99

by Al Strachan

  David Courtney, who died in 2012, was the team’s public-relations man at the time. Few members of the Kings organization felt the changes brought about by Gretzky’s arrival more than Courtney.

  In the past, he had spent most of his time trying to get people to notice the team. “If someone phoned up and said they wanted the entire team out at sea in their hockey uniforms with fishing rods in their hands, I’d ask what would be a good time to do it,” he said with a chuckle.

  Now his primary task was keeping the media horde down to a reasonable number and trying to ration Gretzky’s time. In the past, there had been no need for media accreditation. Courtney knew the two or three journalists who showed up. This time, there was not only accreditation, it was issued on a daily basis so that attendance could be limited and the credentials could not be passed around among friends.

  As for dealing with the numerous requests to interview Gretzky, Courtney sought advice from Bill Tuele, the Oilers’ PR man, who had handled that problem for years, and Los Angeles Lakers PR man Josh Rosenfeld, who was in a similar position with Magic Johnson.

  It was to be new territory for the personable Courtney. “I guess I’m going to have to learn how to say no to people and make it stick,” he said ruefully.

  Kings coach Robbie Ftorek had no such problem. He had been saying no to people for a long time.

  He said no to those who suggested he follow the NHL tradition of wearing a jacket and tie behind the bench. He opted for sweaters. He said no when asked if he trusted his players to be adults without a curfew. And he said no when asked if he was excited about the acquisition of Gretzky.

  “Everybody on this team is equally important,” he said. “Everybody makes an important contribution, whether they’re players, coaches or the guys who wash towels.”

  That might be true if Kings fans were showing up to evaluate the merits of the team’s laundry, or if the guy who washed towels could make an insipid power play dangerous. It seemed an exceedingly bizarre attitude for a coach to take, and right then, on the opening day of training camp, it was clear that a blowup was inevitable. It was obvious that, barring a change of Ftorek’s attitude, no concessions were to be made for Gretzky, and although Gretzky himself would never ask for special treatment, his contributions were so great that a good coach would recognize the need for special handling.

  The relationship between Gretzky and Ftorek bears examining because it reveals a number of Gretzky’s immutable traits. In his career, he experienced coaches he liked and coaches he didn’t like. And although he would never admit it, he probably has less respect for Ftorek than any of his other coaches. But his attitude never wavered: the coach was the boss and he had the right to run the team in any manner he chose.

  The first night of training camp, we went out for a couple of beers in a bar adjacent to the team hotel.

  “You’re going to have trouble with this guy,” I said.

  “No, it will all be all right,” said Gretzky. “I don’t see any problem.”

  I was not surprised at his answer. In all the years I knew him, Gretzky told me lots of hockey gossip, gave me lots of insight into what was happening with his team—and around the league—and passed along a lot of information that was not widely known, to say the least. But he never once criticized his coach.

  Most players, once they get to know you well, unload on their coach at every opportunity. Gretzky never did that. Even when the inevitable confrontation with Ftorek occurred, he wouldn’t tell me about it. It had happened in front of the entire team, so I had no problem getting the whole story, but Gretzky wouldn’t talk about it until long after his playing career had ended.

  With Ftorek off-limits, we talked about lots of other things, and then, just before eleven, Gretzky announced that he had to go. This was a lot earlier than our soirees usually broke up. “Why so early?” I asked.

  “Robbie has an eleven o’clock curfew.”

  “He does? That might be okay for the kids who are trying to make the team, but surely he doesn’t expect you to be in by eleven.”

  “It’s a teamwide thing,” he said.

  “Well, you could always ignore it. What’s he going to do, suspend you?”

  Gretzky just laughed. The team had a rule, and whether it was idiotic or not, he was going to abide by it. Off he went.

  Still, training camp is one thing; the regular season is another. Perhaps once the NHL grind got under way, Ftorek might realize that the Kings were a top-flight professional team, not an American high-school team, and treat them like the former instead of the latter. Then again, he might not.

