99

by Al Strachan

  “If I did one thing that would embarrass Team Canada or the country or hockey,” he said, “I would resign. It didn’t happen.”

  But as the media piled on accusation after accusation, there had even been suggestions that Gretzky was an integral part of the illegal ring. Despite being disturbed by the situation in which he found himself at the time, he had to smile.

  “Come on,” he said. “There are going to be so many innuendoes. I’m not aware of any kind of ring.”

  After the game, Gretzky held the promised press conference and repeated his assertion that he was innocent. When it was over, he invited me back to his house for a beer or two. At that time, four of his children were back in the Los Angeles area with Janet, but his eldest son, Ty, who was fifteen, was there.

  As we stood around the kitchen counter talking about the furore, Ty was listening intently. “I would never bet on sports,” said Gretzky, “but Janet is from St. Louis. She was betting on the NFL long before she met me. I keep telling her not to, but she does it. What are you going to do? Anyone who’s married knows the answer to that.”

  At that point, Ty, who doesn’t say an awful lot, spoke up. “That’s right, Dad,” he said. “When she gets on the phone with Rick, you go like this”—he threw his arms up and let out a huge sigh of exasperation—“and walk out of the room.”

  It was such a perfect imitation that we all laughed. Anyone who was there and had doubts about Gretzky’s innocence would have cast aside those doubts on the spot.

  Eventually, the matter wound its way through the courts. Six months after the allegations surfaced, former New Jersey state trooper James Harney pleaded guilty to conspiracy, promoting gambling and official misconduct. Four months after that, another New Jersey man, James Ulmer, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and promoting gambling.

  Eighteen months after the furore, Tocchet was sentenced to two years’ probation for having been a minor player in the conspiracy. He returned to the NHL in 2008 as an assistant coach, and as of this writing, was a highly regarded analyst on TV in Philadelphia.

  Janet was never charged with anything. What all the media sharks had failed to notice was that it is not against the law to place a bet in New Jersey, even with an illegal betting ring.

  Mike Barnett was never charged, either.

  The “hundreds of players” who were supposed to have been involved were never found.

  If any of the media members who rushed to judgment ever apologized to Gretzky, either in person or through their respective media outlets, it has been a well-kept secret.

  The aspect of the whole affair that Gretzky will not talk about is its impact on his relationship with Bettman, a relationship that had not been great ever since Bettman did everything he could to sabotage Gretzky’s 1994 goodwill tour of Scandinavia. But according to a reliable source, Bettman’s actions regarding the gambling allegations widened a rift that has never healed.

  The source, a close friend of Gretzky, said that on the night before the allegations became public, Gretzky called Bettman to assure him of his innocence. He said that Janet and Tocchet would be implicated to widely different degrees, but that he himself had not taken any part whatsoever in the placing of bets.

  Gretzky knew that Bettman would have to respond to the media the next day, and he wanted him to say that he had faith that he was not involved. Bettman, however, did no such thing. He said he was retaining the league’s own independent investigator—apparently the New Jersey authorities weren’t good enough—and that everyone was under suspicion, including Gretzky.

  Gretzky was furious, and reportedly has never forgiven Bettman. Considering the value which Gretzky places on having a good reputation, he probably never will.

  Gretzky went to Italy, leaving one media storm only to shortly find himself in the midst of another. To say that the result of all the meticulous Olympic planning was a failure would be to put it mildly. Canada did manage to beat Germany and Italy in the opening round, but that hardly came as a surprise. The Canadians also managed to get past the Czech Republic 3–2. But they got shut out by Finland, which did not sit well with their fans, and shut out by Switzerland, which was seen as a total disaster. They barely managed to qualify for the quarter-finals.

  That was as far as they got. In the opening game of the playdowns, they got shut out again, this time by Russia. The defending champions hadn’t even made the final four! They finished seventh.

