gretzky

Gretzky’s Backing of Harper Leads Conservatives to 99 Seats!

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How influential was Wayne Gretzky’s endorsement for Stephen Harper in Canada’s recent federal elections?

It was so influential that Harper’s Progressive Conservatives won 99 seats… Wayne Gretzky’s number uniformly retired by every team in the NHL!

Do you believe in omens?

The Conservatives strategists must have seen this coming, though. They knew they were going to get a butt kicking after all the shenanigans they had pulled in their decade of power. It was just a matter of where the votes were going to go elsewhere. So to help their case, they recruited the athlete who wore the highest number possible. I mean, it could have been worse. They could have gotten Sidney Crosby (87), Mario Lemieux (66) or a goalie wearing number 1 (like the Green Party might have done), to endorse them.

Whether true or not, though, it’s nice to see Stephen Harper rewards his backers well. Wayne doesn’t need any more money. A symbolic statement like winning his number of seats to affirm how much of an influence he had on the campaign, though, that’s priceless!

Watch Kings Ransom on the Gretzky Trade to LA (entire documentary)

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If you were Canadian and alive on August 9, 1988, your life stopped at least for a little while, if not got changed entirely. I know my life got changed entirely. That was the day the Edmonton Oilers traded the greatest NHL player ever, to an American team, in the same division. It was the trade of the century, without a doubt.

Over 20 years later, ESPN produced a phenomenal documentary on that trade called Kings Ransom, as part of their fabulous 30 for 30 series of documentaries. It puts a lot of new perspective and filled in a lot of gaps to the story. Also, with time, we could follow all the story lines to their conclusions, some of which were quite surprising, from the destinies of Peter Pocklington and Bruce McNall, to Wayne himself, his marriage, and what he has done for hockey in the US, especially California area, as well as hockey in Canada and hockey as a business.

It was too bad this documentary hasn’t gotten more buzz in Canada.

Below is the documentary in 4 video clips posted by a YouTube user called HockeyWebCaster. Thanks for posting.

I hope you enjoy and recommend to others who may be interested.

I cried a lot that day when Wayne was traded. Watching this documentary, I did it again. I wonder what the guy next to me on the Air Canada flight to San Francisco thought. 🙂