"Wayne Gretzky gave me direction to become a champion," Pittsburgh's Mario Lemieux told me. "At the 1986 Canada Cup he showed me that you don't take a night off, a shift off, if you want to hoist that Stanley Cup."

Canada won that Canada Cup, with Gretzky setting up Lemieux for the winning goal.

"I'll never forget going into the locker room in Quebec City for Rendezvous '87 and seeing all of the Oilers' players talking it up," former Philadelphia Flyers captain Dave Poulin once told me. "You could feel the magic. You could feel the determination, the will to win from Gretzky, Messier, Lowe ... all of them. That showed me that just playing wasn't enough to win a Stanley Cup, that there was an ultimate desire, a character that you have to master before you could call yourself champion."

And that's still true today.

Dynasty? You bet ya.

But then came the shocker or all shockers.

On August 9, 1988, Wayne Gretzky was traded, along with Mike Krushelnyski and Marty McSorley to the Los Angeles Kings for Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas and first-round draft choices in 1989, 1991 and 1993.

In pop culture today, it might have been considered the day the hockey world stood still. In today's business world, we see that day as the bottom line of this bottom line world. Owner Peter Pocklington, who previously let Coffey and Moog and a few others go because of big-money contracts, saw his financial empire crumbling around him. But on that August day, he sold his soul to the devil and traded a Canadian treasure, in the process, for $15 million.

The days of great players spending their entire career with the same team had just ended. If Wayne Gretzky could be traded, anyone could, right?

"I take a lot of pride in going to Los Angeles and helping the Kings make it to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1993 and kind of doing my part to prove that hockey can be successful in warm-weather cities." -- Wayne Gretzky

To put this happening in proper perspective, this wasn't just any trade, it was the trade to end all trades. Eight times in the 1980s, Gretzky was the NHL's scoring champion. Nine times, including eight straight to start the '80s, he was the League's Most Valuable Player. A record 92 goals in 1981-82, four times 200 points or more, including a record 215 points in 1985-86. Heck, there was more than a wing of the Hockey Hall of Fame recognizing the 40-some league records No. 99 had achieved in the 1980s.

The sun did come up the next morning, even if Edmontonians will never forgive Pocklington for trading Gretzky. Even today, Gretzky says he has flashbacks of his days in Edmonton and ...

"I don't think there's an August 9 that's gone by when I haven't thought about the trade," Gretzky says. "At the time, we were the cream of the crop. We had just won our fourth Stanley Cup in five years -- and I remember playing as well as I ever played in the finals (12 goals and 31 assists for an NHL record 43 points in the playoffs). Then, all of a sudden, it was all over.

"It's the hardest thing I've ever been through."

The move to Los Angeles and then St. Louis and New York City show the biggest changes in the game today. No one is untradeable.

"I take a lot of pride in going to Los Angeles and helping the Kings make it to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1993 and kind of doing my part to prove that hockey can be successful in warm-weather cities that maybe helped the NHL expand to areas of North America that otherwise might not have been considered," Gretzky remembers.

But, the 1980s were changed forever on that August day in 1988, when "The Great One" was basically sold by Pocklington -- reminding older writers of the day in 1920 when a financially-strapped Boston Red Sox Owner Harry Frazee, a backer of plays like No No Nanette in those days, sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees and forever changed the course of history in the process.

"I'll tell you one thing I'll go to my grave believing that there may have been better teams that have won the Stanley Cup, but those Edmonton teams were the most exciting teams ever to win it," Gretzky says with conviction. "That team had so much emotion and energy -- and if we had been able to somehow, some way been able to keep that team together we would have won seven or eight championships."

To this day, New York Rangers GM Glen Sather, then the man in charge in Edmonton, insists that the deal didn't have to happen if the Oilers were a separate entity apart from Pocklington's crumbling business deals. And Sather also insists that the runaway salaries in the NHL began when Gretzky went to Los Angeles and owner Bruce McNall tore up No. 99's $800,000 a year contract and gave him $2 million. Just because he could.

Eight times in the 1980s, Gretzky was the NHL's scoring champion. Nine times, including eight straight to start the '80s, he was the League's Most Valuable Player.

"McNall was giving away money as if it didn't mean anything ... because it didn't mean anything to him, then," Sather told me a while back.

Now, sports are filled with business decisions that cloud our outlook of building a championship team -- too many big contracts, too many deferred payments, not a good job of looking for the right chemistry within your budget, plus free agency.

Back to the future? Let's all take a trip back to the 1980s and maybe you'll see why I love that era so much, when hockey was fun first and business second -- that is, until August 9, 1988.