  Canadians were outraged. All the second-guessers were beside themselves. Everyone had an idea as to what Gretzky and his staff should have done, and most of these views, valid or not, were given media exposure.

  Some were downright idiotic, such as the radio announcer who suggested in one breath that Kris Draper should not have been on the team because his scoring numbers weren’t exceptional and in the next breath that the management team should have placed a greater premium on speed. At the time, there was probably no faster skater in the league than Draper. He didn’t score much because he was a premier penalty killer. It wasn’t his job to score.

  Other observations were not quite as ludicrous, but most of them were badly flawed. The most common criticism was that the team should have placed a much greater emphasis on youth. That was a marginally acceptable observation after the fact, but there was nothing in the twenty-year string of excellence provided by a succession of Team Canadas to support the contention.

  Nash was the youngest player. He had already won an NHL scoring title and had been superb in the world championships. To say that he wasn’t very good in the Olympics would be a generous understatement. Yet, after the fact, the critics suggested that the inclusion of more young players would have changed the result. But Nash hadn’t helped the cause; why would the others?

  The one player the critics seemed to want the most was Staal—certainly an excellent player now, but at the time, he had only two-thirds of an NHL season under his belt and had never played in a major tournament—not even at the junior level.

  It was suggested in hindsight that, in view of the three shutouts, the team needed more scoring, so the league’s top scorers should have been selected without regard for other factors, especially experience. That approach had been tried before by national teams—and by the New York Rangers, for that matter—and had been found to be sadly lacking. Furthermore, if the gold-medal 2002 team had been picked that way, it wouldn’t have had either Mario Lemieux or Steve Yzerman, both of whom had missed part of the NHL season but excelled in the Olympics.

  Many second-guessers were critical of the selection of Todd Bertuzzi—and, after the fact, could justify their stance. But in the first two games of the Olympics, Bertuzzi was Canada’s best forward. Then a twenty-million-dollar civil lawsuit landed on him and, all of a sudden, his game dried up. Gretzky could hardly have been expected to anticipate an ideal situation being negated by a lawyer, even though there’s ample precedent.

  As Gretzky himself had said before the Games began, the only way he could be proved right would be to come back with a gold medal. Anything else would be considered a failure.

  Bobby Clarke, part of the troika that had handled the 1998 team, blamed Canada’s loss on the international rules makers. They had cracked down on what they perceived as “violence,” he said, and taken away the seminal aspect of the Canadian game—physical domination.

  “I think the Europeans had a tremendous amount of respect for that part of the Canadian game—and some fear,” he said. “Now you go over and everybody is the same. There is no difference.

  “In fact, if you watched the Olympic hockey, the women’s hockey actually allowed more stick checking than the men’s. It did! I’m serious.

  “The incidental stuff got called in the men’s and it didn’t get called in the women’s.”

  Even though Clarke had resigned after the 1998 loss, he felt that Gretzky should be kept on after 2006. “Gretzky is a long way above the rest of us,” he said. “I think Gretzky should have another kick at the can becau
se I think he got blindsided.

  “They’ve got five guys skating backward through the mid-zone. It’s the exact opposite of what Canadian hockey has always been. But that’s what won.”

  Clarke’s opinion carried no weight. When the management team for the 2010 Olympic team was announced, the general manager was Steve Yzerman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Retiring as a player in 1999 did not take Gretzky out of hockey. He was immediately bombarded with offers from teams that wanted him to work for their organization in some capacity—either as coach, high-level executive or even owner.

  He looked at all the offers, gave them serious consideration and then, in 2000, became involved with the Phoenix Coyotes. At that time, the team played in a downtown dump that worked fairly well for basketball but certainly not for hockey.

  The future, according to Coyotes owner Steve Ellman, was to be different. He was going to build a hockey arena as part of a complex in the suburb of Glendale. Alongside would be a new domed stadium for the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League as well as stores, restaurants, bars, theatres and even apartment buildings.

  In return for his involvement, Gretzky would get not only 10 per cent of the hockey team but 10 per cent of the whole complex.

