Now that Wayne Gretzky has led the Edmonton Oilers to their third Stanley Cup in four years, he`s going to vacation in the Bahamas and get as far away from sports as possible. Right?
Wrong.
”I`m going to head to L.A. and watch the basketball games this week,”
Gretzky said of the National Basketball Association championship series between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers. ”I`ll sit back and watch everyone else sweat it out.”
After 80 regular-season games, 21 playoff games and countless distractions, Gretzky and his teammates deserve to be spectators for a change. To the victors go the choice seats at the Forum.
Coincidentally, Los Angeles is where the playoffs started for Edmonton. The Oilers lost the first game to the Kings but then won four straight before sweeping Winnipeg in the Smythe Division final.
Edmonton handled Detroit in five games before Philadelphia gave the Oilers all they could handle in seven games in the Stanley Cup final. It was going to the brink, and winning, that makes this victory the most satisfying Cup for the Oilers.
”It`s the best thing that has ever happened for me,” said right wing Jari Kurri, who scored what proved to be the winning goal in the second period of Sunday`s 3-1 victory. ”I`m going to remember this for a long time. It was the toughest and the most enjoyable series. It was just great hockey.”
”A team needs something to unite them, to make them a team,” said Edmonton coach Glen Sather. ”Well, we had a tough series against Detroit and a tough series against Winnipeg. But I think coming against Philadelphia and playing them, and running into (Ron) Hextall and him playing as well as he`s playing, we`ve developed a hockey club to a team.”
Gretzky believes the acquisition of left wing Kent Nilsson from the Minnesota North Stars during the season was the missing link.
”I think the Kent Nilsson trade seemed to be the last piece of the puzzle and just made us a tremendous hockey club,” Gretzky said. ”He gave us more speed and depth. He gave us two offensive lines. And whoever thinks he`s a washed-up hockey player is wrong. I think I`m more happy for him than anyone else.”
”When they traded me to the best team in the league, I thought, `One day I`m going to win the Stanley Cup,` ” Nilsson said.
The Flyers were thinking the same thing, but they could have used a few more healthy players. Right wing Tim Kerr, the No. 2 goal-scorer in the league during the regular season, didn`t play at all against Edmonton because of a shoulder injury.
”If you have healthy bodies all over the place, then you can rest guys a little bit more,” said Flyers defenseman Mark Howe. ”You can`t go six or seven games every series and really have a great, great chance at the Cup.”
Edmonton has been expected to win the Cup every year lately.
”This one is the sweetest, because we had to be gutsy,” said defenseman Kevin Lowe, the first player ever drafted by the Oilers. ”We faced a fair amount of criticism. In our first two Cups, things pretty much went our way. But we faced some adversity this time, and we had to grind it out.”
Gretzky said Sunday`s game was the biggest he had ever played in.
”No question,” he said. ”Because there was no in between. It was either going to be the greatest summer of my life or the longest summer of my life. It`s going to be the greatest.”
— Paul Coffey, widely considered the best defenseman in the NHL, said he won`t play for the Oilers next year unless he can resolve some differences between him and Sather.
”It`s all been building since the Calgary thing (upset playoff loss)
last year,” Coffey said. ”I took a lot of (bleep) behind these doors I really didn`t think I deserved. A lot of that will have to be resolved if I`m going to play for this team again.
”I`m going to have to talk to Slats (Sather). We`re going to have to work it out. I played hurt a lot of years. This year, I played with a hurt back. I`ve done a lot for this hockey club. All I want is to be appreciated for the things I do. If I can`t play here, I`m sure I can play somewhere else.”
— Edmonton back-up goaltender Andy Moog has played out his option, and said he`s going to test the free-agent market.
The 27-year-old Moog would look good in a Black Hawks uniform. If he was a few years younger, the Hawks might be serious about going after him. They still might.
Moog and Grant Fuhr split the work during the season, but Moog started only twice in the playoffs. He played in 46 games during the regular season and was 28-11-3 with a 3.51 goals-against average. He was 2-0 in the playoffs, recording both victories in the first round against Los Angeles.
