Memo to: Wayne Gretzky, fallen idol

Getting chummy with Donald Trump was never going to end well

Wayne Gretzky, Trump’s choice for Canadian “governor” (Wikipedia photo)

Hey Gretz,

How’s it going? Apart from the public relations, I mean. I’m afraid that situation is about to get worse, now that you’ve deputized Janet as your public defender while enlisting Bobby Orr to stand up for you. I know, I know: you had to respond somehow after the Four Nations final fiasco, for which your reputation has taken a Marty McSorley-like beating. But expressing dismay that “haters” have questioned your loyalty to Canada is tone-deaf and misses the point. And I’m sorry, but bringing in another Trump-supporting Hall of Fame superstar as an ally does you no favours, either. On the contrary: your and Bobby’s being arguably two of the best five players in NHL history only magnifies the problem.

Let’s recap.

Weeks before the Canada-U.S. final, you and Janet attended Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony. Apart from the usual dignitaries, this event was reserved for only the best of the president’s friends and allies, more of whom expected to be included but were sidelined. Since you were not there as a former president or someone else invited for diplomatic reasons, could your attendance be seen as anything but a ringing endorsement of Trump’s vision for America and the rest of the world, which now happens to include designs on Canada as the 51st state, tariffs, and other punitive measures aimed at insulting our sovereignty and weakening us?

Canadians might have been willing to forgive all the chummy visits to Mar-a-Lago if you had bowed out of the inauguration. But clearly that was impossible. Perhaps you were too flattered by Trump’s musing that you’d make a fine “governor” of his 51st state. Flattered or not, you failed to take the obvious next step in damage control: a brief statement such as, “Gee, thanks, Donald, but my country’s fine the way it is, and I’ve never been much for politics.” That would have spoken volumes about your loyalty. But no, you zipped your lip as usual. Wayne the inscrutable: as elusive as when avoiding a Bob Probert body slam in the corners.

Which brings us to the Canada-U.S. final, where your behaviour was rather curious. Chosen as Canada’s ambassador for the game, you must have done a fine job—at the invitation of Jon Cooper—reading the opening line-up in the Team Canada dressing room. (You’re the Great One. Of course you did.) But what all the fans in Boston witnessed, along with millions of television viewers, was something else altogether. To anyone familiar with the power of symbolic gesture, it was a cause for concern.

First, you showed up at the pre-game ceremony in a business suit rather than a Team Canada jersey. Next, that suit bore no Canadian insignia such as the Order of Canada pin which you apparently were in no hurry to pick up after being awarded that honour in 2009). Then you walked past the U.S. team bench and gave a thumbs-up to several of the American players. After that, you stood at centre ice with former U.S. Olympian Mike Eruzione, who was not only wearing a Team USA jersey but one bearing the late Johnny Gaudreau’s name and Number 13.

The diminutive Eruzione may not have achieved greatness in the NHL, but he will forever be loved as the leader of Team USA’s 1980 “Miracle on Ice” Olympic gold medal victory. In Boston, he outclassed you in the pre-game ceremony, and the optics were brutal. As Cathal Kelly put it in the Globe and Mail, this was the moment that marked the end of a fifty-year romance with you as an all-time Canadian icon.

“Canada got to see Wayne Gretzky, part-time Canadian, stood up beside Mike Eruzione, fully committed American, and something in them snapped,” wrote Kelly. “For the first time, they saw Mr. Gretzky as he is rather than as he was. He’s no longer that skinny kid who seems amazed things are turning out so well. He’s a 64-year-old man of the world of now, creased by experience and not much the better for it. He’s an other-direction carpet bagger, a golf world hanger-on and a Mar-a-Lago regular. When you see Mr. Gretzky up close now, the first word that leaps to mind is ‘louche.’”

Ouch. What Kelly was alluding to was how a man can be changed by life, and not always in a good way. The same is true of your friend Bobby, who badly tarnished his legacy five years ago by taking out a full-page newspaper ad endorsing Donald Trump in that year’s election, emerging from his own closet of political inscrutability to declare himself a MAGA supporter. This was more than a lot of Canadians wanted to know about Bobby, instantly ruining fond childhood memories of Number Four.

Like you, Bobby was born and raised in small-town Ontario. Like you, he had all kinds of doors open up for him while growing up, his brilliant hockey talent taking him farther than most ever go in the game. And like you, he was a great teammate admired for his commitment to fairness. But somewhere along the way, that Bobby died. I don’t know him personally, of course, and obviously can’t read his mind. But by all accounts—and this chapter of his life has been well documented—he was devastated, in a life-changing way, by a big betrayal.

Bobby was said to be a trusting sort who always assumed the best in everyone and did not realize how bad people can be until he was victimized by the treachery of a man he had trusted more than anyone to look after his interests. Profane and vulgar off camera, Alan Eagleson lived the NHL high life for several years as a player agent and founding executive director of the NHL Players Association. For a time he was well regarded around the league, especially for his pivotal role in organizing the 1972 Summit Series. But Eagleson was a crook who kept filling his pockets with other people’s money until he got caught.

Bobby was one of the players he’d been ripping off for years. In his final betrayal, when Bobby had become a free agent at the end of his contract with the Boston Bruins, Eagleson used his own relationship with the Black Hawks owner to convince Bobby to sign with Chicago—failing to inform his star client that Boston had made a better offer to keep him so that he could finish his career as a Bruin. This betrayal deeply depressed and disillusioned Bobby. He wasn’t so quick to trust people after that, and he might have been forgiven a bit of cynicism about grifters. Perhaps in Trump he saw a con man who at least never pretended to be anything else.

