9.** Indianapolis Racers**

_File under: _They traded Wayne Gretzky!

Back in the mid-1970s, the renegade World Hockey Association wanted to upstage the NHL with high-scoring matchups, and in their first season the Indianapolis Racers complied, losing games 10–0 and 12–2. The team was owned by a vulgar real estate hustler, Nelson Skalbania, who once donated over $100,000 to a YMCA for new racquetball courts so he could have 5 p.m. reservations for the rest of his life. In 1978, Skalbania exploited the NHL’s rule against drafting teens by signing a 17-year-old phenom named Wayne Gretzky, and in one of his first games he scored two goals in four seconds. But the team’s coach didn’t think much of the spindly center, and after only eight games, Skalbania flipped him for cash to the Edmonton Oilers, where he went on to win four Stanley Cups after the team joined the NHL. Racers fans were incensed, and an Indianapolis newspaper headline roared HEY NELSON, GO BACK TO SKALBANIA.