Can somebody please drive a broken composite stick through the heart of that saying that is trotted out every time a big trade is made in the National Hockey League?

You know the saying; whichever team ends up with the best player wins the trade.

Yeah, says who?

Sam Pollock, that’s who.  The legendary general manager of the Montreal Canadiens worked the phones at a time when it often seemed that half of his fellow GM’s in the league approached their job like it was a hobby, something they did for kicks after the dishes were done.

In this day-and-age, despite what the frothing fan base of a particular franchise may feel, every one of the thirty NHL general managers are top notch.  In this instantaneous over-informed society we live in, there is no way a GM not up to the job would last for any length of time.  They would very quickly be exposed.  Bob Pulford should thank his lucky stars he handled the job at a time when dinosaurs such as Bill Wirtz walked the Earth.

When two teams make a major trade, such as the one the Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs engineered on the last day of January, some hockey pundit somewhere will bring up that old Sam Pollock saying.

It’s often true; just think of the Montreal Canadiens moving disgruntled goaltender Patrick Roy (along with Mike Keane) to the newly minted Colorado Avalanche in exchange for goaltender Jocelyn Thibault, and forwards Andrei Kovalenko and Martin Rucinsky (December 6^th, 1995).

But it’s not always the case.

Steve Simmons uttered the Sam Pollock phrase on “The Reporters” on TSN, citing defenceman Dion Phaneuf as the best player in the Flames/Maple Leafs deal.

If that is indeed correct, then why did Flames’ GM Darryl Sutter trade the best player?  Did Sutter bump his head during a weekend trip to Okotoks?

Of course not; Sutter appraised his team, what it needed and what could be sacrificed, all the time keeping in mind the underlying factor of the salary cap, and its often far-reaching implications.

Maple Leafs’ GM Brian Burke did the same thing to his team, and presto, we had a big trade to discuss.

On paper, or at least on a piece of paper dated January 31^st, 2008, Phaneuf is without question the best player in the swap.  But that is a long two years ago.  Since then, Phaneuf has become everybody’s favourite whipping boy, and as the Flames were awash in expensive defenceman, it was pretty clear they would move the underachieving, at times selfish, rearguard.

Time will tell if Phaneuf is the best player in the deal.  Maybe big defenceman Keith Aulie will end up being the best player.  That’s the chance any team takes when it swaps warm bodies.

The Calgary Flames traded Brett Hull to the St. Louis Blues.  The young emerging sniper went on to a Hall-of-Fame career.  The Flames profited from that trade by winning the 1989 Stanley Cup.  Hull would not win a Cup in St. Louis.

The Golden Brett was the best player in the trade in hindsight.  Even at the time of the transaction, the Flames knew they were giving up a future superstar.  Still, who won that trade?

That March 7^th, 1988 trade breaks down as such…Brett Hull, and Steve Bozak to the Blues for defenceman Rob Ramage and goaltender Rick Wamsley.  The Flames were upset that spring by the Edmonton Oilers (Wayne Gretzky’s final hurrah as an Oiler), but Ramage was a key part of the Redwood defence that helped the Flames win it all a year later.

Speaking of blockbusters, how about Gretzky going to the Los Angeles Kings during the summer of 1988?  It put hockey on the map, as the cliché goes, in many non-traditional markets in the U.S. (feel free to debate the pros and cons of that result), but the Kings never won the Stanley Cup.  They lost to Montreal in 1993, while the Oilers won the 1990 Cup, two seasons after trading The Great One.  As for Gretzky, he never won another Stanley Cup after 1988.

Who won that Gretzky trade?  Well, the Kings, even though they never won the Cup.  If anything, that trade was a harbinger of what the NHL would face during the 1990’s; the marginalization of small market teams and the resulting player moves necessistated by monetary concerns.

That August 9^th, 1988 trade breaks down as such…Gretzky goes to the Kings along with Marty McSorley and Mike Krushelnyski.  To the Oilers goes Martin Gelinas, Jimmy Carson, 1^st round draft picks in 1989, 1991, and 1993 and money.

