Wayne Gretzky was once Edmonton’s favourite adopted son. The greatest ice hockey player in the history of the game had made that town’s hockey team, the Oilers, the best in the game, winning four Stanley Cups in five years in the mid-1980s. He turned a quiet, provincial capital into the centre of the ice hockey world.
Today, outside the Oilers’ modern arena, Rogers Place, there is a statue of Gretzky holding the giant trophy aloft.
A week ago, someone smeared faeces on the sculpture and the reaction of many was “makes sense”.
For decades he sat near the top, often at the peak of, “favourite Canadian” lists. However, Gretzky, known as “The Great One”, is no longer cherished by many Canadians and it is all because of his friendship with Canadians’ public enemy No 1: Donald Trump.
When Gretzky was traded in 1988 from the Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, he wept.
That transfer ushered in the modern, big-money era of professional ice hockey in North America, sending a beloved Canadian superstar from a widely admired but small bastion of Canadian hockey power, to a big American city, one famed for bright lights but not hockey.
He wept because an era was closing: he had played in Edmonton since he was a teenager and had taken up the mantle as the game’s greatest player. But the team’s owner, Peter Pocklington, was running low on money in his other businesses and could no longer afford Gretzky. The Kings’ owner, Bruce McNall – who would later go to jail for fraud – could.
Pocklington’s sale of Canada’s biggest sporting name outraged many. He was burned in effigy. His other businesses were boycotted by pockets of fans.
Fourteen years later, Gretzky’s patriotic emotions were to the fore again. At the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Gretzky had been tasked with directing the men’s ice hockey squad, hoping to win the country’s first gold in the sport in 50 years. “Everybody loves to see us lose,” Gretzky crowed, in response to reports in the American press that the Canadian squad was not exactly united. He planted his flag for his country and they would go on to beat the United States in the final.
But two decades later, Canadians have turned on him.
Gretzky and his wife, Janet, were guests at a Mar-a-Lago party for Trump on election night last November. Gretzky was photographed wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. They were guests of Trump at his inauguration in January.
Wayne Gretzky in his MAGA hat 🏒🥰 pic.twitter.com/PBtYh2Rm9E
— HockeyHighness (@Hockeyhighness1) November 12, 2024
The connection is long-standing. Gretzky’s son-in-law is Dustin Johnson, the two-time major-winning golfer who has been friends with Trump for years.
Gretzky ...
