Stanley Cup FINALS : Unexpected Greatness : When Wayne Gretzky Suffered a Rare Back Injury, Many Thought His Career Was Over. But He’s Back in the Finals and Seemingly as Good as New

Oh, sure, everyone is smiling now. Visitors to the King locker room need a pair of sunglasses and a coat of industrial strength sun block to protect themselves from the glare of toothy grins. Of course, you’d smile, too, if you were in the Stanley Cup finals and Wayne Gretzky was skating as if he were having some sort of Edmonton Oiler-Hart Trophy flashback.

But six months ago, as Gretzky endured the longest scoring drought of his 14-season NHL career, the mood was markedly darker. Gretzky had just returned from a 39-game layoff, made necessary by a rare and potentially crippling herniated disk located between his shoulder blades.

The more he struggled, the more rumors were born. They began as discreet whispers, tinged with just enough truth that people actually began to believe them. Before long, they had taken on a life of their own.

“Gretzky is skating scared.”

“Gretzky has lost a step.”

“Gretzky is finished.”

To hear the talk was to hear Gretzky, 32, being downgraded from the Great One, to the Good One, to the Long Gone One.

Yes, well, so much for those theories. Gretzky’s back is back and so is his game. If you need proof, simply ask the Toronto columnist who recently wrote that Gretzky was playing like someone with a Steinway strapped to his shoulders.

Gretzky, piano and all, promptly scored three goals and added an assist in Game 7 as the Kings eliminated the Maple Leafs and advanced to the championship series against the Montreal Canadiens.

No surprise there--Gretzky usually does most of the Kings’ heavy lifting.

And once the Stanley Cup finals started, Gretzky was at it again, scoring a goal (two, if you count the one into his own net) and collecting three assists in a Game 1 victory.

“Since his back has healed and he’s in shape physically, he’s just so possessed right now,” King Coach Barry Melrose said. “He believes in what we’re doing. He believes in himself again. He’s the best player in the world again right now. He means so much to this team, so much more than he ever meant to Edmonton.”

More than Edmonton? The Oilers, ladies and gentlemen, won four Stanley Cups with Gretzky.

But the new and improved Gretzky (if that’s possible) said he has never felt better or lighter on the ice. Each shift, each assist, each goal, each victory is savored like few others.

“It’s different right now,” Gretzky said earlier in the playoffs, “because everybody thought I’d died. Nobody expected me to be playing. Nobody expected me to play this well.”

There were doubters. One of them might have been Gretzky himself, who saw his hockey life flash in front of his eyes last July, when doctors told him he might be a forecheck away from forced retirement.

Actually, Gretzky knew something was terribly wrong with his body as early as the previous season. The date to remember: April 28, 1992--the day Edmonton knocked the Kings out of the playoffs and sent Gretzky wincing in pain to the visitors’ locker room.

Mike Barnett, Gretzky’s longtime agent and friend, was there for the game, and afterward he was summoned to a private room near the team dressing area. It was there that he found Gretzky, who was in street clothes, but whose face was pale and bathed in a cold sweat. A King physician stood nearby.

“I tried to hide my shock,” Barnett said. “I mean, this wasn’t normal. It was clear by the strain on his face that he was in obvious pain.”

It was a rib injury, or so Gretzky kept telling himself.

A few days later, Barnett and Gretzky met for breakfast. Halfway through the meal, the pain returned, this time forcing Gretzky to stretch out in the restaurant booth in a desperate effort to ease the hurt.

Still thinking that the injury wasn’t serious, Gretzky traveled to Hawaii for a family vacation. The rest and relaxation would do him good and allow his rib cage to heal--at least, that was the plan.

Gretzky went to Hawaii, but he didn’t rest. Shortly after his arrival, the condition flared up, forcing him to spend time in a local clinic and later, in a hospital. When he returned home, the discomfort in his rib area slowly subsided. In fact, Gretzky later was able to begin a rigorous off-season conditioning program.