Money, because Oilers’ owner Peter Pocklington was beginning to experience the first of his many business/legal headaches to follow.  “I’d Trade Him Again”, indeed.

Gelinas and Carson were key members of that 1990 Stanley Cup winning squad in Edmonton.

Even if either Phaneuf or Aulie outperforms the players sent to Southern Alberta in this latest blockbuster, when a GM makes a trade, he’s looking to improve his team, not worrying about the legacy of the trade.  If his team improves, either short-term for a playoff drive, or long-term, then the legacy issue usually takes care of itself.

Exhibit B about the foolhardiness of investing 100% faith in the Pollock saying also involves the Calgary Flames.

Flames fans were up-in-arms when Magic Kent Nilsson was traded to the Minnesota North Stars on June 15^th, 1985.  Through that trade, the Flames received two draft picks, one which they used to grab Joe Nieuwendyk in the second round (27^th overall) in the 1985 NHL Entry Draft.

When Nilsson hoisted the 1987 Stanley Cup with the hated Edmonton Oilers, many Flames’ fans decried the earlier trade, asking “Joe Who?” about Nieuwendyk, until Joe Who popped in 51 goals as a rookie in 1987-88.

Joe Who was part of the Flames 1989 Stanley Cup team, so when it came time for Calgary to move him along to the Dallas Stars (December 19^th, 1995), they got Corey Millen, and some guy named Jarome Iginla.

Iginla had been the Stars 1^st round draft pick in 1995, and all these years later, the captain of the Flames is a reasonable bet to make the Hockey Hall-of-Fame upon his retirement.

Still, some Flames’ fans grumbled about losing Joe Who to the Stars.  You’d think they’d have learned their lesson; the team that gets the “best player” in the trade doesn’t necessarily win the trade.

The Minnesota North Stars got Nilsson, but he won a Cup with the Oilers.  The Dallas Stars got Nieuwendyk, and he helped them win their only Cup, but they paid a heavy price in giving up Iginla.

Arguably, both teams won that trade.

Then there’s the June 13^th, 1987 swap between the Quebec Nordiques and the Washington Capitals.  Dale Hunter, the heart and soul of the 1980’s Quebec Nordiques went to D.C., and coming back to Quebec was a draft choice that ended up being Joe Sakic.

(The actual trade was Gaeten Duchesne, Alan Haworth and a 1^st round draft pick to Washington for Dale Hunter and Clint Malarchuk).

Perennial playoff failures, the Capitals got a shot-in-the-arm with the inclusion of Hunter on their roster, and they finally won a Game Seven in overtime when La Petite Peste scored on a breakaway against the Flyers’ Ron Hextall the following spring.

The Nordiques entered some very bleak years, before stockpiling high draft picks, and emerging as a young, promising team, led by Sakic.

Both teams can claim to have won that trade, all depending on how you view it.  The Capitals needed to change up their chemistry, and the Nords needed to rebuild.  Both succeeded thanks in large part to that trade.

In reality, the team that really won that trade was the Colorado Avalanche, but no-one had any inkling of that reality back when the Hunter trade was consummated.

A final note.  Even if Dion Phaneuf wins the Norris Trophy, the Leafs/Flames trade is not even close to being a duplicate of the January 2^nd, 1992 trade that brought Doug Gilmour to Toronto, despite what the Toronto-based hockey media has been repeating over and over and over again.

The Flames and Maple Leafs exchanged five players each that day, with Gilmour being the prime asset.  He was a very good player with Calgary (and St. Louis before that), and thanks to a contract impasse with GM Doug Risebrough and the Flames’ brass, Gilmour was shipped out-of-town.

This transaction actually fits the Sam Pollock saying about which team wins a trade.

Even on that day, unless you were a diehard Flames fan, one could see the Leafs “won” that trade.  The inspired play of Gilmour, and the sizeable contributions of the likes of Jamie Macoun, and Ric Nattress, far out shadowed the meager contributions in Cowtown of the likes of Gary Leeman and Michel Petit.

