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by Wayne Gretzky

  The first guy to the net to throw his arms around Andy was Paul Coffey. He was just so incredibly happy for Andy’s success. Coff would get his chance too. Within four short years, he’d win the Norris Trophy as the National Hockey League’s best defenseman.

  • • •

  When I played for L.A. a few years down the road, Bruce McNall would sometimes tease me and say, “Hey, Wayne, why don’t you tell us about the Miracle on Manchester?”

  We thought 1981–82 might be our year. We’d come first in the Smythe Division with 111 points, 48–17–15. Vancouver was second, but they were thirty-four points behind us. We ran away with it.

  We had the Kings in the first round. They had sixty-three points and a losing record, 24–41–15. And yet despite the point spread, we were both high-scoring teams. They had some great firepower on the Triple Crown Line with Marcel Dionne, Charlie Simmer, and Dave Taylor. Larry Murphy had scored sixty-six points on defense, and they had a great captain in Dave Lewis. These were really proud men. And when we went into the semifinals to play them, I think we got ahead of ourselves and lost sight of that.

  To this day, Bernie Nicholls, who would eventually become my friend and teammate on the Kings, says that they had absolutely no business beating us. In hockey, though, anything can happen. The Kings came into Edmonton and out-gunned us 10–8.

  We took the second game 3–2 in overtime and headed to the Forum on Los Angeles’ West Manchester Boulevard. In Game Three we were up 5–0 in the third period. Their owner, Jerry Buss, had gone home in defeat, and Glen Sather was behind the bench with a big grin. The Kings scored two goals early in the third. Suddenly, you could sense the momentum kind of turning. They scored their third just before Garry Unger took a five-minute major. They scored two more with Unger in the box, the last one tying the game with only five seconds left in regulation time. Now we were into overtime, and Kings’ winger Daryl Evans scored off the faceoff to win it. That game became the Miracle on Manchester.

  We took Game Four, but the funny thing is the Kings had just assumed we’d win the series and so they didn’t even have a flight booked to Edmonton for Game Five. That meant we shared a plane, which took off at one-thirty a.m. The Kings asked for the front of the plane because we had to play that night and they thought that if we got off first and made it through Customs, Immigration might keep them there the rest of the night just to help us out. They beat us in the final game, 7–4. The hockey world was stunned. Every time I see an interview with their play-by-play guy, Bob Miller, he still talks about it.

  But we learned from it.

  There was a tremendous amount of pressure from media and fans to break up the whole group because they thought we were too offensively minded. But Glen never gave in to that pressure. What he did was very smart. He hired John Muckler, who came in and molded the group. He was really stern on the direction of each and every player. That freed up Glen to focus on being a bench coach, which meant he didn’t have to be as hard on the players as he’d been in the past.

  As much as the Oilers had some great players, we really weren’t a great team in the 1982–83 season. We had a lot to prove. And we’d just learned that if you don’t do well in the playoffs, the regular season is forgotten.

  We finished our sweep of Winnipeg on April 9, 1983. On April 20 we eliminated Calgary in the fifth game of the second round, and then we swept the Black Hawks. Everything was a little too easy in those first three rounds. What I mean is that, if you’re an experienced team, it’s great to just walk through each series because it’s not as hard on your body and it gives you an advantage, especially if the other teams go deep in their rounds. But if you’re an inexperienced team, as we were, you get the wrong message. You think, “Wow, this is not all that difficult. This is going to be our year!” Not that we weren’t thrilled. When we were handed the Campbell Bowl for winning the conference, we carried it around like it was the greatest trophy ever—until we got our hands on the next one. For a while, there was a tradition that it was bad luck to touch the Campbell Bowl or the Prince of Wales Trophy. But Sidney Crosby made a point of touching the Prince of Wales in 2016, so maybe that superstition is coming to an end.

