21 Years Later: Revisiting Wayne Gretzky's Trade to the LA Kings

On Aug. 9, 1988, the NHL made headlines across both the United States and Canada. The NHL’s greatest player, Wayne Gretzky, who at the age of 27 had just the Edmonton Oilers to their fourth Stanley Cup championship in five seasons, was traded to the Los Angeles Kings.

This was not just a monumental trade; it was a true piece of sports history forever to be entrenched in hockey legend and lore.

Despite playing in the remote outpost of Edmonton, Gretzky was the most recognizable face in the NHL.  His star power and talent seemed unmatched. He was breaking long standing scoring records with each game and season he played.

As flashy as he was on the ice, Gretzky was just the opposite off it. He appeared humble, reserved, and possessed a solid respect for those who came before him in the NHL.

And because of all this, he was forever labeled “The Great One.”

People who didn’t follow hockey knew who Wayne Gretzky was.  Replicas of his No. 99 Edmonton Oilers jersey were available nationwide in the United States at a time when hockey jerseys weren’t normally found in retail stores.

There was a Wayne Gretzky hockey doll, something of cross between a Barbie doll and an old-school G.I. Joe action figure.  In 1983, Canada issued a Wayne Gretzky dollar coin, which was actual legal tender at the time.

He was the perfect superstar; easy to hype and readily exploited.

With him in their control, the NHL possessed their greatest marketing weapon in years—which is exactly why the league needed to get him out of Edmonton.

There are two camps surrounding Gretzky’s trade to L.A.  Even today, 21 years after the deal, there are debates regarding who asked for it and why it actually transpired.

For his own part, Gretzky maintains that he had nothing to do with the trade. Despite the fact that he had just married Janet Jones, then a rising Hollywood actress just a month prior to the trade to Los Angeles, Gretzky claimed to have not wanted to leave Edmonton.

Born and raised in Canada, Gretzky wanted to finish his career right where he started it. But if we’re to believe Gretzky’s take, the Oilers ignored their star money maker’s wishes and sent him packing to sunny California.

The Edmonton Oilers owner at the time, Peter Pocklington, told a different tale. 

He claimed that he often received trade offers for Gretzky but always rejected them, knowing full well who Gretzky was and what he meant to the franchise.  Pocklington claimed that Gretzky approached him with the L.A. trade offer.

Pocklington, assuming Gretzky’s days in Edmonton were numbered due to the automatic free agency clause in every NHL players’ contract (that wouldn’t kick in for four more years, when Gretzky was 31 years old), bent to his star’s wishes if nothing else than to ensure the team got something out of Gretzky’s inevitable departure.

As he told Canada’s CBC television, “My first love is to the team, not Wayne Gretzky.”

Pocklington claimed that some twenty minutes prior to the press conference announcing the deal, he pulled Gretzky aside, giving him a final opportunity to back out of it before it was too late.

But Gretzky was determined to go to L.A.

However, rumors abound that Pocklington was cash strapped at the time from other bad financial decisions (in fact, he would sell the Oilers in 1998, file bankruptcy in 2008, and be arrested by the FBI for bankruptcy fraud in 2009) and needed to deal Gretzky—not for the three players or three first round draft picks that were included, but for the $15 million in cash attached to the transaction.

It’s hard to know who to believe. Both sides sounded as if they were attempting a certain amount of damage control regarding the situation.

Gretzky didn’t want to soil his squeaky clean reputation and be made the heavy, demanding an exit out of Canada for the bright lights of Hollywood that came attached to his new starlet wife.

Pocklington couldn’t afford to infuriate his fan base and admit to shipping off not just the Oilers’ top player, but perhaps the greatest player the game had ever seen, for a few extra bucks.  And not to the likes of the Winnipeg Jets (another Canadian team seeking Gretzky at the time) mind you, but to an American team, no less.

Both sides had a lot riding on the deal—some of it fear—as the trade pissed off a lot of Canadian citizens. Their national game had just lost its greatest home-grown hero.  It went so far as New Democratic Party House Leader Nelson Riis attempting to force the Canadian government to step in and stop the trade (to no avail).

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