I know, for I had a sprited argument with the Calgary cabbie who was dropping me off at the Calgary airport that evening, as I was returning to Toronto after spending Christmas with the family.  He was convinced that the Gilmour trade would put the Flames over the top, as they were getting 50-goal scorer Leeman.

Leeman would win his only Stanley Cup two seasons later as a role player with the 1993 Montreal Canadiens.  His stay in Calgary was brief and uneventful.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and GM Cliff Fletcher won that trade easily.  It helped revive, on-ice, that franchise, and set up the Leafs to enjoy, for the most part, a rather successful decade.  In both 1993, and 1994, the Leafs were legitimate Cup contenders.

That was a trade that shook up the NHL.  The current Flames/Maple Leafs trade only shakes up those two teams.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Back in those (mostly) innocent days when I was a kid, one sports story that worked its way through my Grade Four classroom was the sordid tale of a couple of New York Yankees pitchers that swapped their entire families.  Not just their wives, but also their kids and their dogs.  No word if the furniture was thrown in, or if there was a set-of-dishes to be named later.

Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson were solid pitchers for the Yankees, but to a bunch of nine-year-old growing up in suburban Edmonton, these guys were as famous as Reggie Jackson or Catfish Hunter.

It was just plain weird what the southpaws did, never mind what your personal morals may be.  Sure, it was the early 70’s, and the hangover from the technicolour Sixties was upon us, but this went beyond wife swapping.  To this day, I still scratch my head at the notion.

Hockey, being a mostly conservative sport in almost every aspect of that definition, has never publicly had the same arrangement, though you hear stuff sometimes you can’t repeat, though no doubt someone is squirreling it all away for a future tell-all book.

So it comes as a complete shock to me that former Edmonton Oilers’ owner Peter Pocklington reveals in, what else, his new book, that at one point during the early 1980’s, two National Hockey League teams almost went all Kekich/Peterson, and pulled off the most outrageous trade in the history of sports.

Having obviously squirreled away a ton of inside stories over the years, along with a map of where all the bodies are buried, Peter Puck has grabbed the attention for his new book he hoped he would by revealing that he worked out a deal with Toronto Maple Leafs’ legendary owner Harold Ballard that would have seen the two men swap teams.

Swap teams.  Completely.  Which means the fine folk of Edmonton would have been saddled with the complete roster of the early 80’s Maple Leafs, just in time to watch the young guns of the Oilers emege as one of the greatest teams in NHL history.  The trouble is, those young bucks would have been hoisting all those Stanley Cups dressed in Maple Leaf blue.  Worse, the city of Edmonton would have had Ballard within their city borders.

Apparently, for whatever reason, Ballard changed his mind and the entire thing was scuttled.

The mind is boggled at the implications of such a wholesale trade, if it had been allowed to proceed.  Since such a possibility reads like science fiction, let’s put on the Spock ears and follow the changes that would have occurred to our timeline, if that deal had actually gone forward.

It should be noted that the pebble in the pond, check that, the giant boulder in the pond that the Oilers-Leafs swap would have been to the rest of the NHL would have had far-reaching implications, that would still be felt to this day.

The Edmonton Oilers would have moved years ago, if that deal had materialized.  Most likely, the Houston Oilers would have had to wait until the death of Ballard, and the battle over his diminished estate had been settled, before they could finally concentrate on the business of hockey, and during the 1995-96 season, Houston would win the Stanley Cup.

The Quebec Nordiques would still be in the league, though they never would have ended up with goaltender Patrick Roy, and thus, to this day, the Nordiques still would not have won the Stanley Cup, and there are still concerns about building a new arena.  There are whispers the team may move to Kansas City.

Roy would remain with the Montreal Canadiens, though head coach Mario Tremblay would have lost his job as a result.  The Canadiens would make the Cup Final in 1998, losing to the Detroit Red Wings.

The Nordiques would not have been in position to draft Eric Lindros first overall in 1991; that honour went to the Edmonton Oilers, who had earlier traded the rights to the New Jersey Devils for Tom Kurvers, and it was the Devils who took Lindros first that year.

