Risky Business

The face of hockey was visibly tired. Wayne Gretzky's eyes welled last Thursday as he announced, after his Phoenix Coyotes' 5-1 capitulation to Dallas, that he wasn't going anywhere--except to the Olympics as Team Canada's executive director--and said that he had not bet on sporting events. "Didn't happen," he said, hands thrust into the pockets of his black suit. "It's not going to happen."

From the outside, at least, Wayne's world always had appeared to be a well-ordered place of humility and probity. But last week it collided with a bizarre netherworld whose axis was a big-money betting ring that New Jersey authorities allege was financed by Gretzky's close friend and Coyotes associate coach, Rick Tocchet, who has been charged with promoting gambling, money laundering and conspiracy (box, page 29).

The criminal investigation, known as Operation Slap Shot, has a wide-ranging dramatis personae. There's Tocchet's alleged partner, James Harney, the New Jersey state trooper who managed to squirrel away $250,000 worth of Rolex watches and nine plasma-screen televisions on a salary of $75,000. There's the Philadelphia-based Bruno-Scarfo crime family, which may have had its hands in the operation. There are the half dozen or so unidentified current and former NHL players who allegedly wagered through Tocchet, and Phoenix G.M. Mike Barnett, who allegedly placed a $300 Super Bowl bet with the coach. And, ominously, there is actress Janet Jones, Gretzky's wife. According to reports, she bet more than $100,000 in a recent six-week period, including $75,000 on the Super Bowl--$5,000 of which was laid on the coin toss. To rework an old joke, Gretzky went to a hockey game and Season 6 of The Sopranos broke out.

But what did Gretzky know, and when did he know it? The Associated Press has reported that on Feb. 6--the same day Tocchet learned he was under investigation-- Gretzky and Tocchet were overheard on a police wiretap discussing how to minimize the fallout for Jones, whom Gretzky married in 1988 and with whom he has five children. That revelation does not contradict Gretzky's claims that he was ignorant of his wife's gambling until the police knocked on his door in Phoenix on Feb. 6 and asked to speak to Jones (who was at the family's Thousand Oaks, Calif., home). Last Thursday, Jones, who has not been charged, released a statement in which she said nothing about her own gambling habits but maintained that she never bet on her husband's behalf. Whatever went on in the Gretzkys' dual households, the proximity of the game's greatest player to a betting ring that police say generated $1.7 million in 1,000 bets over a recent 40-day period is troubling, especially for a league that continues to maintain a breezy gambling culture despite a number of embarrassing situations in recent years.

In 2003 reports surfaced that Czech star Jaromir Jagr had run up nearly $500,000 in debt in an online casino. Jeremy Roenick's name popped up in a 2004 FBI investigation after he paid tens of thousands of dollars to a Florida-based tout service; Roenick also reportedly left tickets to a game for one of the handicappers. (Neither player was sanctioned by the league.) In 2004 NHL officials revealed that director of officiating Andy van Hellemond had asked referees for loans, in part to cover horse racing debts. Van Hellemond resigned.

Betting on NHL games is proscribed by the league--there is no evidence the Tocchet-Harney ring took hockey action from its NHL clientele--but gambling on other sports has been greeted with a furrowed brow, an occasional internal investigation or a shrug. (Betting in the NHL is "like [what] 50 percent of American society does, for lower amounts," one Olympic hockey player wrote in an e-mail to SI.) The Canadiens have promotional ties with Casino de Montr�al, and the Penguins want to finance a new arena with funding from a casino company that is seeking a license to operate slot machines in Pittsburgh.

But is the NHL more lax about gambling than other leagues? In an e-mail to SI, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly pointed out that his charter prohibits conduct "dishonorable, prejudicial to or against the welfare of the League or the game of hockey"--and asks "is it really any different than the sports leagues' standard of conduct?" The answer: Yes. There is less ambiguity in the NFL rules, which outlaw "associating with gamblers or with gambling activities in a manner tending to bring discredit" to the league.

The NFL vigilantly enforces those rules. In 2004, when Steelers running back Jerome Bettis wanted to invest in a proposed racetrack-casino in Pittsburgh, the NFL held up the deal for a month until it was satisfied that he would be insulated from the gambling operation. Meanwhile, Major League Baseball is so twitchy about gambling that the Phillies' Lenny Dykstra received a year of probation from the commissioner in 1991 after he admitted to losing $78,000 in poker games and golf bets, even though he wasn't charged with a crime.

Daly told SI that the NHL might modify its rules at the end of its own investigation into the alleged Tocchet ring. The league's probe is being conducted by lawyer Robert Cleary, a former federal prosecutor who from 1996 to '98 headed the case against the Unabomber. "Mr. Cleary has full and unfettered authority to take this investigation wherever it needs to go to find all the relevant facts," Daly wrote. "No NHL or Club personnel are off-limits to him."

That of course would include Gretzky, who was scheduled to land in Turin--with his wife--on Tuesday. He should be arriving as a hero, the leader of the defending Olympic hockey champion, an ambassador for his sport. Instead he will travel in the shadow of Operation Slap Shot and face questions about how the man who could see so much on the ice managed to miss so much at home and in the office. But the investigation is not enough. The league must start overhauling its rules about gambling, using the other major sports as models. Otherwise, the only "under" anyone will bet is where the NHL's image is going.