Friedman: Canucks blew their chance to sign Gretzky

Elliotte Friedman was on Toronto’s Sportsnet 590 on Friday morning.

On the stories of how Wayne Gretzky could have been a member of the Leafs at one point:

“Gretzky had an interesting one with the Canucks too. He’s talked about that before and Pat Quinn talked about that years and years ago, about how the Canucks thought they were going to get him around the same time... they thought they were going to sign him as a free agent, years later.

“And what happened was the owner at the time was John McCaw. The story that Quinn told, and Gretzky did say it was true, was that the Canucks had him signed at night verbally.

“He said, ‘Look, I’ll sign the papers formally in the morning.’

“McCaw got on the phone to Quinn and said, ‘We want this done tonight.’

“Quinn said, ‘Well, he said he’ll sign it in the morning. He’s committed.’

“The owner said, ‘No, no, no. We’re doing this tonight. I want it formalized. No questions.’

“So Quinn had to call Gretzky back and say, ‘Okay, can you sign?’

“And Gretzky was like, ‘What? I told you I would sign in the morning.’

“He says, ‘No, I’ve got to have it tonight.’

“And the whole deal blew up over that.

“So Quinn talked about that once and Gretzky said it was true. So around the same time he was thinking about Toronto, he was also thinking about Vancouver. So there were two Canadian teams there that kind of blew their chances at getting him.”

Source: Sportsnet 590/ Transcript: Nichols on Hockey