Top 100 momentsNo. 53
Edmonton trades Wayne Gretzky to the Kings. Canada treats it as a funeral. Sunbelt hockey treats it as a founding.
August 9, 1988. The Oilers send the Great One to Los Angeles. Peter Pocklington needs money. Wayne Gretzky cries at the press conference. Edmonton feels sold. Hollywood gets a center who can fill a building that had not always cared.
The Kings still do not win a Cup with him. They do make hockey visible in California. Later franchises in the South and West owe a debt to a trade that looked like a betrayal and worked like a broadcast strategy.
Canadian hockey’s wound and American hockey’s map are the same day. No athlete move in the sport has been louder.