Remembering the Wayne Gretzky trade. No, the other one.

On Saturday, the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks will face off in a Winter Classic alumni game that will be played outdoors, at a baseball stadium, and will include Wayne Gretzky.

It's kind of strange that Gretzky is the most surprising part of that sentence.

But it is. Outdoor games at eccentric locations are old hat now, but Gretzky wasn't supposed to play in this one, having hinted that an alumni appearance for the Oilers earlier in the year was his last game ever. But he apparently changed his mind, and will suit up for St. Louis. And that's fun, because it gives an entire generation of young hockey fans a chance to go: "Wait, Wayne Gretzky played for the St. Louis Blues?"

He did indeed, although it didn't last long and it didn't go especially well. You kind of had to be there.

But some of you weren't. So today, let's look back at the events the led up to the deal and some of the weirdness that followed, as we walk through the five stages of the (other) Wayne Gretzky trade.

The Build Up

We all kind of assume that Wayne Gretzky was a Los Angeles King for life.

Well, not for his whole life, since he'd already spent a good chunk of that shattering records with the Edmonton Oilers. But for the rest of his career, sure. Gretzky was going to be the guy who broke in as a flashy youngster in Edmonton before moving down south to redefine the way an entire country viewed the sport, and then he'd ride off into the SoCal sunset.

Still, we knew there was a chance that a move could happen someday. As the old saying went, "If Wayne Gretzky can be traded, then anyone can be traded," which is a group that technically would include Wayne Gretzky again. But if it did, it would be a blockbuster, and it would probably take months to put together and go down in the offseason. That's what had happened in 1988, when the trade that sent Gretzky from Edmonton to L.A. was considered the biggest in the history of pro sports and had Canadian politicians demanding legislation to stop the deal. Another Gretzky deal could happen, but it would be a monster.

Gretzky in a Blues jersey will always look weird. Photo by Sam Mircovic/Reuters

Wayne Gretzky, a hastily thrown together trade deadline rental? No way.

That's why it was stunning, and more than a little confusing, when reports started to emerge in early 1996 that Gretzky could be on the block. But the Kings weren't contending, and Gretzky was reported to be unhappy. With free agency looming and the Kings struggling financially in the wake of one-time owner Bruce McNall's legal scandals, what had seemed unthinkable suddenly looked very real.

Wayne Gretzky was getting traded, and the deal was going to go down quickly. This was really happening.

The Bidding

By February 1996, it was clear that a deal was imminent, probably even in advance of that year's March 20 trade deadline. As far as a destination, the usual suspects were floated. The Canucks, who'd missed out on Gretzky in 1988 (and turned out to be a year away from landing a big-name veteran of their own, although they'd rather not talk about it). The Blackhawks, who always seemed to be in on the big names. The Maple Leafs, because you can't have a good trade rumor without the Leafs being mentioned. And, yes, the Blues, although initially as a long shot.

But the clear favorite was what seemed like the obvious choice: the Rangers. Every star player of the 90s made a stop in New York at some point, and they seemed like a natural fit. The Rangers were contenders, they had plenty of money, and they could even reunite Gretzky with Mark Messier. As the rumors grew from plentiful smoke to outright fire, the hockey world waited for Gretzky to make his inevitable move to Broadway.

And that's where Mike Keenan came in.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Grab bag: Trade rumors, CATLAGs, and Patrick Roy vs. the Wings

In this week's Friday grab bag:
- Your favorite team might trade a guy, but will they get something in return?
- Introducing the CATLAG player, the deadline's most inescapable storyline
- An obscure player gets traded for Wayne Gretzky
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back at a classic highlight of the greatest rivalry of all-time

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Five NHL sure things that ended up being huge disappointments

We’re just 13 days away from Christmas Eve, and by now you’ve probably made your requests, dropped all your hints, and written your letter to Santa. Now it’s time to sit back and dream of all the cool stuff you’re hoping to find under your tree on Christmas morning.

And maybe you’ll get everything you hoped for. But let’s face it, the odds are against you. Chances are you’ll just end up being bitterly disappointed, like always.

Luckily, you’re a hockey fan, so you’re used to it. History is filled with examples of hockey fans getting excited about something that seemed like a lock to bring joy and happiness, only to be let down in the end. So to help you get in the right frame of mind for the holidays, here are five examples of hockey sure things that turned out to be massive disappointments.

The 1998 Olympics

It’s hard to describe the level of excitement that most hockey fans felt heading into the 1998 Winter Olympics. For the first time ever, the NHL was taking a break to allow all the best players to compete. Oh sure, we’d had other best-on-best tournaments, like the Canada Cup and World Cup. But this was the Olympics. There were gold medals on the line.

And once all the world’s best players had gathered in Nagano, we were treated to a two-week tournament that featured such memorable moments as …

Um …

Give me a second, I’m sure there was something …

Or maybe not, because once you got past the novelty factor, the 1998 Olympic tournament stunk. And yes, that’s probably an indefensibly North America–centric view to take, given that both Canada and the U.S. finished out of the medals. If you’re from the Czech Republic, you remember Dominik Hasek leading the country to an unexpected gold medal while cementing his status as the best goaltender in the world, and maybe of all time. If you’re Russian, you remember Pavel Bure’s five goals in the semifinal. In you’re from Finland, you may recall Ville Peltonen’s third-period winner in the bronze-medal game.

But the NHL sent its players to the Olympics primarily to drive up interest in the U.S., and from that standpoint, the tournament failed miserably. Team USA, just two years removed from a World Cup win, didn’t do anything memorable aside from trashing its hotel. Canada, meanwhile, lost to Hasek and the Czechs in a shootout that’s best remembered for coach Marc Crawford using a defenseman instead of Wayne Gretzky.

And even those more successful European teams didn’t exactly put on a show. The gold-medal game between the Russians and Czechs was painfully dull, a 1-0 snoozer in which the only goal came on a harmless-looking screened shot from the point. It was a great exclamation point to Hasek’s epic games, but as a showcase for the sport of hockey it was a disaster. (For the men, at least. The women's tournament was pretty great.)

North American fans would get their gold-medal showdowns in 2002 and 2010, and even Sweden’s win at the 2006 Games was plenty of fun. But the 1998 experience didn’t accomplish much of anything, other than reminding hockey fans that the late '90s were incredibly dull.

>> Read the full post on Grantland