Love him or hate him, and almost everyone has hated him for the last 30-plus years, there are few Edmonton Oilers who lived a more interesting life than the man who owned them: Peter Pocklington.

He was a flamboyant and frustrating personality, whose ego helped create his celebrity in the Edmonton scene from the late 1970s to the late 1990s.

Through the arrival of Wayne Gretzky, the Oilers’ introduction into the National Hockey League, and owning baseball’s Trappers and soccer’s Drillers, he helped make Edmonton a sporting destination.

His various business ventures would later ensnare him as one of the biggest villains in Edmonton by the late 1980s with the Gainers strike, the eventual sale of Gretzky, and the will-they, won’t-they threats of moving the Oilers to Hamilton, Minnesota, or Houston.

But his charisma was undeniable. He tried – and failed – to run for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1983, raced jet boats on the world stage, and was confronted by Mexican bandits.

He also experienced one other bizarre, scary, out-of-a-movie ordeal that over the years has become largely forgotten, despite having little parallel in sports.

Before committing the “Hockey Crime of the Century,” Pocklington was held hostage in his Edmonton home for $2 million by a desperate gunman. He was lucky to survive.

And no, the perpetrator wasn’t a disgruntled Oilers fan.

“I really thought I was God’s gift to mankind,” said Pocklington in his book I’d Trade Him Again: On Gretzky, Politics, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Deal. “Until the day I met Mirko Petrovic, the Yugoslav immigrant who was about to prove I wasn’t so invincible after all….

“I thought I was bulletproof — until I was shot.”

The front page of the Edmonton Journal on April 21, 1982.

Why was Peter Pocklington held hostage in 1982?

The year was 1982.

On the ice, the Oilers were victims of one of the biggest upsets in NHL history at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings, who were 48 points worse in the regular season, and even came back from a five-goal deficit in Game 3. 

The Miracle on Manchester, as it’s known, prompted Edmonton Journal columnist Terry Jones to go on a front-page tirade, infamously calling them “weak-kneed wimps” and “choke artists.”

Long story short, the season was over. Gretzky, along with Kevin Lowe, were unexpected additions to Team Canada’s squad at the World Championships in Finland, and a long offseason was just underway.

And on the mild spring morning of April 20, Peter Pocklington awoke at his home on 8638 Saskatchewan Drive like it was any other day. His five-year-old son had been taken to school, and he was about to head to his office. He finished his breakfast, said goodbye to his wife Eva, and walked out to the attached garage.

That’s where a man in a black balaclava waited in the shadows and brandished a chrome-plated .357 Magnum at Pocklington.

Mirko Petrovic was a Yugoslavian immigrant originally in the cement business in Fort McMurray, but had fallen on hard times. He was the man behind the mask, desperate, and looking for $5 million.

They walked inside the house together, and Eva screamed when she saw her husband held at gunpoint by a masked man. Peter told him to uncock the gun if they wanted to talk money. Petrovic evaluated his options and complied.

The other people in the house were a houseguest, Joe, who became their son’s babysitter, and their housekeeper, Carmen. They both were brought into the room and watched.

Ever smooth under pressure, Pocklington attested that he didn’t have $5 million to give him, which triggered a tense negotiation, the biggest one in his life of wheeling-and-dealing. They bartered as........

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