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.

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.

"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.