Lindros would thrive in the Swamp, and he never suffered a concussion from that devastating Scott Stevens open-ice hit, as they were on the same team.  Lindros would retire as a member of the Devils, having won three Stanley Cups, in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

A young Peter Forsberg would captain the Philadelphia Flyers to the 1995 Cup.

If Pocklington had ended up with his young team in Toronto, he would have most likely made a ton of cash over what he realized in Northern Alberta.  Even with his business problems that existed in other industries he ran (Gainers Foods), Peter Puck would have not needed to cash in his depreciating asset known as Wayne Gretzky.  Even if he later broke up the Boys On The Bus, odds are Bruce McNall would have been exposed as a charlatan by then, which means the Great One doesn’t end up in L.A, after winning five Cups with Toronto.

Let’s say, instead, Gretzky is traded by the Leafs to the Rangers.  It is he, in 1994, that hoists the Stanley Cup over his head, as the Broadway Blueshirts end their 54-year drought.

As for the Kings, they continue to flounder, though the NHL props them up financially.  As a result, there isn’t a mad rush to pan fool’s gold in the U.S. south, meaning that the likes of the Anaheim Ducks and Florida Panthers never come-to-be.

The NHL still would expand to Ottawa and Tampa, though the Lightning are moved to Minnesota, and that’s where they win the Stanley Cup in 2004 over the Flyers.

The Thrashers and Predators never see the light-of-day, though Penguins’ owner Mario Lemieux threatens to move his team to Nashville if he doesn’t get a sweetheart arena deal from the city of Pittsburgh.

The league is impressed with the Nashville bid, and promises to consider expansion to Tennessee, and Kansas City, in the near future.  Canadian billionaire businessman Jim Balsillie, by now a personal friend of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, is often mentioned as the owner of a Nashville NHL franchise.

No-one ever hears about William Boots Del Biaggio.

The Islanders still need a new arena, and threaten to move to Hamilton, which Pocklington blocks.

The Winnipeg Jets still move to Phoenix, as the NHL is emboldened by the relative success of the Houston Oilers and Dallas Stars, though even in this alternative timeline, the Coyotes still lose a ton of money.

The North Stars have moved to Dallas, setting up a great rivalry with Houston, but overall, the NHL have dipped a tentative toe into the expansion waters, instead of diving in headfirst, and ending up with the fractured neck they have now.

Which only goes to prove that in every scenario, no matter how bleak, no matter how wacky, there is always a sliver of hope.

Makes me wish Ballard didn’t get cold feet.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

By Terry Jones, SUN MEDIA

EDMONTON — When Wayne Gretzky returned to then-Northlands Coliseum as a King on Oct. 19, 1988, fans held up a banner which seemed to sum up how the city of Edmonton was dealing with the trade.

It was Wayne Gretzky’s wedding day.

Eddie Mio was doing his duty as best man, getting the groom to church on time.

“We were on the way to the church when Wayne looked at me. ‘Eddie, I’m getting traded out of here. I’m not going to be here,’ Wayne told me … on the way to the church,” said Mio. Mio looked at Gretzky and played it perfect, considering the situation.

“Wayne, you’re getting married. Don’t even think about it. Enjoy the day,’ I told him. I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think it was possible to take Wayne away from Edmonton. I just didn’t think anything like that could happen. No way.” Don Metz, the high profile Edmonton video maker who filmed the so-called Royal Wedding, couldn’t believe his ears either.

“A few days after their wedding, I drove Wayne and Janet to the airport. They were in the back seat of my Suburban,” said Metz.

“I was chatting with Wayne, looking at him in the rearview mirror. ‘When do I see you again?’ I asked.

“How does Oct. 5 sound?” said Gretzky.

“‘Oct. 5? What about training camp?”

“‘I don’t think so,” said Wayne looking out the window.

I asked him who he’d play for. He kept looking out the window. For those five or six seconds it felt like time stopped. And I knew better than to ask again.

This past week Metz has here. I’m not going to be here,’ Wayne told me … on the been putting the finishing touches on a one-hour show entitled A Day The Game Changed, revisiting a date that became infamous in Canadian history, Aug. 9, 1988.