  Over the next few years, while he was acting as executive director of two Canadian Olympic hockey teams and fulfilling a number of other obligations to his corporate sponsors, Gretzky was also trying to make the Coyotes viable. He lined up other investors, brought in Cliff Fletcher as a caretaker general manager until his old friend Mike Barnett became available, and finally, in 2004, took over the coaching reins himself.

  The franchise has been successful at times. Very few times. It was never a good team to start with, having originally been the Winnipeg Jets, winners of only two playoff series in the seventeen years they existed in the NHL before moving to Phoenix in 1996.

  Barnett did nothing to make the team better, and by 2007, even Gretzky had to accept that his longtime friend hadn’t done a satisfactory job. It was a team that had never had a superstar—and, to date, still hasn’t. The Coyote with the most talent when Barnett arrived was probably Danny Briere. He was traded away for Chris Gratton, a workmanlike player who had very little potential and failed to live up to it.

  In Gretzky’s four years as a coach, the Coyotes never made the playoffs. But it must also be said that no intelligent hockey observers found that to be a surprise, considering the calibre of the players on his roster.

  In recent years, with Don Maloney as GM, the Coyotes have been better. In 2012, when they advanced as far as the Western Conference final, hockey was the talk of the town and their home games were sold out. But for the most part, the Coyotes have been a dismal failure, their books always showing even more red than their uniforms.

  Ellman sold his majority share of the team to Jerry Moyes in 2006, but the financial situation didn’t improve, and in 2009, after Moyes had filed for bankruptcy, the NHL had to step in and assume ownership of the team until new owners took over in July 2013.

  Gretzky had already signed a five-year contract extension, but because he was tangled up in the corporate web that lawyers create in such situations, he had to step down as coach and head of the Coyotes’ hockey operations. He has had no direct involvement with the National Hockey League ever since.

  He took over the coaching duties in Phoenix even though most of his friends advised against the idea, but his explanation was simple. “I love the game. I want to get back down to the ice and be among the players.”

  He’s not there as of this writing, but until the path is cleared for his return, he continues to be as close to hockey as he can get. He is not only Canadian hockey’s greatest ambassador, he is hockey’s greatest ambassador.

  In 1999, just seven months after his retirement, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. The standard mandatory three-year waiting period had been waived.

  Three months later, his number was retired by the NHL, a singular honour. “When I started wearing this number in junior hockey in 1977,” he said, “I didn’t expect that one day, they wouldn’t let anybody else wear it. It’s a great honour.”

  In 2002, when Queen Elizabeth II agreed to drop the puck for the ceremonial faceoff at the opening of Vancouver’s GM Place, Canucks owner John McCaw asked Gretzky to be a part of the proceedings. The two had developed a friendship while waiting in vain for their functionaries to work out a contract for Gretzky in 1996.

  Gretzky escorted the Queen onto the ice for the ceremonial face off, then sat beside her for the period of the game that she watched.

  “She was really nice,” Gretzky said. “She was trying to watch the game and she was really curious about the game. She was very impressed by the goaltenders. She thought the goaltenders were extremely quick and maybe the best athletes on the ice, in her mind.

  “She was curious about icing and penalties. She was good. She really enjoyed herself.”

  Gretzky’s only moment of concern came during the pre-game ceremony. “We walked down the ice and she tried to get closer to the young kids so she could wave to them,” he said. “I was getting a little nervous because she was getting away from the carpet, but she was just trying to get closer to the kids.”

  In 2003, when the bidding to host the 2010 Olympics was coming down to the wire, Gretzky jumped on board to help the Canadian cause. He went to Prague, where the decision was to be announced, to try to seal the bid for Canada. “I’ll just try to sell them on how great Canada is,” he said, “how much people enjoy the Olympic games in Canada, how Vancouver is ready to support the Olympic Games and how it’s the right city and the right choice for them.