  Then we ran into the New York Islanders. We were at a point they’d been at a few years before. A disappointing playoff exit, followed by a solid season and a chance at redemption—and a Stanley Cup. The Islanders went through it, we went through it, and I think a big part of the stability for both teams was that neither Torrey nor Sather panicked. Torrey kept his core—Trottier, Bossy, Potvin, Gillies, Smith, and Bob Bourne—together. As I talked about earlier, Torrey felt that stability was a big factor. Constantly changing coaches and players can lead to overkill in those areas, and by the time you get to the playoffs, you’ve almost got another team.

  In both cases, the Islanders and the Oilers had to learn how to win. We had a real hatred for them and they had a hatred for us, but the one thing I will tell you is that we respected the Islanders more than any other team in hockey and we wanted to be like them.

  • • •

  But we had a long way to go before we could realistically take on the Islanders. Through three games they were simply the better team. We brought all of our speed and energy, and they just found a way to neutralize it. It wasn’t that they embarrassed us or ran us out of the building or anything. They just had an answer for everything we could throw at them. The first three games weren’t close.

  Game Four was held in Nassau County Coliseum. You had to descend to the dressing room through the bowels of the arena. There was a fair bit of nervousness at that point because we were up against a very strong team. And we were down three to nothing. But when we walked into the dressing room to get ready for the game, there at the front of the room was a large blackboard where Kevin Lowe had written, “We’ve got them right where we want them.” We all kind of laughed, and it broke the ice a bit. New York would beat us again to win four straight, but I think it was that kind of philosophy, the attitude Kevin had conveyed in his scrawled comment, that made us a stronger team later on. It was like saying, “They don’t have us yet. Let’s go out and do what got us here.”

  I tell this next story a lot because it was a turning point. A lesson that helped us through the next season and playoffs. As we were leaving the Coliseum, dressed up in our suits, Kevin Lowe and I walked down the hallway past the Islanders’ room where their management, wives, and families were celebrating, and we saw some of the old vets sitting there having a beer, relaxed but not in a really festive mood.

  They were battered and bruised and had ice bags and heat packs all over their bodies. Meanwhile we were in great shape, ready to go another playoff round. Seeing them like that told us, “Okay, we learned a lot from the previous year—how hard the playoffs are, and how disciplined and focused you have to be. But to win the Stanley Cup, you have to take it to another level.”

  The time between losing that game and the first playoff game of the next season, 1983–84, seemed an eternity. All we kept thinking was, “We’re gonna get back to that final, and when we do get back to that final, we’re not gonna lose.”

  Thirty-Four

  THE LAST DYNASTY

  Mark Messier provided a lot of leadership in the locker room. He took the team seriously, and he made sure everyone else did too. One of the young players from the minors came in to practice once, and afterward he took his sweater off and threw it at the hamper. He missed and the sweater landed facedown. Mark got up, walked over to this young guy, looked him square in the eye, and in a quiet voice said, “That crest never touches the floor.” He was saying it not just to the kid but to all of us. The message was clear. “If you don’t respect what that logo stands for, then how can we ever become champions?” It resounded in the hearts of all the players, and the environment in the dressing room seemed to gel.

  In 1983–84, the Oilers entirely transformed their thinking. U
p till then we played so-called “firewagon” hockey. In other words, we just wanted to score the other team into submission. That’s just the way things were in the Clarence Campbell Conference in the west, which was fast and high-flying—and distinctly different from the Prince of Wales Conference in the east, where teams like the Islanders and Bruins and Flyers played a more grinding, methodical game. (The contrast between the two exactly mirrored what was going on in the NBA at the time: the Celtics and the 76ers in the east were physical and the Lakers in the west were fast. Actually, for a number of years there were incredible similarities between the NBA and Stanley Cup playoffs.)

  But now we were becoming focused as a team, defensively and offensively. Our assistant coach John Muckler, who was a real strategist, brought the guys together to form a team that could take on the Islanders.

  • • •

  Kenny Linseman was a big asset on the team. He was a smaller guy, 175 pounds soaking wet, but played with a big chip on his shoulder. He’d make a point of going after the tough guys so that they wouldn’t come after him. (When winger Kevin McClelland joined the Oilers that year—if we made it to the final against the Islanders, we’d need that kind of muscle and grit—the first time he came into our dressing room he shook Kenny’s hand and said he was sure glad Kenny was on our team because he wouldn’t have to go through Kenny’s stick anymore.)