It will run for the next two weeks on the NHL Network. “It was John Shannon’s idea,” Metz said of the NHL’s VP of broadcasting.

“His idea was to use this as the pilot for a 12-part series on days that changed the game in hockey, to tell cultural stories about hockey like (those that) have been told so often about baseball.”

“I see A Day That Changed The Game as being a concept I’d like to franchise to other sports.”

“If you’re doing days that changed the game of hockey, though, you definitely have to start with this one.”

The Day That Changed The Game?

“It’s pretty hard for me to comprehend that. I don’t look at it that way,” said Gretzky this week from his summer place in Idaho.

“Mark Messier going to New York was great for hockey there. Brett Hull doesn’t get enough credit in Texas. Th ere were lots of guys. I think I was maybe the first piece of that puzzle.”

There may have been 11 other days that changed the game in hockey. But this was the day that changed the game and what probably says it more than anything else is that Gretzky, 20 years later, is coaching the Phoenix Coyotes in the NHL.

“Would I be in Phoenix doing what I’m doing today? No. No chance,” laughed No. 99 when he returned the Sun Media call.

“I’d probably still be in Edmonton going to lunches and dinners on behalf of the Oilers.”

Still, there are mixed messages on what hockey means in the U.S. 20 years after the Gretzky trade.

On one hand, in the last few years teams called the Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes and Anaheim Ducks have won the Stanley Cup.

But on the other, the NHL’s TV numbers in the U.S. are as low as most cult sports and there are plenty of good seats to be had in most of those rinks. As for Gretzky’s legacy with the Kings – during the last two years, the Los Angeles Times didn’t send a beat writer on the road with the team.

“There’s probably some credence to that,” said Gretzky.

The impact is open to great debate, but there is no debate on a couple of other items. Gretzky, until that day, was effectively the league’s salary cap. When somebody wanted more money, all the GM had to say was: “I’m not paying you more than Wayne Gretzky.”

Earlier this week, Gretzky said: “I was making $400,000 and there were a couple of guys getting up to a million. I had a year left on my contract and I was going to play hardball, but I wasn’t thinking of leaving. I wanted to catch up and I felt there were other guys on our team that needed to catch up, too.”

Salaries went up in a hurry. Who knows if it would have made any difference, eventually, in where they ended up today.

Today, players from California and other Sun Belt cities are showing up in the Western Hockey League and getting drafted into the NHL.

On that front, at least, Gretzky has no hesitation to say today that the trade definitely had an effect in a good way.

“I’m ecstatic about it,” said Gretzky. “Absolutely. Kids are playing hockey in California and Arizona, Texas and a lot of those places. Back when I went to Los Angeles, there were maybe six or seven good kids on most of the teams.

“Now, at just about every level, there are teams which can compete with teams of that same level in Canada. And some are making the NHL. There’s such a huge population in those areas and kids are playing the game. And when kids play this game they see how good it is. I’m proud of that.”

TRADE WAS A TOUGH DAY

Aug. 9 isn’t a day Gretzky celebrates. For years after when he came to play in Edmonton, he insisted the bus driver take a route where he couldn’t see his statue in front of the building. From several perspectives, financially for one, his life has turned out better. But that day still isn’t an enjoyable exercise in nostalgia for anybody involved on this side of the border.

Twenty years ago Wayne’s dad Walter said it was all telegraphed to him.

“I knew Wayne was getting traded days before he did because Nelson Skalbania phoned me and asked, ‘How much does Wayne make?’ I said ‘Why?’ He said ‘Because Peter’s shopping him to the highest bidder. I said ‘No he’s not.’ He said ‘Yes he is.’ That was during the 1988 Stanley Cup finals.

“The day after they won that fourth Cup, Wayne said ‘You know, dad, I’m going to shop for a house in Edmonton.’ And I told him ‘You better forget that, they’re shopping you.’ ”

Many people figured Gretzky knew he would soon leave Edmonton when he gathered the team on the ice and posed with the Cup, something that had never been done before and now is a tradition with Cup-winning teams.