  “I’ve done a bunch of different things just trying to promote Canada and Vancouver,” he said. “Whatever they ask me to do, I try to help them. I think it’s the right place to have it. I think it’s the next best thing for American TV, if it’s not in the U.S., to have it in Canada. With the time zones, that helps a lot.

  “With the venues they have for ice hockey, figure skating, curling and skiing, it’s the perfect place. I hope they can get it.”

  They got it. Whether Gretzky had an impact on the decision-making is hard to say, but he certainly didn’t hurt the cause.

  In 2005, the last active link to the magical days of the Edmonton dynasty was severed when Mark Messier retired after twenty-five years in the NHL. Messier and Gretzky had been close in the dynasty years, they remained close when Gretzky left Edmonton and they’re still close today.

  For four years, they lived in the same apartment building. They won four Stanley Cups together. Their parents were friends. They were children in Wonderland, kids barely out of high school, conquering the hockey world.

  “His family are great people,” said Gretzky, “and they lived in Edmonton, which was great. His grandmother used to come to every game, every team function, every Christmas party.

  “It was a pretty special group. He was a big leader of it. He was a unique person.

  “He really truly enjoyed every part of being a hockey player—being with the guys, being in the locker room, being in the back of the bus, enjoying a big win. Everything you could conceivably think about as being a part of hockey, he loved.

  “I’ve never seen a guy like that, except maybe Gordie Howe. Gordie didn’t ever want to retire, and that’s how Mark was: ‘I want to play forever.’ He never wanted to quit.”

  Like Gretzky, Messier started his professional career as a teenager. “When Mess came in to the league from the WHA at eighteen, he was kind of raw,” Gretzky said. “He was just power and speed. But he developed soft hands and really learned the game, and passing the puck. When Glen moved him from left wing to centre, his career really went to a different level. We didn’t have a guy to match up against Bryan Trottier. That always hurt us. Mess was able to stand up to that challenge, and that was a huge reason that we ended up winning.

  “He really made himself into a p
laymaker. At first, he was more a goal scorer—go down the wing and snap the puck—but he became a good playmaking centreman. One of the reasons he was able to play so many years was that he developed into such a talent. I don’t think he had that natural ability at the beginning.”

  Messier was a leader of legendary proportions and probably the first true power forward in today’s sense of the phrase. “He used to scare me in practice,” Gretzky said with a laugh. “He played with such a fierce competitiveness that sometimes I’d think, ‘Geez, I hope he doesn’t forget it’s practice.’ ”

  In 2010, either out of gratitude, or because he had been overlooked as flag bearer in previous Olympics, or maybe just because of an attack of plain old common sense, the Canadian Olympic Committee finally got it right and picked Gretzky to light the flame to open the Vancouver Olympics.

  In September 2012, even though he had said he would never play in old-timers’ games, he relented and took part in a two-game exhibition series in Russia. Two famous hockey events—the 1972 Summit Series and the 1987 Canada Cup—were commemorated, it being their fortieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries, respectively. Also, the series was a memorial for the victims of the plane crash that had claimed the lives of the entire Yaroslavl Lokomotiv team on September 7, 2011.

  Gretzky had expected the games to provide a few laughs and a relaxed time. “That was the idea,” he said in 2013. “It was supposed to be just a fun trip because we don’t play a lot of hockey any more. But as soon as we got into the games and the fans got into it, the whole level changed.

  “We were all thinking, ‘What did we get ourselves into here?’ We were just supposed to have fun and all of a sudden, everybody is trying hard to win.”

  The Russian team featured recently retired players like Alexander Mogilny, Igor Larionov and Alexei Yashin, whereas the Canadians were mostly of an earlier vintage. Even Ken Dryden and Phil Esposito were involved.

  Once the Russians started double-shifting their better players, the Canadians knew they were in for a tough time. They lost the opener 6–5, an appropriate score for an anniversary of the 1987 Canada Cup.