It was September of 1980. Almost your typical day at training camp for a NHL team. Starts and stops. Coaches barking out instructions. Scouts scribbling in their notebooks.

Almost typical.

There were changes happening to the fastest team sport going. Six months earlier, a group of young Americans shocked the hockey world by beating the Russians and then going on to win the gold medal at the Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.

The New York Islanders had the look of a juggernaut, acquiring heart-and-soul center Butch Goring just before the trading deadline and going on to win the first of four consecutive Stanley Cups.

The most highly anticipated arrival in the NHL proved to be as good as advertised, when Wayne Gretzky scored 51 goals, led the league with 86 assists and tied Marcel Dionne for the most points with 137.

And now, here we were with the Oilers in training camp to see if the wunderkind was just a flash in the pan.

This is why I love the 1980s so much. Story lines galore. Burning questions. My gut feeling during those few days in Edmonton that September was that this game that I loved so much as a kid could only get better and better.

The Montreal Canadiens has just finished winning six championships in the 1970s, including four straight from 1976 through 1979 with the stingy goaltending of Ken Dryden, steady and sometimes prolific offense of Jacques Lemaire, Guy Lafleur, Steve Shutt and Yvon Cournoyer that was triggered by the dominant transitional defense led by Serge Savard, Larry Robinson and Guy Lapointe – "The Big 3" as they were known.

Now, the Islanders were threatening a more up-and-down dominance -- with Mike Bossy, Bryan Trottier, Clark Gillies, Bob Nystrom, Goring and the rest.

But that day in Edmonton told me I was seeing the start of something even more special.

In 1984, the Oilers turned the tables and ran the table against the Islanders -- winning their first Cup title in five games. The Oilers won again in 1985, '87 and '88.

We knew about "The Great Gretzky," still just 19, but already a legend long before he came into the NHL in 1979. We also saw a team that proved magic at the draft table -- just like the Islanders, getting Kevin Lowe, Mark Messier and Glenn Anderson with their first three picks in the 1979 Draft and coming right back in 1980 with the selection of Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri and Andy Moog, along with Grant Fuhr in 1981.

On the ice at practice that day, I remember seeing a young Finnish winger cutting across the ice from right wing to left wing, looking for a quick one-time shot on his off wing. The whistle blew.

A coach pointed to where he wanted this winger. But there was another whistle. And another.

"When I came to Edmonton, I didn't know if it was going to be for one day, one week or one year," remembers Kurri, who went on to become one of only 14 players to score 600 NHL goals. "I'll never forget that first week with the Oilers -- I never heard so many whistles and was yelled at so much. Every time I went off of my wing, the coach would stop play and yell at me, tell me how we don't do that here."

It was peculiar to me because I liked the flow, the fact that Kurri was looking for an opening in the defense and being creative. I became even more intrigued when I saw Kurri working with Gretzky after practice like Joe Montana must have done with Jerry Rice.

"After practices, Wayne and I began to work on a few plays, where he and I circled, turned and did a lot of creative things to try to find an open shot," Kurri told me. "Then we decided to try a couple of those plays in practice. The first time I came off my wing, I expected to hear the coach blow his whistle again. Instead, he let play continue and Wayne set me up for a quick shot and a goal. I looked at that as a defining break in traditional Canadian hockey. And that kind of improvisational play was an important part of the success Wayne and I had together.

"Did Wayne North Americanize me or did I Europeanize him? I think I Europeanized him."

Even today Gretzky laughs when asked about those Oilers, who set standards in scoring no other NHL team will match. In the '80s the Oilers scored 400 or more goals in a season five times, a level no other team before or since has reached.

And, just think, it all started without the blessing of the coaching staff.

A couple years later, Gretzky told me, "Paul Coffey and I used to sneak out and watch the kids' games they would have before we played. The difference in the way we played and the way kids were taught was totally different. We used to remark that the way they played was like tabletop hockey -- up and down the wing, almost like the kids had levers attached and there were grooves on the ice to keep them on the wing. But that was the Canadian way. It's still the way they teach kids -- and that's unfortunate."

Hockey's fascination to me is that the game is fun first, with the creativity on ice combined with the speed that can take your breath away. And let's not forget the hitting and shooting and passing, the skills that should determine a champion from the rest of the contenders but has been replaced a game in which a $500,000 a year checker can hook and hold and neutralize a $10 million player into submission in the playoffs.

Wayne Gretzky was a fixture at NHL All-Star games throughout the 1980s.

Oh the 1980s!

The development of players around Gretzky and Kurri and Lowe and Coffey and Fuhr, plus the move of the physically intimidating Messier from left wing to center to counteract the Islanders' Trottier after the Oilers lost four straight to the Isles in the 1983 Stanley Cup Finals again proved to be a defining moment in the nurturing of Edmonton's championship aspirations.

Run and gun hockey was taking over -- and it was perhaps the most exciting time in hockey in quite a while. In 1984, the Oilers turned the tables and ran the table against the Islanders -- winning their first Cup title in five games. Followed by another. And after a fatal Steve Smith pass cost Edmonton against Calgary in 1986, the Oilers won again in 1987 and '88.