99: Gretzky: His Game, His Story by Al Strachan

Author:Al Strachan [Strachan, Al]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Biography, Hockey, Non-Fiction, Sports, Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780771083259
Google: WUgwvCSxZvUC
Amazon: B00D5BFDJO
Publisher: FENN-M&S
Published: 2013-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

To a player like Wayne Gretzky, whose life was hockey, Maple Leaf Gardens was his hallowed hall, his Valhalla.

It was where he had seen his first National Hockey League game. Growing up, he watched Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday, and with very few exceptions, those games were played in Maple Leaf Gardens. (There were no regional telecasts in those days and definitely no double-headers.)

In his mind, as a child, the famed backyard rink in Brantford wasn’t Wally’s Coliseum as much as it was Maple Leaf Gardens. That was where he was scoring all his goals in seventh-game Stanley Cup final overtimes.

Had he been a baseball player, the Gardens would have been Gretzky’s Yankee Stadium. Had he been a soccer player, it would have been his Wembley. But he was a hockey player and it was no coincidence that, throughout his career, he invariably put on a show in Maple Leaf Gardens.

His first visit to the place he refers to as “a sacred building” came when he was a transfixed, awestruck six-year-old, sitting in the back row with his grandmother, watching the abysmal Oakland Seals.

“We sat in the last row of the greys,” he said. “We got there an hour early and I don’t think I moved the whole time. I think the first time I got out of my seat was when they announced the three stars.”

Only twelve years later, he was back, not just as a player but as the brightest young star in the game, astounding hockey fans everywhere but especially when he played in Toronto. “The easiest thing in the world is to get up for a hockey game in Maple Leaf Gardens,” he said with a laugh.

It had been his lifelong ambition to take part in a playoff series in Maple Leaf Gardens, and it was in that special place in 1993 that the Toronto Maple Leafs and Los Angeles Kings staged the major part of a series that remains memorable to this day.

A Stanley Cup final in Toronto would have been Gretzky’s ultimate fantasy come true, but it was impossible at the time because the Leafs and Kings were in the same conference. Playing in Maple Leaf Gardens for a berth in the Stanley Cup final was a close second.

For the Kings, it represented an achievement that wouldn’t be matched for almost two decades. In the time between that series and their improbable Stanley Cup victory in 2012, the Kings won just one playoff series.

Leafs fans, on the other hand, usually refer to the 1993 aggregation as their last great team. Granted, some of the subsequent Toronto teams had success. They advanced to the conference final again the following season but never seemed likely to win. “We were all worn down by then,” explained general manager Cliff Fletcher. Their other conference final appearances were in 1999, against the Buffalo Sabres, and in 2002 against the Carolina Hurricanes, but those, too, came to naught.

But that 1993 team with Doug Gilmour, Wendel Clark and Felix

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