With the gift of genius, there is still the burden of frustration.
Wayne Gretzky wore it like his black suit Wednesday night at the United Center, where the Los Angeles Kings were eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs by the suddenly enlivened Blackhawks.
“It’s horrible, embarrassing,” whispered hockey’s finest player, who began his NHL career across the street, in a Stadium that is now a shell waiting to crumble, on an October evening in 1979.
Gretzky was a child prodigy then with the Edmonton Oilers. That was 61 league records and 2,506 points ago, numbers unlikely ever to be equalled by the next class of superstars, or any generation thereafter.
Yet, here stood the Great One, all but apologizing for a semi-season worth of pratfalls by the highly paid Kings. On another night in another year, Gretzky wouldn’t have let them lose a game so crucial as Wednesday’s.
But that was then and this is now and at least Gretzky mustered some positive words for the purists after a sound 5-1 defeat. At age 34, with nothing to prove, he would not leave in this frame of mind.
“I’m not going to retire,” said Gretzky, who collected just 11 goals in 48 games. “I still love to play too much. I also love to win, though, and it’s frustrating.”
Just then, speaking of frustration, another luminary appeared in the hall. Jeremy Roenick, the Hawks’ ailing center who wasn’t even a teenager when Gretzky began redefining this sport. There will be a day when the Great One passes the baton, and Roenick surely is among the candidates to help carry a league that Gretzky strapped on his back.
But Roenick, a genius in his own right, also churns. Once upon a time, Hawks owner Bill Wirtz spoke of a “lifetime” contract. Roenick’s fear now is that it might take him a lifetime to get it.
“Frustrating,” said Roenick, echoing that refrain again. The Hawks finished their regular schedule by winning five in a row and they will open the Stanley Cup tournament on home ice against Toronto, but Roenick is on the outside looking in.
He skated Wednesday morning on his wounded knee, as he did Monday, and management might take this to mean Roenick is about ready. But Roenick’s Boston-based agent, Neil Abbott, says not so fast. Better his client err on the side of caution.
There’s big money at stake here. Roenick’s injury, once thought to be career-threatening, isn’t that at all. But it complicates negotiations if the Hawk brass suspect that Roenick’s availability relates in any way to contract talks.
“We’d sign Jeremy tomorrow, if the numbers were right,” said General Manager Bob Pulford. But the differences are considerable–about $4 million over four years–and Roenick weighs the risks against the rewards.
“I’m not playing now because I’m not ready,” he said. “I should be ready in about 2 1/2 to three weeks. It has nothing to do with my contract. But we’ve been going back and forth for a year. If I don’t have a deal this summer, it’s possible that I won’t show up for training camp.”
This could get slippery, and stranger things have happened. Why, even Wayne Gretzky was traded. Believe all the rumors, and he could be traded again, to a contender where he could win one more Stanley Cup.
“I want to come back to the Kings. . . . Maybe, they don’t want me back,” he said. “Our fans have supported us through thick and thin. If I’m fortunate enough to play on another Cup team, I’d like it to be there, in L.A. That’s where I’m going tomorrow and I’m not going to disappear.”
When the Great One decides he’s had enough, he’ll say so. No player in NHL history has been a better talent or goodwill ambassador, but there he was Wednesday night, an artist with no canvass.
“The Blackhawks will be dangerous in the playoffs,” Gretzky predicted. And he will be invisible. The genius in the black suit said good-bye until next time.
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