Wayne Gretzky spent 18 regular-season games with the St. Louis Blues after arriving from Los Angeles in February 1996, then left for the New York Rangers that summer. Chris Pronger was there for all of it, and he believes he can point to the exact moment the Blues lost him.
Gretzky in St. Louis
Pronger was in his third NHL season and his first in St. Louis, having been traded there the previous summer. Speaking on The Rich Eisen Show, he explained that Gretzky’s arrival had been a relief for him personally, because it moved the spotlight somewhere else.
“He kind of took the focus off of me and the Blues, and everybody, as should be, all eyes on him,” Pronger said. “It kind of gave me that quiet time to get away to find my game and really find myself.”
He also said watching Gretzky handle the attention was an education in itself.
“Just to watch him, how he handled the media scrutiny and the fan attention, and how he practiced, how he came to play every night, just being able to watch somebody of that caliber every single day,” Pronger said. “If you’re a sponge, you can take a lot in.”
Asked for the best piece of advice Gretzky gave him, Pronger admitted there wasn’t one. What stuck instead was something he watched happen to him.
Why did Wayne Gretzky leave the St. Louis Blues?
The moment came in the second round of the playoffs against the Detroit Red Wings. Mike Keenan was both head coach and general manager in St. Louis at the time, and Game 2 was a Sunday afternoon broadcast on Fox, complete with the glowing puck.
It went badly. Detroit scored five times in the first period on the way to an 8-3 win, with Steve Yzerman recording five points and Nicklas Lidstrom scoring twice. Pronger recalled the final score as 8-1 and admitted his memory was foggy on the number, but not on what followed.
“Mike came in the locker room and berated every single person. And then he got to Gretz,” Pronger said. “I don’t know if he’d ever been talked to like that before. He absolutely laid into him. And to Wayne Gretzky.”
READ MORE: The hilarious reason Wayne Gretzky played defense as a kid
In Pronger’s telling, that was the end of it.
“I think that was about it. He had seen enough. He’s like, ‘I don’t think I’m going to be signing here,'” he said.
Pronger was careful to note that being on the receiving end of Keenan wasn’t unusual, least of all for a young defenseman.
“My third year pro, my first year there, I was kind of the whipping boy, so if he’s going to lay into me, I get it,” Pronger said. “But at that stage, to him, probably not the best idea.”
The Blues recovered to push Detroit to a Game 7, losing 1-0 in double overtime. Gretzky signed with the Rangers that July.
Read more:
