DORIAN GEIGER
Sports Editor

Though the past decade of Wayne Gretzky’s post-hockey career might be best remembered by stints on Canadian Tire ads and his coaching duties for the financially ailing Coyotes, Hollywoood director Peter Berg brought the mystique of the Great One back to life.

Responsible for other films like Friday Night Lights and Hancock, Berg tackled an aspect of professional sports so often left out of the spotlight in the film industry and sports journalism too — the dynamics of high status player trades and their impact on the world of sports and the cities involved.

King’s Ransom, which first aired on TSN on Nov. 18, is a documentary that sheds light on the infamous NHL trade that sent Canadian icon Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988. Taking a fresh approach to a pivotal moment in Canadian hockey culture, King’s Ransom is a tale of devastation felt by a close-knit community of 1988 Edmonton, as well as Canada as a whole, all because of a single business transaction.

In an interview for King’s Ransom, Berg sums up the forces that drove the plot of his documentary in a simple sentence: “Money and love of the game and national honour all kind of collided at this one moment in time.”

Fans typically only hear the aftermath of the trade of their favourite players in tidbits in newspapers, on sports broadcasts or Internet blogs and are usually never presented with the real picture of the forces and elements within such transactions. Mainstream sports media are also guilty for generalizing trades, downplaying their complexity and conveying the message that these million dollar athletes are traded around the NHL like Upper Decks between some card collecting youngsters.

No trade in NHL history has — or likely ever will — approach the soap opera status the swapping of Gretzky had, and Berg really did capture a variety of emotions in this stirring cinematic collage of sports history.

Inspecting a profession fuelled by the fire of childhood dreams, King’s Ransom insightfully depicts how one man forever changed the landscape of professional hockey in North America by shattering the dreams of one city and giving another the ability to recognize their own.

In a city known for trendy celebrities and acclaimed blockbusters, where the local NHL team, the Kings, sat in a lowly 20th place when Gretzky arrived, Berg presents L.A. as the last place on Earth that Canadians wanted their national symbol competing. As far as hockey players go, the degree of betrayal Canadians felt at that moment in time was unprecedented. To give up Gretzky — who honed his skills on a backyard pond in the harsh northern climate of Ontario — to the sunny City of Angels was utter blasphemy to many Canadians.

King’s Ransom has a very nostalgic, archaic, projector-footage feel to it and emerges not only as a journalistic endeavour into sports history but an artistic ahcievement as well.

Geography plays a key role in the cinematography of Berg’s documentary and the geographical divide is ever-present to amplify the lingering betrayal in Edmonton. The wintery streets of Edmonton ceaselessly transition back and forth between palm trees, celebrities and beachside vistas of California’s west coast as Berg uses geography to visually contrast the two cities’ greatly differing hockey cultures.

Berg’s presentation of the Canadian government’s near intervention in the matter is humorous and pointedly illustrates how dear many Canucks held Gretzky to their hearts. Framing that moment in time, Berg even gives the audience a glimpse of a younger Lloyd Robertson delivering the breaking news from his CTV post.

Prior to King’s Ransom’s release, it was announced that Gretzky himself will be in Saskatoon on Feb. 5 to speak at the 50th Annual Kinsmen Sports Celebrity Dinner. Catching a glimpse of the Great One won’t be cheap for Saskatonians though — tickets are $299 each, $1,199 for a table of two and $2,399 for four people.

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photo: Three Slow