest hockey player of all time standing up from a table and popping his head through the top of a jersey bearing a cartoonish, unfamiliar logo.
The Los Angeles Kings? Wayne Gretzky was traded to the @#%!@ Los Angeles Kings?
For an instant, I was praying I was hallucinating.
And I was sure my dinner plans that night—on the two-year anniversary of my first date—were toast.
After all, this was Wayne Gretzky. The centerpiece of the best team in a generation. The player who’d dominated his sport to a competitive degree that no one—not Michael Jordan in hoops, not Hank Aaron in baseball, not Walter Payton in football—had ever approached.
Ninety-two goals. Two-hundred fifteen points. Seven consecutive scoring titles. Eight consecutive MVP awards. Four championships. Two playoff MVPs. And a dynasty that showed zero signs of fraying.
But by the time a 45-second video package ended, it was all over.
At the risk of sounding too dramatic, I was shell-shocked. The Oilers weren’t just a hockey team, they were a big reason a geeky trailer-park kid emerged from his preteen shell. And Gretzky wasn’t just a player, he was the currency that same shy kid used to earn a spot at the cool sports table.
With him in Los Angeles, it was never the same. The Oilers went from unprecedented to ordinary (by comparison). The Kings went from whipping posts to rivals. And when Wayne scored the game-clincher to knock my boys out of the playoffs the following April, my hero officially went from beloved to reviled.
I’d forgiven him by the time I chatted him up as a reporter in 1997, and I was right back to worship as I trekked to his Garden finale as a fan two years later. But as the quarter-century milestone arrives today, it’s hard not to wonder what might have been had I just clicked the remote straight to MTV.
Better yet, next time I’ll just read a book.
Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1732496-how-the-wayne-gretzky-trade-rocked-my-world-25-years-ago
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