  The Gretzky era in Los Angeles was to last almost eight years—a period that brought about major changes in the National Hockey League and made Gretzky a worldwide star. He had been a magnificent player in Edmonton, and he continued to be a magnificent player in Los Angeles. But now he had the Los Angeles media machine promoting him, and he was playing in the United States. Whether Canadians liked it or not—and they didn’t—the inescapable fact was that once Gretzky got to Los Angeles, he was accorded an image that he could never have acquired in Edmonton.

  It didn’t take him long to start building the mystique. In the season opener, he scored on his first shot on goal. Moments later, he assisted on another goal. By the time the game ended, the Kings were up 8–2 on the Detroit Red Wings, and Gretzky had a goal and four assists. He had already passed eighty-three people on the Los Angeles Kings’ all-time scoring list.

  Ftorek shrugged off Gretzky’s contributions, but Jacques Demers, the shell-shocked Detroit coach, didn’t. “You can see what Gretzky does to that team,” he said. “I have never seen a Los Angeles team come at us like they did tonight.

  “I would say, without exaggeration, that he makes everybody on that team a 20 per cent better hockey player. He’s going to make them a much better team. They dominated a good Red Wings team—and this is a good Red Wings team. They came at us with purpose and complete conviction, knowing what was going to happen, and they made it happen.”

  Unlike Ftorek, the Los Angeles players couldn’t contain their praise for Gretzky. “It was a lot of fun,” said Luc Robitaille, who had opened his season with a hat trick. “The spirit on this team is unbelievable. You know he’s going to work hard on every shift. It was fun to bounce off him. You always get chances when you play with him, so you just go down and get those rebounds.”

  Bernie Nicholls, who had a goal and three assists, said, “He is a treat, that’s for sure. I wish everybody had an opportunity to play with this guy. You’re playing with the greatest player in the world. He’s such a team player and a team person. You know he’s always out there giving his best, so you want to give your best. You don’t want to disappoint the guy.”

  Bobby Carpenter had a goal and two assists. “It feels like you’ve just won the lottery all by yourself,” he said. “No one else had the winning ticket. I’ve been saying right from the beginning of training camp that we didn’t just get three or four new players in that trade, we got twenty new players. That’s the effect he has on the team.”

  When the Kings won their first four games, visions of Stanley Cup parades danced in their heads, but before long, the glitter started to wear off. Larry Playfair, a useful player who was well liked by his teammates and the Los Angeles fans, spoke out. Unless you were either a Ftorek favourite or someone who had played hockey with him at some point in his career, he said, you wouldn’t get preferential treatment.

  Playfair was immediately shipped out for his indiscretion, but there was no escaping the truth of his observation. The team had awful goaltending, and the culprits didn’t seem to get a lot of help from goaltending coach Cap Raeder, who, like Ftorek, was an American. Although he later became a solid member of the coaching staff, at that time, his main qualification seemed to be that he and Ftorek had been in high school together.

  Ron Duguay, who had played with Ftorek on the New York Rangers, got almost as much ice time as Gretzky, wh
o had not previously played with Ftorek anywhere. Not only was Gretzky not getting his usual ice time, he wasn’t getting quality time, either. Snipers like Nichols and Robitaille were rarely his linemates, and often, he wasn’t even sent out for a power play.

  On the early-November weekend when the team’s internal conflicts started to become public, the Kings were in Winnipeg. Gretzky usually had Carpenter and Bob Kudelski as his linemates, but on this occasion, he was flanked by Hubie McDonough and a defenceman, Marty McSorley. Gretzky scored an unassisted goal, but the Kings lost 8–4 after giving up six third-period goals.

  Some disgruntled players, who wanted to remain anonymous in view of what had happened to Playfair, blamed Ftorek. They had intended to relax the day before, a rare Saturday off-day. For a team that travelled as much as the Kings, an off-day was much coveted—especially in this case, because the team was embarking on a twelve-day road trip. Ftorek was unimpressed. He mandated a bowling outing for the entire team. Attendance was not optional.

