Here is a countdown of ten Gretzky records that will not be broken:. Well, Gretzky led the league in points for half of his career. In each of the years that Gretzky won the award, he amassed at least points during the season. The Great One averaged Gordie Howe has won the second most Art Ross Trophies in a career with six. Jaromir Jagr has the highest total among active players with five. Soon enough, Edmonton came to be a championship juggernaut.
With Gretzky leading the way, the Oilers finished as Stanley Cup champions in , , and As his team won, Gretzky blazed through the record books by posting unfathomable numbers. In , he cracked the point barrier for the first time, setting a single-season record with 92 goals, while also collecting assists. His finest year may have been , a season in which he totaled 52 goals and an NHL single-season record, assists.
With the big numbers came plenty of adoration from Canadian hockey fans. On toy store shelves, the Wayne Gretzky doll was a part of the inventory, and in , the government of Canada even issued an official Wayne Gretzky dollar coin. Helping the player's celebrity status was his quiet, humble attitude, which helped ensure he wouldn't do anything off the ice to tarnish his image. However, in the summer of , the unthinkable happened when the Oilers traded Gretzky to Los Angeles for a slew of players, draft picks and cash.
Speculation has swirled around the exact reason for the trade. Popular opinion has long suggested that Gretzky, who'd recently married the actress Janet Jones, had pushed for the trade to further his wife's career. But another theory banks on the idea that the NHL, fearing that its greatest asset was being wasted in Edmonton, forced the move.
If Gretzky was in Los Angeles, the reasoning went, hockey's best player could greatly help the league become relevant in southern California. Regardless of why the trade happened, in the fall of , Gretzky donned a Kings jersey for the first time. Over the next eight seasons, he led the franchise, not quite dominating the league as he once had, but still making his case as the NHL's best player.
In , he even steered the franchise to the Stanley Cup finals, where the club lost to the Montreal Canadiens in five games. Despite frigid temperatures, the crowd numbered 57,, with an additional several million watching the game on television.
The Edmonton alumni won the Megastars game 2—0 while Montreal went on to win the regular season game held later that day, 4—3. Louis Blues players two days before the Winter Classic. He represented the Blues in the game, which his team won 8—7. In October of , Gretzky returned to the Oilers as a partner and vice-chairman of the team's parent company, Oilers Entertainment Group.
Gretzky made his first international appearance as a member of the Canadian national junior team at the World Junior Championships in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. At the age of 16, he was the youngest player to compete in the tournament. He went on to lead the tournament in scoring with 17 points to earn All-Star Team and Best Forward honours. Gretzky's 17 points remain the most scored by a year-old in the World Junior Championships.
Canada finished with the bronze medal. Gretzky debuted with the Team Canada's men's team at the Canada Cup. He led the tournament in scoring with 12 points en route to a second-place finish to the Soviet Union, losing 8—1 in the final. He notched 14 points in 10 games, including a two-goal, two-assist effort in Canada's final game against Sweden to earn the bronze.
Gretzky did not win his first international competition until the Canada Cup, when Canada defeated Sweden in a best-of-three finals. He led the tournament in scoring for the second consecutive time and was named to the All-Star Team. Gretzky's international career highlight arguably came three years later at the Canada Cup. He has called the tournament the best hockey he had played in his life. Playing on a line with Pittsburgh Penguins' superstar Mario Lemieux, he recorded a tournament-best 21 points in nine games.
After losing the first game of a best-of-three final series against the Soviets, Gretzky propelled Canada with a five-assist performance in the second game, including the game-winning pass to Lemieux in overtime, to extend the tournament. In the deciding game three, Gretzky and Lemieux once again combined for the game-winner.
With the score tied 5—5 and minutes to go in regulation, Lemieux one-timed a pass from Gretzky on a 3-on-1 with defenceman Larry Murphy. Lemieux scored to win the tournament for Canada; the play is widely regarded as one of the most memorable plays in Canadian international competition. The Canada Cup marked the last time the tournament was played under the "Canada Cup" moniker. Gretzky led the tournament for the fourth and final time with 12 points in seven games.
However, he did not compete in the final against the United States due to a back injury. Canada nevertheless won in two games by scores of 4—1 and 4—2. Five years later, the tournament was revived and renamed the World Cup in It marked the first time Gretzky did not finish as the tournament's leading scorer with seven points in eight games for fourth overall.
Leading up to the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, it was announced that NHL players would be eligible to play for the first time. Gretzky was named to the club on November 29, However, Gretzky was passed over for the captaincy, along with several other Canadian veterans including Steve Yzerman and Ray Bourque in favour of the younger Eric Lindros. Expectations were high for the Canadian team, but the team lost to the Czech Republic in the semi-finals.
