Kings Ransom

There probably couldn't have been a more fitting movie for this project to start on than Kings Ransom, director Peter Berg's look at the 1988 trade of Wayne Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings.

This was the story that dominated my summer vacation when I was nine-years-old.

I lived in a town (Chatham, Ontario) where hockey was closer to religion than sport, and my brother was a standout goalie for the rep hockey team.

Even though my personal hockey career lasted just three laps around our end of the rink during pre-game warm-ups, my life was still dominated by the sport, and this was the lead story for a long, long time.

It's crazy to see the press conference from The Molson House again, 23 years later.  I can remember it like yesterday.

"I promised Mess I wouldn't do this" is one of those phrases most Canadian males over the age of 30 just automatically know, and more than a few people might get choked up if you were to say it to them today.

Trivia time: what was the trade itself?

Who and what did Los Angeles give up to get Gretzky, and who went with "The Great One" to LaLaLand?

I'll give you the answer at the end, and no, I didn't have to look it up. I have an eidetic memory for this kind of stuff, and this trade was a big deal to the nine-year-old me.


My perspective on the deal has shifted over the last 23 years, but so has the landscape of sports.

How we follow sports, and how much we know and care about the business side of our favourite sports is totally different today.

Back then, trading the best hockey player in the history of hockey players when he was still in his prime made no sense whatsoever.

Make no mistake about it — Gretzky is the best to ever step on the ice, period, end of discussion; take your Bobby Orr and Mario Lemieux arguments elsewhere.

(Note: those are the only other two players who can be argued as potentially being superior to Gretzky, and yes, I'm up for a debate if anyone is interested.)

It's easy to watch Kings Ransom today and fully understand where Peter Pocklington was coming from.

Gretzky was 27-years-old and entering the final year of his contract.

He refused to renegotiate before the deal expired, wanted to be the highest paid player in the league, and was coming off a year where he finished second in league scoring, notched 43 points in 19 games during the playoffs, and won the the Stanley Cup for the fourth time in five years.

I probably would have made the same decision if I was in Pocklington's position, but we didn't look at players and trades in those terms back then.

We didn't know about the length and terms of Gretzky's contract.

We didn't look at our favourite teams in terms of their salary cap, how many expiring contracts came off the books at the end of the year, and whether the local superstar was going to bolt for greener pastures as quickly as he could.

All we cared about as fans was the performance on the ice, and no one performed better than Gretzky and the Oilers.

They had just won the Stanley Cup — again — and looked poised to keep winning in the future, their line-up stocked with Hall of Famers and a litany of outstanding "glue guys" who all filled their roles perfectly.

Gretzky suggested they could have won four more Cups in the film, and I don't think that's unreasonable. "The Great One" won the Hart Trophy in his first year as a member of the Los Angeles Kings, and the Gretzky-less Oilers won the Stanley Cup again in 1990.

Things are completely different now; we don't look at sports the same way.

We didn't look ahead to the crop of free agent talent that was going to be available at the end of the year. We didn't worry about our favourite players leaving town because they wanted to play in a bigger market with more off-field opportunities.

It was still a pretty big deal five years later when Barry Bonds left the Pittsburgh Pirates for the San Francisco Giants, and the $43 million he got over six years was a record.

Boy how times have changed.

Now we know the financial situation of our favourite teams and expect to see guys changing uniforms frequently in their careers.

Winning two or three championships in a decade makes you a dynasty, and trading the best player on your team for financial reasons makes perfect sense to even the club's most ardent supporters.

In today's climate, Bonds would have be shipped out of Pittsburgh long before Francisco Cabrera singled home Sid Bream, and the Pirates would have been happy with the two veterans and three decent prospects they got in return.

We just spent two years speculating about LeBron James' impending free agency, questioning whether he would re-sign with the Cleveland Cavaliers or whether Cavs owner Dan Gilbert should trade his superstar to avoid him leaving town and getting nothing in return.

Twenty years earlier, Gretzky was LeBron, Pocklington was Gilbert, and Edmonton, Alberta was Cleveland, Ohio, minus the 730 days of 24/7 discussion of the possibilities prior to "The Decision."

Today we know that anything is possible, and part of the reason for that is because of what happened on August 9, 1988.

I understand Pocklington's decision now — and even think it was ultimately the right move — but that has only come with age, and a shift in the way we consume sports.

We see the business side of sports much more now, and understand the difficult choices owners have to make, even if we don't admit it when it happens to our teams.

As long as your team gets doesn't get 50 cents on the dollar for your best player, you know deep down it was the right thing to do with a guy approaching free agency who is going to want more money than your team can reasonably offer.

There is no off-season for fans any more.

When the games aren't being played, we're plugged into the rumour mill, contract negotiations, and scouting draft classes.

We're watching the Scouting Combine on The NFL Network, reading the latest Insider information on ESPN.com — a privilege we happily pay for in yearly installments — playing video games and participating in fantasy leagues that let us act out our managerial dreams.

It wasn't like that in 1988 — not in Edmonton, not in the NHL, and not in the sporting world I knew.

All-stars didn't get traded, never mind trading the greatest player in the game.

The Gretzky deal changed all that, for me and a lot of other people, and for sports as a whole I think.

After the Oilers traded"The Great One," it meant that anyone could be traded by any team, in any sport, at any time.

While that doesn't sound strange today, it was a sobering realization for sports fans in 1988, even nine-year-old kids.

Trivia Answer: Los Angeles traded Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas, $15M US, and three first-round draft picks to Edmonton for Wayne Gretzky, Marty McSorley, and Mike Krushelnyski.

Tomorrow: The Band That Wouldn't Die