Canada's loss was hockey's gain The beauty of milestone anniversaries is they provide the opportunity for reflection. Viewed under the gentle glow of time rather than the glare of the moment it’s easier to see things as they really are, and find the best in things. When Wayne Gretzky was traded it seemed impossible that it could be the start of something good for Canadian hockey. Gretzky was Canadian hockey: a living, breathing parable. He wasn’t Bobby Orr, who honed his game on frozen rivers and lakes in the Ontario north or Gordie Howe who learned his on frozen farm ponds under the Western sky; but he was the small-town boy with the backyard rink, taught the game by a determined father. That his greatest professional moments — and some of the greatest moments in all of hockey — came in Edmonton, a northern, prairie city where the best arena ice on the planet made the tale all the more perfect. The Oilers were everything to Edmonton and Gretzky was everything to the Oilers. Gretzky sold to the Los Angeles Kings? What did hockey mean to Southern Californians? Hockey had sold its soul. That’s how it felt then. Here was hockey’s greatest resource, the greatest player on the sports’ greatest team, going to play for the Kings, a franchise that had rendered Marcel Dionne an afterthought during his brilliant prime, played in a half-empty building and had failed to make a Stanley Cup final appearance in the previous twenty years. But does it feel that way now? When you have something precious there’s an understandable instinct to keep it close lest it be scarred by a cruel world, or melt to a puddle in the Southern California sun. But if something is truly special the right thing to do is to share it with the world so everyone can see what you hold so dearly and why. And while the fact that Oilers owner Peter Pocklington was broke and desperately in need of Kings-owner Bruce McNall’s $15-million in cash is hardly the most elegant reason, those circumstance have been a gift to hockey and in turn a gift for Canadian hockey fans. Gretzky went forth and hockey players multiplied. The centre of popular culture was forced to pay attention to a game that was once the preserve of Northern Ontario mining towns and prairie farm fields and became the coolest game on earth. California got introduced to hockey and a significant slice of them discovered they really, really liked it. “It’s been fantastic for the growth of USA Hockey. We’ve been able to attract better and better athletes and part of that is because we’re able to draw players from places like California and Texas,” executive director of USA Hockey Jim Johannson said. “A lot of them come from inline hockey and then they move to the ice. They tend to be very good skaters with great hands and they’re multi-sport athletes because of the climate there; they’re immersed in other sports too. “Two years ago five of the final 28 players in consideration for the (gold medal-winning) world junior team were Californians,” Johannson added. “You figure that team was mostly 1992 and 1993 birth years and you do the math — they were getting introduced to the game during the peak of the Gretzky era in LA, so it’s been pretty remarkable.” The numbers are pretty staggering. In 1987-88 USA hockey had 186,511 registered players across the United States; that has more than doubled, to 510,279 in the 25 years since the trade, or an increase of 174 per cent. Statistics weren’t collected on a state-by-state basis until 2002-03 season at which point there were 18,660 registered players in California. A decade later there were 24,126 playing, a jump of 29 per cent. Most significantly the fastest growth has come at the U8 age group where participation is up almost 50 per cent over the past decade, suggesting that parents who grew up during the Gretzky era are doing the same for their children as Walter did for Wayne: get them on skates early. At the elite level, California-based teams sponsored by the Kings, the Anaheim Dunks and San Jose Sharks are fixtures among the top-10 teams at every age group in all of the United States, making room for teams of surfer kids among the best that traditional hotbeds such as Massachusetts and Minnesota produce. It’s a development that can be traced directly back to Gretzky arriving in Southern California. It has meant that hockey has been able to spread its wings, breaking out if its regional, climate-based strongholds. Gretzky leaving Canada was a loss, but it was hockey’s gain. And isn’t what is good for hockey good for Canada?