  On Sunday morning, Ftorek was on the ice, snarling at his players and demanding that they work harder during the game-day skate. Little wonder the Jets wore them down in the third period that night.

  Of bigger concern to the team than the loss to Winnipeg was the ongoing malaise.

  Ftorek’s attitude clearly had not changed since training camp. He appeared to feel that if he admitted that one player was better than the others, he would somehow injure the psyche of the lesser players. In American high schools, where Ftorek had learned his hockey, that might have been true. In professional circles, especially circles staffed primarily by men who had battled their way through Canadian major junior hockey, it was not the case. The players knew who was good and who wasn’t. They knew who should be on the ice in crucial situations and who should stay on the bench. And since their coach, by his actions, made it clear that he either did not know those things or was in denial of them, it followed that they had no faith in him.

  The season was only a month old, but already, one of the recurrent questions in hockey circles was “How long can Robbie Ftorek last as coach of the Kings?”

  The stock answer—only partly in jest—was “As long as Wayne Gretzky lets him.”

  But in reality, that answer was totally wrong. Gretzky had no wish to interfere in the coaching of the team. That was a decision that had to be made by the general manager—who, in name, was Rogatien Vachon, but who, in fact, was Bruce McNall.

  The friction between the coach and his team was becoming so obvious that McNall was repeatedly asked how long Ftorek would last. A week after the bowling incident, McNall said that Ftorek would last the season, “unless he dies.”

  But by the end of November, McNall was ready to go back on his word. There had been a blowup between Gretzky and Ftorek, and as far as McNall was concerned, that meant Ftorek was finished. He could have a job within the Kings organization or he could go back to the New Haven farm team, where he had been before becoming the Kings’ coach.

  McNall never pulled the trigger, and the person who talked him out of it was Wayne Gretzky.

  The flash point had come during a game in Detroit. Gretzky messed up a play that cost a goal, and, wanting to make it clear that it was his fault and not anyone else’s, he smashed his stick across the crossbar.

  Ftorek benched him for a display of temper. It was one of his rules that players must never lose their composure on the ice.

  Gretzky does not handle public humiliation well. He had never before been benched in an NHL game, and according to a number of players, Ftorek took the opportunity between periods to announce his motive.

  “It’s my job to teach people things,” he said. “I’m here to teach.”

  “If you want to be a teacher, go back to New Haven,” snapped Gretzky. “I’m here to win a Stanley Cup.”

  Twelve years later, those who remembered the stick-smashing incident and Ftorek’s insistence that composure must be maintained had cause to be amused. Ftorek, then coach of the New Jersey Devils, disagreed with a non-call by the referee and, in a fit of rage, hurled the players’ bench onto the ice. He was ejected from the proceedings and given a one-game suspension—presumably by someone who wanted to teach him something.

  Ftorek’s self-serving stance angered Gretzky so much that he was still infuriated after the game. When McNall tried to talk to him, he turned and walked away, leaving McNall plaintively shouting, “Wayne, Wayne,” as the distance between them increased.

  The next day, McNall and Gretzky met face to face and McNall explained that he was going to fire Ftorek and wanted Gretzky to be alerted to the situation before he did so.

  However, Gretzky insisted that Ftorek should be left in place. It was not a black-and-white situation, but he felt that for the good of the team, the inevitable instability that follows a coaching change should be avoided.

  This illustrated one of the many differences between Gretzky and Ftorek. Clearly, both wanted to win, but Ftorek put his principles ahead of the team. Gretzky wouldn’t dream of criticizing or embarrassing Ftorek, but Ftorek had no problem embarrassing and criticizing Gretzky.

  Not only would Gretzky not denigrate Ftorek directly, he wouldn’t even do it implicitly by sulking, floating, spreading dissent or using any of the other time-honoured tactics that many star players have used to get their way over the years.

