After 19 Years, Gretzky Trade Still Shapes Hockey

August 9, 1988: A day which will live in infamy in Canadian hockey history. Sing it with me:

Walter Gretzky had a son
He grew up to be the great one
He came from Brantford Ontario
He liked Gordie Howe you know

It was on this Summer day 19 years ago that Peter Pocklington, a man as hated in Edmonton as Walter O'Malley is in Brooklyn, decided to trade the greatest player who ever lived, Wayne Gretzky, to the Los Angeles Kings for the moral equivalent of a bag of pucks. And while that Oilers team eventually recovered from the trade to win another Stanley Cup in 1990, there was little doubt that the team had sold out its heritage.

When I lived in Edmonton
He made us the City of Champions
With Jari and Semenko by his side
He filled our frigid city with pride

After all, if you could trade Gretzky, who else could possibly be safe? And so it went, as all of the players who formed the core of what I believe to be the greatest hockey team in the history of the game -- Messier, Kurri, Anderson, Fuhr, Lowe and Coffey (who had been exiled to Pittsburgh ahead of the Gretzky deal) -- each eventually were shown the door in an effort to manage the payroll by developing talent and then shipping it elsewhere once it got too pricey.

Everyone hated Peter and Janet
For trading the best player on the planet

For Canadians, the deal landed with a great thud from Gander in the East to Victoria in the West. Had Gretzky started his NHL career in an American city, perhaps it wouldn't have arrived with such a thunderclap. But he had played for a team on the Canadian prairie, gone there without complaint after having grown up in the spotlight since childhood.

A child from immigrant stock, Gretzky just wasn't a Canadian, in many ways he exemplified what Canada thought of itself: Hard-working and talented yet humble and determined. He wasn't just a hockey player, he was a national treasure. And how in the world could Americans, who over and over again despite the best efforts of generations of Canadians continued to ignore the game, possibly appreciate the gift that had just dropped in their laps?

Bruce McNall had an idea.

Americans don't understand
The national sport of the north land
The world's fastest game they always dissin
But they dont know what they are missin
If they'd just watch Wayne Gretzky play
Then they'd watch hockey everyday

Then he moved out to L.A.
To help bring hockey to the U.S.A.

Well, not everyday, but without Wayne Gretzky, the Washington Capitals may well have remained the only hockey team dwelling South of the Mason-Dixon Line and the Kings the only team in the lower 48 West of the Rocky Mountains. Instead, we've watched teams battle for the Cup in regions that rarely see ice develop naturally, with winners coming from Denver, Tampa, Raleigh, Dallas and Anaheim. Without the Gretzky trade it never happens.

In the most recent NHL Draft, a pair of Americans went #1 and #2 overall, with a total of 10 chosen in the first round alone, including a Californian. Without the Gretzky trade, it never happens.

In a lot of ways, all the arguments that passionate -- are there any other kind? -- hockey fans continue to have to this day all grew out of the Gretzky trade. Expansion, Canada's loss of control over its national sport and the endless and seemingly fruitless pursuit of the American sports fan, all of it arises from that one day.

In the end, perhaps that's the greatest tribute you could pay to Gretzky, in that only the trade of the greatest player of all time could have so shaken the game to its foundations, changing it forever.