That hardly explains why Bobby would endorse Trump’s politics (in 2020 he called him “the kind of teammate I want,” someone who had come through for Americans “regardless of race, gender, or station in life.”). But there’s one thing you two have in common that could probably explain it: from the time you were barely pubescent you have both been feted, flattered, and showered with money and favour by powerful men whose politics have never been progressive.

Having your ass kissed every day by fans, team staff and other players is one thing. But when it comes from the team owner, the man with the money, it must be intoxicating and, over time, corrupting. Those of us from your generation, who have followed your career from the beginning when you joined the soon-to-be-defunct World Hockey Association as a 17-year-old, have witnessed this transformation in you. The first telling moment might have been in 1983, when you were squired around the Progressive Conservative leadership convention by Peter Pocklington.

The then-Edmonton Oilers owner had bought you from another rich man, Nelson Skalbania, on your eighteenth birthday. Four years later, Pocklington’s bid for the PC leadership was arguably to the right of that pitched by the eventual winner, Brian Mulroney. But the optics of being seen by his side in this context did not bother you in the least. You were all puppy dog shy, careful not to share any opinions that might embarrass your benefactor. (Although, to be fair, it was quite apparent to the Canadian public that you didn’t have any opinions to share even if you’d been asked.)

What struck me at the time was how utterly at ease you seemed with the idea of being shamelessly exploited by Pocklington—used to reinforce the power while enhancing the brand of the man who had signed you until the year of your jersey number, ‘99. If you had simply shrugged with a smile and said something like “You dance with the ones that brung ya’,” that would have been witty. But it was also clear that you were far too earnest and cautious for something like that to have even occurred to you.

Of course, Peter Puck didn’t stick with you until 1999. No, before the first decade of your deal was over in 1988, Pocklington took one look at his thoroughbred and decided to sell before his performance level peaked. And so off to Los Angeles you went in that massive trade, now the chattel of one Bruce McNall, another rich man and literally a thoroughbred racehorse owner. McNall was good to you—so good that you refused to allow the Kings to retire your 99 jersey until he could attend the ceremony (this after the free-spending Kings owner’s fall from grace as a convicted felon, having spent 70 months in prison for conspiracy and fraud.)

While some Canadians lamented your move to the U.S., few held it against you at the time. Even the league’s boast that you were helping to “grow the game” south of the border was seen as a worthwhile mission. (Of course, that was five years before the debut of Gary Bettman as league godfather. Who knew then that “growing the game” in the U.S. would ultimately mean preventing Canadian teams from ever again winning the Stanley Cup?) As the years passed and you inevitably spent less time in Canada, more of the people you called friends just happened to be very rich Americans. The longer you lived in the U.S., the harder it was to maintain that regular guy façade—the “aw, shucks” persona, the Princess Diana false modesty—that had endeared you to so many Canadians. That Wayne had long since died.

Given all of the above, perhaps it should be no surprise that you and Bobby would end up getting charmed by the ultimate crook. Like the two of you, Trump is not an intellectual. Like the two of you, he has no true understanding of politics and finds the whole business of government tiresome and beneath him. Perhaps most importantly, he knows how to flatter those whose support he needs and seeks. In the two of you, he sees men who have been told every day of their lives just how great they are. This makes you perfect marks for his seduction: the ultimate useful idiots.

Sadly, your and Bobby’s on-ice intelligence—which was off the charts—has never been matched by socio-political awareness or intellectual depth off the ice. Like the millions of other Americans who stupidly voted for Trump, you have cast your lot with a malignant narcissist whose motives for entering the political arena were entirely selfish and whose destructive impacts are global in their reach. (Speaking of which: I guess you’re okay with your friend’s selling out Ukraine to Putin? And you approve of his and JD Vance’s disgraceful and despicable ambush of Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House?)

In perhaps the ultimate irony, Gretz, your own political pratfall has managed to cheapen one of your greatest accomplishments while creating a new public relations dilemma for the NHL. Until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago, the record for top goal scorer in NHL history was untainted by politics. Until Trump’s inauguration, it was tainted only by the fact that the man poised to break your record, Alexander Ovechkin, is a declared supporter of Vladimir Putin. Now, with Ovie just a dozen goals away from the record as I write, a lot of Canadians are wincing at the shit sandwich you’ve just served up. Once the record falls, likely this month, some might even cheer Ovie’s feat out of spite. Others envision a group photo of the two of you, with Trump and Putin beaming at your sides. (Sorry, I just had to stifle a gag reflex.)

Instead of whining about being “heartbroken” by what some Canadians are saying about you, you might want to ask yourself this question, which must have occurred to you already: what would Walter think? What would your dearly departed dad, as quintessentially Canadian as any small town hockey parent in this country, make of your dalliance with Donald Trump? What would he say about your responsibility as a Canadian celebrity, given your influence? How do you imagine he would suggest you prove your loyalty as a Canadian?

If you have no doubt that Walter would have taken your side unequivocally, just as Janet and Bobby have done, well, more power to you, I guess. But for many Canadians, the best proof of your loyalty would be to end your relationship with Donald Trump immediately. Right now, this minute. Take to Twitter/’X’, or Truth Social, and tell Donald it’s all been a big mistake, thanks for the memories, etc., but you no longer wish to be used by him. And then apologize to Canada for having been such an asshole.

Like you used to say: you miss a hundred per cent of the shots you don’t take. The same principle applies to actions that require courage.

Yours,

DG