  Kenny could get very intense. He would get whipped up into a blind rage. His mom, Hazel, was a redhead with an unbelievable temper like his, and so they clashed. He was the oldest—Hazel had five kids after Kenny in just eight years. But when Kenny was seventeen, Hazel got sick and died of cancer. It was hard, especially given all the words they’d had between them. That always seemed to ride with Kenny.

  I first saw Kenny when I was fifteen. I was playing Junior B hockey with the Toronto Nationals, who were affiliated with the Peterborough Petes. My next-door neighbor, Paul Goulet, was the chief scout for the Petes (this was when Roger Neilson was coaching the team), and once a month, beginning when I was eight, he’d take me to a game. The next season they had some injuries, and so I got to play three games for them. By then, the Petes were coached by a guy named Garry Young, who was really good to me. My second game we played Kingston. Before the warm-up Garry called me over—I was small, probably 5’9”, 125 pounds max. He said, “When you get out there, look over at Number 14.”

  I nodded.

  “Every time 14 is on the ice tonight, you get off.”

  I got on the ice for warm-up, and saw this little guy wearing number 14. He was so small that I thought, “Why?”

  I came back to the bench after warm-up and said to the coach, “You want me to get off the ice for that little guy? Is he that good?”

  The coach shook his head. “No, he’s the dirtiest guy in the league. He might cut your eye out, and I don’t want that to happen.” Number 14 was Kenny Linseman. To this day I still tease Kenny and say, “I wasn’t allowed to play against you.”

  In Philly, Bobby Clarke nicknamed him the Rat. I always called him Kenny. I was funny about nicknames. I had a few of them: in the Soo it was Pretzel, early on in the Oilers’ locker room it was Wheezy. I just like being called Wayne or Gretz. Not all guys were happy with their nicknames, and I know Kenny wasn’t proud of his. I didn’t think it suited him anyway. I mean, he played the game ferociously, as tough as anyone who’s ever played in the NHL, but from his point of view he was just trying to do whatever it took to be successful and to be a champion.

  • • •

  When we made it through to the Stanley Cup finals, a lot of people perceived our matchup with the Islanders as the new against the old. Actually, the average age difference between the two teams was only a little over a year. Not as much as everyone thinks. (Although it’s true that when you compare some of the key guys, they were a little older—Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier, and John Tonelli were twenty-seven and Denis Potvin was thirty, whereas Oilers Andy Moog and Jari Kurri were twenty-four, Messier and I were twenty-three, and Coffey was twenty-two.) Kevin Lowe had a theory that every full playoff season you play makes you an extra year older—like doggy years. And in 1984, the Islanders were battle-worn. They’d gone through to the finals for five years straight.

  Their goalie, Billy Smith, was one of the oldest guys on both teams. He was thirty-three. To call him a competitor would be an understatement. A year earlier, in Game One, we outshot the Islanders thirty-five to twenty-four and yet they won 2–0 on an empty-net goal. Billy did not fit the Islander mold, and in some respects that helped balance things out. He was on the wild side, which took them to another level. There’s an old biblical saying, “An angry man stirs up fights,” and that’s what Billy did. We were in wars with him throughout the entire season and the playoffs. If he had the chance he’d cut your head off. He didn’t even pretend he wasn’t trying to hurt you if you came near him. I was particularly focused on Billy because I knew he would’ve loved to bring me to my knees. He hated me, and I didn’t like him. Today, though, we have a mutual respect. I know how good he was and how much he wanted to win. Besides Ron Hextall, he was probably the best goaltender I ever played against. Each of them could wield his stick pretty good to protect his crease.

  Billy was fearless too. I remember seeing him jawing with Dave Semenko and wondering, “What could Smith be saying to Semenko?” And more importantly, “What was Dave saying back?” Whatever it was, I’m sure it was witty and mean. But in general, tough guys don’t get enough credit for being funny. It takes a special kind of coolness to come up with good one-liners in the heat of battle.