  Eighteen years after the incident, Gretzky finally discussed it with me.

  “Throughout my career,” he said, “the one thing I really believed in is that although you might agree or disagree with everything the coach says or does, especially when you’re a leader or a captain, your best player has to maintain the coach’s philosophy.

  “I might not agree, but I would never challenge his authority. I don’t believe in that. Robbie Ftorek—I lived or died by what he believed in, so he can never look back and say, ‘You challenged the coach,’ or, ‘You screwed the coach.’ ”

  In Los Angeles, as was the case everywhere else he played, Gretzky conformed to the desires of the coach and the needs of the team.

  Ftorek, on the other hand, saw only one way of doing things—his way. Anyone choosing to take another route could expect to be disciplined and made an example of, even if the team’s well-being was jeopardized in the process.

  Adding to the dilemma was the fact that the Kings weren’t playing badly. Certainly, their record could have been better, but on the other hand, it was a lot better than it had been before Gretzky arrived. This was uncharted territory for the Kings, so there was no precedent to consult. Perhaps if Ftorek were axed, his replacement wouldn’t do any better.

  Ftorek was allowed to stay on by virtue of Gretzky’s intervention, but he didn’t increase his reliance on Gretzky. For McNall, this was a major concern. He had spent ten million dollars to buy the Kings and a further fifteen million to buy Gretzky—which was a good indication of the value he put on Gretzky’s contributions. But he had a coach who did not share that valuation.

  It is not necessary for a team to like its coach. Scott Bowman, perhaps the greatest coach in hockey history, was not liked by his players—most of the time. Steve Shutt, an integral part of the Montreal Canadiens dynasty that won four consecutive Stanley Cups under Bowman in the 1970s, put it this way: “We hated him 364 days a year. On the 365th day, we got our Stanley Cup bonuses.”

  It is, however, necessary that a team respect its coach, and with the Kings under Ftorek, that never happened.

  Ftorek instituted fines for any player who was on the ice without his helmet chinstrap fastened, even in practice. Again, this might have been almost understandable in an American high school. It was incomprehensible at the NHL level. There were even four-figure fines for any player who left his sweater on the dressing-room floor. Ftorek was, of course, partial to sweaters.

  In February, when the Kings were awarded a rare overtime penalty shot, Ftorek selected Robitaille to take it, not Gretzky. Robitaille was stopped and the game ended in a tie. The
incident created ripples throughout the league, so much so that when John Muckler, who was coaching the Campbell Conference in the all-star game, discussed the strategy he intended to use, he said, “You know what? We’ll even let Gretz take penalty shots in overtime.”

  While many observers felt that with another coach, the Kings would have won their division, the team was far from terrible, and the early goaltending problems had been resolved.

  Within a few months of selling Gretzky, Pocklington had announced in front of a number of witnesses that he would sell Grant Fuhr to the Kings for five million dollars. He later said it was a practical joke, but McNall thought he was serious and tried to follow up on it. When that didn’t work, the Kings traded for Kelly Hrudey and finished with a record of 42–31–7, good enough for second in the Smythe Division and what, for fans, was a dream matchup in the opening round of the playoffs.

  The Kings would face the Oilers.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was often said in those days that anyone who left the Oilers organization did so with knives in his back, and Gretzky was no exception. Now that the Oilers and Kings were about to go head to head, the knives started arriving from the front as well.

  Back in November, Gretzky had taped an interview with Prime Ticket in which he said that he didn’t always get along with Sather and that when Sather was apportioning blame in the dressing room, it was Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri and Gretzky himself who got the lion’s share.

  By the time the playoffs opened, none of this was a secret. Gretzky had said the same thing to me, and I had written about it months before. Even so, Sather, always looking for a psychological edge, saw it as a good time to publicly accuse Gretzky of turning his back on friends, breaking confidences and a number of other nefarious activities.