CBC-Sports

The day Wayne came to town

November 20, 2009 05:31 PM | Posted by   Kelly Hrudey  

Talk about being bombarded with memories!

This week I watched Kings Ransom, the Peter Berg directed documentary about the Wayne Gretzky trade to Los Angeles.

I remember the day well.

August 9, 1988, my brother Ken and I were in Banff, Alberta. Every August we would head to the mountains of Western Canada for some vigorous hiking and mountain biking because of the spectacular training opportunities.

As Ken and I sat stunned watching the Gretzky press conference, never in my wildest dreams could I ever have predicted how the trade would directly affect my life too.

Back to the show for a minute, Berg did an amazing job of showing the raw emotions felt by so many people directly involved with Wayne being shipped south to Los Angeles.

I think hockey fans saw what I was able to see in Wayne as a teammate of his for almost eight seasons - the emotion that he normally doesn’t show in public.

Wayne was so open with Berg, probably exposing more of himself with his candid thoughts concerning two important thoughts: one emotional and the other realistic.

That’s the first time publicly I can recall Wayne saying he was mad at Peter Pocklington because normally he’s very gracious or even evasive with those types of questions.

It was also the first time Wayne delved into (with great detail I might add) how challenging the task of turning around a very poor hockey team would be, even for the game’s greatest player.

I guess that’s where I came into the picture. Along with many other players, I would ultimately be brought on board to help Gretzky and the Kings get to a respectable level.

As we all know, we never did achieve our goal of winning a Stanley Cup in L.A., but we certainly raised the bar for the franchise. No longer were the L.A. Kings an easy two points for the opposition. We were now taken seriously.

As well, I was there to witness the explosion of hockey fans he created in Southern California and not just the casual fan, but the ones that still love the game of hockey today.

Watching Kings Ransom caused a real jolt of energy to flow through my body and helped me remember how exciting it was to attend a Kings game.

It wasn’t just another NHL tilt; it truly was an event. Like the day Wayne was traded.

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