Q&A: Robitaille's favorite jersey

I'm glad to report that finally, after considerable technical difficulties -- in short...iPhone ``Voice Memos'': great for short recordings, death for long recordings -- I'm ready to post all the rest of the Luc Robitaille Q&A. Honestly, transcribing interviews usually isn't fun, but I really enjoyed getting to listen to this again, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it as well. I'll break it into readable segments over the next couple days.

The following is an awesome story, one that I had never heard before...

Question: You're the only player to wear every Kings jersey that has existed. Which was your favorite?

ROBITAILLE: ``My favorite -- and there's a reason for it -- my favorite is the one that we had in the Gretzky era, and I'll tell you why. When I was in junior, Wayne bought our junior team in Hull. My last year in junior, after Wayne bought the team, he changed the colors to black and silver, and I loved those. Even though I had never really seen the Raiders, I loved the Raiders' colors. I clearly remember, in my second year with the Kings, Bruce McNall had taken over control of the team and he brought in a jersey to the locker room. It was very, very dark blue, silver and gray, but really dark blue. Borderline black, but it was dark blue. If you remember, in Bruce's company everything was dark blue and gray and silver.

``So he showed it to me, and I didn't know this at the time, but Bruce knew he was trying to get Wayne. I didn't know that at the time, and I remember telling Bruce... He asked me, `What do you think of this?' He had my number on it, on the jersey, and I said, `I like it, but you should see what we did in Hull. It was black. It was the same thing but it was black and silver, instead of dark blue.' I said, `I loved those.' And you know Bruce, he was like, `Oh yeah, yeah.' But then I told him it was Wayne who designed them. I didn't know he was trying to get Wayne at the time, but he knew that. Then, a week later, it was the All-Star Game in St. Louis. I was there and they showed tapes of myself in junior. Bruce saw that jersey and he put two and two together, and then he was really into it. I remember that day in St. Louis, he told me he thought he could get Wayne Gretzky. This was in February. I thought he was nuts.

``I do believe, to this day, he changed the colors to help him get Wayne. Wayne had changed our Hull colors. We were blue and we went to black and silver, and we won everything. So for me it was, `We changed those colors and we won everything, so I want to do that.'''

Question: When Bruce showed you that dark blue jersey, did he already have the new logo?

ROBITAILLE: ``No, he didn't have the logo at that point. I saw the logo for the first time when Wayne got traded and he showed the jersey.''