By the time training camp arrived, Gretzky was in the best shape of his career. “He went into camp feeling like lightning,” said his wife, Janet Jones. “He was feeling great. We’d just had the third child and then. . . .”

And then Gretzky woke up one day, only to discover that his rib cage hurt worse than ever. Experts were called in. Tests were conducted. A diagnosis was finally made: Gretzky had suffered a herniated thoracic disk, which had prompted the pain in his rib cage.

This was no ordinary injury. Most herniated disks occur in the lower back, where the spinal cord is wider and more agreeable to recovery. Pittsburgh Penguin star Mario Lemieux once had a lower back herniation and successfully returned to the ice.

Gretzky’s situation was different. His herniation, King physician Ron Kvitne said, took place at the exact point where the spine is narrowest in diameter.

“It is so rare,” Kvitne said. “Nobody has any experience with professional athletes dealing with this. So there’s no track record. We couldn’t say to Wayne: ‘Here’s these athletes who have had this, they all had surgery, they all recovered, there’s nothing to worry about.’ ”

Instead, Gretzky was presented with a collection of more sobering options:

--He could undergo surgery, where there existed, however slight, the chance of complications and thus, the chance of paralysis.

--He could rest and rehabilitate his back and hope for the best.

--He could retire.

“The worry is if you don’t operate and he twists his back, he can become paralyzed,” Kvitne said. “And if you do operate, and since it’s such a narrow area, there is a risk of damaging the nerves. You’re sort of in a tight spot as to what to recommend.”

The seriousness of the injury hit Gretzky and the Kings like a slap shot to the face. No one, including Gretzky, quite knew how to cope with the news.

“I saw him the day after he was diagnosed, and I saw the fear in his eyes and heard the concern in his voice,” left wing Tony Granato said. “He wasn’t all that sure that he was going to be able to do it. It scared him. It scared me. Just the thought of him not being out there, whether it be for the Kings or Edmonton or for the NHL, was a scary thought.

“A guy like that should be able to leave under his own terms and when he wants.”

King owner Bruce McNall had dined with Gretzky the night before the pain returned.

“There was no problem,” McNall said. “The next day I get a call telling me that (Gretzky was hurt). I didn’t know what it meant. It took a few days before I understood.

“At that point, the thought of (Gretzky) playing hockey, I thought was a joke. I didn’t think that was anything one would consider.”

Said Jones: “The pain that he thought was caused by maybe a broken rib or a torn cartilage . . . all of a sudden it’s become as critical as your career. The future of what you do is at stake. I know it’s not the same thing as cancer, but it’s the same kind of feeling where you’re caught off guard and something’s taken away.”

Gretzky, after meeting with back specialists, consulting with Barnett and discussing his options with Janet, decided against surgery. Instead, he began a treatment program that included physical therapy, rest and medication.

“I’m sure the first week he was scared to death that there was a chance (his career was finished), so we had a horrible feeling in our stomachs,” Jones said. “After that, though, we were optimistic. The whole family was. We never had a doubt in our minds that he would play again. Never.”

Slowly over the next several weeks and months, the size of the disk herniation decreased. So did the pain. Gretzky began to train again, a return target date beginning to form in his mind.

“I remember coming in here,” left wing Luc Robitaille said, glancing at the Kings’ locker room at the Forum, “and he was working two, three hours a day to come back. I think he realized when he was hurt how much he loved to play the game.”

Meanwhile, the Kings were handling Gretzky’s absence better than anyone expected. Without him, they went 20-14-5. All was surprisingly well.

Gretzky returned to the lineup Jan. 6 against the expansion Tampa Bay Lightning. If ever there was a perfect setting for a comeback, this was it. Home game. Home crowd. Easy opponent.

The Kings lost, 6-3. By the end of February, they had won only seven of 25 games, and there were rumblings that the team was better without Gretzky than with him. Imagine that.

