As it turned out, Buss' foresight of what Gretzky could mean to the Southern California marketplace was accurate. But the timing simply wasn't right.
Even the innovative Buss, who died in 2013, probably couldn't have envisioned how Gretzky's presence would provide the impetus for popularizing hockey at the grassroots level in nontraditional markets.
Despite Buss' well-known powers of persuasion, Pocklington wasn't willing to entertain his proposal quite yet.
"What he saw was a team that had an asset. Would he be able to keep that team together, or would the owner eventually want to rebuild?" said Jeanie Buss, Jerry's daughter and the Lakers owner and president, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2013. "He just kind of planted the seed, I believe, and a guy like Bruce would be the one to stay on it and deliver."
Three years later, McNall, who was Kings majority owner, made his move.
The impact was felt immediately. In Gretzky's first season with the Kings, they had 91 points and rallied from down 3-1 to upset the Oilers in the first round of the playoffs. Soon, the Kings were one of the toughest tickets in town. By 1991-92, they sold out every game at the Great Western Forum.
One of the many fans who watched the Kings play at the Forum, located in Inglewood, California, eventually helped trigger a fundamental shift in the League's footprint. He happened to be a powerful movie studio chief at Disney and an acquaintance of McNall's.
"Michael Eisner used to come to the games because his son loved to play hockey and he loved hockey and created a movie ("The Mighty Ducks"), and next thing you know he owned an NHL franchise," Gretzky said of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now the Anaheim Ducks). "Once Michael Eisner got on board, he helped really take hockey to another level, not only in California but throughout North America."
It's safe to say hockey's growth in nontraditional U.S. markets received a major boost from the epic trade between the Kings and Oilers 29 years ago.
"It was a perfect storm, but quite honestly, I didn't come here thinking, 'Oh my gosh, we were going to make hockey big,'" Gretzky said. "I never ever even thought that. There was more of, 'I want to get there and I'd really like to help this franchise become a winning franchise.' That was the mindset."