Gretzky denies that, saying it was kept from him until after they’d won the Cup. And the first thing he’d heard was that he was going to Vancouver, although over the years he discovered, “(the trade talk) went back to the second round of the playoffs.”

The trade rumours actually first surfaced the year after he’d entered the league.

Then, the year he won his first Stanley Cup, there was the rumour Gretzky was going to the New York Rangers for $15 million US ($18 million Cdn at the time).

Gretzky’s agent Mike Barnett said he’d heard it “six or eight times” in the same day.

“Nonsense,” said Oilers owner Peter Pocklington, who blamed the Calgary Flames for starting the story.

A few days later, Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard told me that Pocklington pitched Gretzky to him for $18 million to bail out of bad business deals.

“Happy Harold has obviously lost all his marbles,” said Pocklington. “Wayne Gretzky belongs to me and he always will. That’s absolute rubbish.”

Again the story went away. But it kept coming back and always the number was $18 million. The last time the story was emphatically denied was Aug. 4, 1988.

“There’s nothing to it,” said coach and general manager Glen Sather. “Every summer it’s a different rumour. This one goes in the same bin as all the others. If there’s anything like that I’m sure Peter would let me know. There’s nothing to it.”

FIVE DAYS LATER …

On Aug. 9, 1988, Wayne Douglas Gretzky was sold to the Los Angeles Kings for $15 million US, $18 million Canadian. And like Americans, who remember exactly where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated or when man landed on the moon, most Canadians can tell you where they were that day.

Shock. Outrage. Anger. None of those emotions quite covered it, especially in Edmonton where the reaction was not unlike a death in the family, a death not by natural causes.

The Edmonton Sun coverage was incredible the next day. And the front page headline, written by then-sports editor Phil Rivers, will be remembered for almost as long as the day will be recalled: 99 TEARS.

On the cover there was the picture of Gretzky dabbing his tears, the headline and the only other words on the page were: “Pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 18, 19, 23, 30, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46 and 47.”

It was called a trade, but it wasn’t.

“It was not a trade,” says Sather. “It was a sale. It was about money.”

Sather, with Pocklington out of the picture, on the 10th anniversary of the day the dirty deed was done, finally spilled the story from his side and tells it the same another decade later.

“I took Wayne into a room with just the two of us at Molson House. I talked to him and said I’d stop the deal. I told him I’d tell Peter I’d resign if he didn’t stop the deal. But Wayne decided not to because it was all beyond repair at that point.”

The way Gretzky remembers it today is: “Glen had me in there a whole hour.”

Sather was in the dark all the way until Pocklington finally told him, allowing him to at least have an influence in getting some players and picks.

“I was the last to know. We went to the Arctic fishing. I think everybody on the Arctic trip knew about the deal except me. Peter was afraid to tell me. And I don’t blame him,” said Sather.

The only thing Sather adds to the story 20 years later is when Pocklington finally told him, he now says he physically pushed his owner.

“I gave him a big shove. I thought about decking him.”

Gretzky had tears in his eyes during the press conference and couldn’t get any words out other than the ones most hockey fans remembered … “I promised Mess I wouldn’t do this.”

Pocklington, who was being hung in effigy in Edmonton, claimed at the time that Gretzky was just pretending to cry, but now admits those were real tears.

At the press conference, he also suggested it was because Janet wanted to live in Los Angeles, but now he admits he said that to try and make himself look better. Now, 20 years later, he says the mistake he made “was not putting my arm around him and saying to the press, that if you don’t want the deal to go through…”

It’ll be interesting to see what Pocklington says on the 25th anniversary.

“I regret doing it and wish I hadn’t done it,” would be nice.

—

THE TRADE

TO LOS ANGELES: Wayne Gretzky, Marty McSorley, Mike Krushelnyski

TO EDMONTON: Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas, $18 million (Cdn), L.A.’s first-round pick in 1989 (later traded to New Jersey for Corey Foster; the Devils picked Jason Miller), L.A.’s first-round pick in 1991 (Martin Rucinsky) and L.A.’s first-round pick in 1993 (Nick Stajduhar).