According to Barnett, Gretzky now says he should have waited three or four more weeks before returning to the ice. Melrose insists that it was the coaching staff’s fault, that it should never have allowed Gretzky to come back so soon.

Whatever the circumstances, Gretzky appeared tentative, almost unsure of himself when he returned. He didn’t score a goal from Jan. 10 to Feb. 15. Gretzky, his own worst critic, began second-guessing himself.

Perfectly normal, Kvitne said.

“I think it took a while for him to push that fear (of reinjury) to the back of his mind so that he could perform and play like he’s capable of playing,” Kvitne said. “Right now, he’s out there playing every day as if nothing happened. I think a lot of the fans have forgotten that. If he has a bad game, they’re saying, ‘Oh, Wayne--something’s wrong.’ They think he’s too old. Or too this. Or too that. They forget that he had this unbelievably severe injury.

“And I’m sure from time to time it still creeps into his mind: that the next hit might do it.”

As Gretzky slowly returned to game shape, a transformation of sorts took place. His teammates always held his hockey skills in awe, but there existed a lingering feeling among some of the players and reporters that perhaps Gretzky was too close to management, specifically owner McNall. Gretzky’s fingerprints, it was said, were all over the Kings’ roster.

But in mid-March, as a massive storm swept across the East Coast and forced the cancellation and rescheduling of many sporting events, Gretzky did something that caught the attention of the Kings: He complained.

It hasn’t happened often, but Gretzky publicly criticized King management and the NHL for insisting that the team fly Sunday from Philadelphia, where its game had just been canceled, to Buffalo for a Monday game against the Sabres and then back to Los Angeles for a Tuesday game against Winnipeg.

The unexpected outburst produced a management memo that was reportedly crumpled and thrown away by Gretzky in full view of King teammates. “Mutiny on the Bounty” it wasn’t, but the gesture was a bonding moment.

“It was the thing to say,” Robitaille said. “He’s the leader of our team, and that was the thing to say. He knew how we felt, and he stuck up for the players. Sometimes you’ve got to take a stand, and it meant a lot to everybody.”

If McNall was upset, he didn’t show it.

“There’s always been a misperception in many ways that (Gretzky) had a lot more to do with the trades and running the franchise and so forth than he ever did,” McNall said. “On several occasions he’s been able to stand up and say what needs to be said. People didn’t necessarily believe that. He’s his own guy. He stands up for what he thinks is right, whether it be a travel schedule, or a trade, or anything else.”

As the months passed, Gretzky’s game began to show signs of life. He didn’t reach the 100-point mark (the first time that has happened), but he did give the Kings something more important, a leader who was reaching midseason form as the postseason arrived.

In return, Melrose did Gretzky a favor by becoming the Kings’ new all-purpose lightning rod. Gretzky skated, Melrose held court.

“I think Melrose has made it a lot easier on Wayne this year,” said defenseman Marty McSorley, Gretzky’s longtime friend. “Melrose is willing to take responsibility for anything and everything. Barry is willing to step up and say: ‘This is the way things are going to be done and the way we’re going to do it.’ In the past, a lot of people would look to Wayne from every standpoint.”

In fact, it was the lure of playing for Melrose and his up-tempo, positive-thought-a-minute system that helped motivate Gretzky during his rehabilitation. More important, Gretzky wasn’t ready to retire. Not yet. Not under those circumstances.

“I worked real hard to get to this point,” he said. “I could have walked away a very rich man. The doctors told me to quit. I think I have seven years (actually, five) left on my contract. It could have been a pretty nice getaway, but. . . .

“I love to play and I worked hard to get back and I spent a lot of hours in rehabilitation. I think that the reason I am back playing is that I worked hard and I wanted to come back. It’s as simple as that.”

There are no more whispers these days involving Gretzky, only cheers. There are those who say Gretzky’s injury taught him to appreciate the game more. Actually, it might be the other way around: The game, and the people who play, might better appreciate Gretzky.

“This,” his agent Barnett said, “is a case of the good guy prevailing.”