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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Knightfall" data-source="post: 2659101" data-attributes="member: 2012">Oilers retire Coffey's No. 7 on TuesdayCanadian Press10/16/2005 4:09:17 PMEDMONTON (CP) - Paul Coffey comes home Tuesday to the scene of his greatest hockey triumphs and to a city that witnessed both a bitter breakup and the beginning of the end of an NHL dynasty.The 44-year-old Hall of Fame defenceman will have his No. 7 retired and raised to the rafters at Rexall Place when the Phoenix Coyotes - and former teammate Wayne Gretzky, now Phoenix's head coach - come to town.Coffey, drafted sixth overall by the Oilers in 1980, played in 21 NHL campaigns and became famous for his free-wheeling skating and end-to end-rushes. He played his first seven seasons in Edmonton and was a key member of  three of the franchise's five Stanley Cup-winning teams.But in the fall of 1987 he refused to report, demanding instead a contract renegotiation. Two months and many headlines later he was dealt to the lowly Pittsburgh Penguins.That deal, Coffey said, hit home about two weeks later."I remember looking around that (Penguins) dressing room thinking to myself `What have I done? I've just left arguably the best hockey machine of the '80s,' " Coffey said recently from his car dealership, north of Toronto. "But I remember saying to myself  `This is what it is. This is where you are. Work hard and let's get out of it.' "He was among the league's elite at the time. In 1985-'86, Coffey set an NHL record for defencemen by scoring 48 goals.He was on the fifth year of a six-year contract worth about $320,000 Cdn. Media reports at the time said he wanted that boosted to about $600,000 or higher to put him in line with the Boston Bruins' Ray Bourque.Eighteen years later, Coffey says money wasn't the deal-breaker. It was the sheer nastiness of the dispute.And it was nasty.When Coffey refused to report, then-general manager Glen Sather publicly mused about "greed" corroding championship teams. The Oilers offered him a new deal that included unnamed real estate.Pass, said Coffey.The Oilers struggled on the ice. They fined Coffey $250 a day, hinted at suing for breach of contract. Coffey said he wanted what was fair.Then, Oilers owner Peter Pocklington's private negotiating-table comments about Coffey spilled into the public spotlight."I said that many times he appeared to lack intestinal fortitude in games and didn't seem to have the balls to go into the corner for the puck. I realize he had a bad back and perhaps that was the reason," Pocklington said in published report.Coffey, who had once gutted it out by playing on a broken foot, responded swiftly: "It's impossible for me to go back and put on that hockey sweater again."Half a generation later, Coffey shakes his head. "It got so out of whack," he said. "It became personal. It became stupid."It would have been nice to play a few more years in Edmonton. It would have been nice to properly say goodbye and appreciate all they had given me, but there was no chance for any of that."<Coffey went on to win another Stanley Cup with the Penguins in 1991 and later played for Los Angeles, Detroit, Hartford, Philadelphia, Chicago, Carolina and Boston. With Detroit, he won his third Norris Trophy as the league's top defenceman.Coffey ended his career as the 10th leading scorer in NHL history with 396 goals and 1,135 assists in 1,409 regular-season games.He is second only to Bourque in terms of points by a defenceman.Coffey's Oiler teammate Kevin Lowe, now the team's general manager, says he remembers Coffey as a perfect skating machine, a harmony of leg strength and grace, an artist working in brown Bauers on an ice-white canvas."In terms of an era of fast-paced hockey, Paul was the cutting-edge guy," Lowe said.Coffey's defensive partner Charlie Huddy, now an Oiler coach, agreed the speed of the end-to-end rush made No. 7 unforgettable."A lot of times he'd get to the red line or the other blue-line and end up coasting the rest of the way," he said. "He just had an unbelievable way he could glide, as strong as he was."Coffey's departure proved to be the beginning of the end for the `80s Oilers.Gretzky followed him a year later in a trade to the Kings. Others like Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Glenn Anderson, Lowe all left too.But Coffey says he doesn't look in that rear-view mirror."In a perfect world, everybody could have been happy, everybody could have been treated fairly, we could have stayed together 15 years," he said. "Who knows? "But we all know that didn't happen, so I don't think about it."</blockquote>

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