Wayne Gretzky – The Great
What discussion about the great game of ice hockey does not begin and end with Wayne Gretzky? You may or may not be a fan of the Very good, but you can’t deny his dominance and the impact he had on the game any more easily than you can convince Rosie O’Donnell which subtle is better.
Growing up a huge NBA fan (my tenure as a fan started when I was 8-10 years old with Julius Ervin and ended with the retirement of Sir Charles Barkley), was not a fan of the Chicago Bulls, but once Michael Jordan entered the scene, you knew you were seeing something special.
And just like Gretzky (indeed, perhaps the only viable similarity to Gretzky), whether you love him or hate him, you certainly had to give this man his place in sports history.
Over the years, many have been tempted to compare Wayne Gretzky’s dominance in the sport of ice hockey to Michael Jordan’s own personal statistical dominance in professional basketball. Others are tempted to compare tiger wood dominance in professional golf to the statistical wonder of the Grandiose.
Any such comparison is made in vain.
Yes, each of the aforementioned superstars dominated (or is dominating) their respective sport. But no one did it to the inescapable magnitude of Wayne Gretzky during his twenty-year professional ice hockey career.
To put Gretzky’s exploits into perspective, if Michael Jordan were to equal the Great One’s single-season scoring record —statistically speaking— he would have had to average more than 70 points per game.
Gretzky began playing Junior B hockey at age 14, winning a challenge to the existing rules of Canadian amateur hockey. That first season, he won the rookie of the year award, totaling 60 points in 28 games.
As many well know, throughout his NHL career, Gretzky had more assists (1963) than second on the all-time POINTS list (Mark Messier with 1,887).
His record of 2,857 points will never be surpassed.
All told, Wayne Gretzky maintains:
40 regular season records
15 playoff records
6 All-Star records
He won 4 Stanley Cups (Oilers), earned 9 MVP awards and was the leading scorer in the NHL in 10 different seasons.
Not only is he the only player to score more than 200 points in a single season, but he accomplished the feat. four times. He scored more than 100 points in a season 13 consecutive times, with a total of 15. He also had 50 hat-tricks.
Arguably, there has never been a player with such a natural sense of the flow of the puck, the position of the ice, and the ability to create time and space. The Great One was said to have eyes in the back of his head.
In one game, he scored on the face-off puck drop. twice, against the same goalkeeper.
His greatest attribute, perhaps, was not exemplified by his grace with a stick and puck, but rather his presence without them. No dominant force was ever so humble. Rick Reily, chief editor of Sports Illustrated, once proclaimed that the biggest challenge in interviewing Wayne Gretzky was getting him to say something about himself.
Whether you love him or hate him, denying him his place in history is impossible. He was an ambassador for the sport and reinforced the idea that hockey could be (and is) a game of grace, skill and honor.
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