  • • •

  A lot of people don’t know this, but during the nine-day break after we beat the Minnesota North Stars to make it into the final against the Islanders in 1984, Roger Neilson had just been released by Vancouver. He was a good hockey man and a very creative thinker, so Glen hired him as our first video coach. Very few teams used video back then, but Roger spent his entire career trying to find ways to win.

  Before he started coaching in the NHL, Roger was coaching for the Peterborough Petes. In 1968, there was a penalty shot against his team, so Roger put a defenseman in net. When the shooter picked up the puck, the defenseman charged out. As a result, a rule was established that you had to have a goalie in net on a penalty shot.

  Roger once pulled his goalie when the faceoff was in his own end. The puck dropped, a forward stepped on the ice and skated to the red line, and the guy taking the faceoff passed it up-ice for a breakaway. So, again because of Roger, there’s now a rule that requires you to have all six guys on the ice unless there’s a penalty.

  Glen Sather never tried to snuff out our creativity, but he wanted to review the tapes and watch what was going on. Interestingly, the Islanders were doing then what a lot of teams do now: collapsing into the slot on defense. All five Islanders would protect the middle in front of their own net. They would let you wheel around the perimeter all night, passing back and forth and taking bad-angle shots. Then they would grab the rebound and go the other way.

  You can’t pass if no one is open, so it was really hard for us to make the kind of plays we were used to making. We were such a good skating, passing team. So we’d try it anyway—and we’d just end up turning the puck over and they’d go back on a two-on-one.

  Our new game plan for the finals was to take the puck wide, take the shot, and have guys driving to the net. We weren’t supposed to try to make any plays in the slot. The coaching staff said, “Forget trying for beautiful plays. Don’t even bother looking in the slot until we’re safely ahead and the Islanders are taking risks. Then, if you outman them, obviously make a play.”

  The Islanders were a really businesslike team. They had every element—skill, smarts, and some really tough guys. But they weren’t bullies. The Flyers were bullies, and the Bruins were bullies, or tried to be. The Islanders were like Wall Street. They were like a corporatio
n: everything was in place, everyone had their job. We knew that passing was a huge part of their game, but the video helped us with their patterns. Roger’s videos were like that.

  The thing about going up against championship teams like the Islanders is that they’ve got great forwards you have to defend against, tough defensemen you’ve got to get through, and then a top goalie you have to outmaneuver. They could beat you offensively and defensively and they could beat you up. They had it all. We did too, but they were a dynasty team, and once you win, you know what it takes to win.

  • • •

  People always say to me, “Who was the hardest player to play against? Who was the best defenseman?” There were a lot of good defensemen I played against—among them Larry Robinson, Ray Bourque, and Brian Leetch. And the Islanders had a Kim Clackson–type player named Gordie Lane who was flat-out dirty, so I didn’t like being out there with him. You never knew what he was going to do.

  But I have to say that Denis Potvin was the hardest. I played every shift against him, Butch Goring, and Bob Bourne. Matchups were a big part of the NHL, and still are. I was always conscious of where he was on the ice because he’d be looking to run the crap out of you. I even knew when he was drinking Gatorade on the bench—that’s how closely I watched him. He wasn’t dirty, but he was mean, very mean. I say that in a hockey way, not in a bad way. He used to like to step up at the blue line and he’d either stick his big hip out or lay his shoulder into you. He didn’t want to let you get any momentum. It was like running into a parked car.

  • • •

  They really outplayed us in Game One, but we won it 1–0 because goaltender Grant Fuhr stood on his head and they couldn’t score. As well, the video had shown us where to be when the Islanders moved the puck, so we were able to constantly intercept their passes. For instance, Brent Sutter and Kevin McClelland took a faceoff to the right of Billy Smith. Sutter won the draw for the Islanders, but our left-winger Dave Hunter followed him into the corner. Pat Hughes picked up the loose puck and passed it over to McClelland. Glen always preached, “Hit the net with a quick release,” and sure enough, it worked in that situation.