The game went to a shootout with a 1—1 tie after overtime, but Gretzky was controversially not selected by coach Marc Crawford as one of the five shooters, all of whom failed to score. Team Canada then lost the bronze medal game 3—2 to Finland to finish without a medal. The Olympics marked Gretzky's eighth and final international appearance, finishing with four assists in six games. He retired from international play holding the records for most goals 20 , most assists 28 , and most overall points 48 in best-on-best hockey.
Gretzky's size and strength were unimpressive in fact far below average for the NHL , but he is widely considered the smartest player in the history of the game. His reading of the game and his ability to improvise on the fly were unrivaled, and he could consistently anticipate where the puck was going to be and execute the right move at the right time.
While they were using all this energy trying to rattle his teeth, he was just skating away, circling, analyzing things. He was also considered one of the most creative players in hockey. Every time he took the ice, there was some spontaneous decision he would make. That's what made him such a phenomenal player. Gretzky's ability to improvise came into the spotlight at the Olympics in Japan.
Then an older player in the sunset of his career, he had been passed over for the captaincy of the team. But as the series continued, his unique skills made him a team leader. In his first two seasons in the NHL, his deft passing skills helped earn him a reputation as an ace playmaker, and so opposing defencemen focused their efforts on foiling his attempts to pass the puck to other scorers. In response, Gretzky started shooting on goal himself—and with exceptional effectiveness.
He had a fast and accurate shot. Statistics support the contention: whereas Phil Esposito, who had set the previous goal-scoring record, needed shots to score 76 goals, Gretzky netted his 76th after only shot about half as many. He scored his all-time record of 92 goals with just shots. Because he was so light compared to other players, goalies were often surprised by how hard Gretzky's shot was. Goalies called his shots "sneaky fast.
When Gretzky entered the league in , critics opined that he was "too small, too wiry, and too slow to be a force in the [NHL]. But that year, Gretzky tied for first place in scoring, and won the Hart Trophy for the league's most valuable player.
In his second year in the league, weighing just pounds, he broke the previous single-season scoring record, racking up points. The next year —82 , at pound still "a wisp compared to the average NHL player" , he set the all-time goal-scoring record, putting 92 pucks in the net. He weighed "about pounds" for the better part of his career. He consistently scored last in strength tests among the Edmonton Oilers, bench pressing only pounds 64 kg.
However, he had remarkable physical stamina. Like his hero, Gordie Howe, Gretzky possessed "an exceptional capacity to renew his energy resources quickly.
His stamina is also indicated by the fact that Gretzky often scored late in the game. In the year he scored his record 92 goals, 22 of them went in the net during the first period, 30 in the second and 40 in the third.
He also had strong general athletic skills. Growing up, he was a competitive runner and also batted. As a result, he was offered a contract by the Toronto Blue Jays. History repeated itself in June , when Gretzky's year-old son, Trevor, was drafted by the Chicago Cubs.
Trevor signed with the Cubs the next month. Gretzky also excelled at box lacrosse, which he played during the summer. At the age of ten, after scoring goals in his hockey league, he scored goals in lacrosse. According to him, lacrosse was where he learned to protect himself from hard checks: "In those days you could be hit from behind in lacrosse, as well as cross-checked, so you had to learn how to roll body checks for self-protection.
Gretzky adroitly applied this technique as a professional player, avoiding checks with such skill that a rumour circulated that there was an unwritten rule not to hit him. Defencemen found Gretzky a most elusive target. You saw him but when you reached out to grab him your hands felt nothing, maybe just a chill.
The pound 93 kg Potvin, a three-time winner of the Norris Trophy for best defenceman, added that part of the problem in hitting Gretzky hard was that he was "a tough guy to dislike It was like running Gandhi into a corner.
The latter followed Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings in , where he played the same policeman role for several more years. But Gretzky discouraged unfair hits in another way. I saw him do it night after night.
Commentators have noted Gretzky's uncanny ability to judge the position of the other players on the ice, so much so that many suspected he enjoyed some kind of extrasensory perception. Sports commentators said that he played like he had "eyes in the back of his head. Gretzky said he sensed other players more than he actually saw them. Veteran Canadian journalist Peter Gzowski says that Gretzky seemed to be able to, in effect, slow down time, writing: "There is an unhurried grace to everything Gretzky does on the ice.
Winding up for the slapshot, he will stop for an almost imperceptible moment at the top of his arc, like a golfer with a rhythmic swing. In front of the net, eyeball to eyeball with the goaltender … he will … hold the puck one … extra instant, upsetting the anticipated rhythm of the game, extending the moment.
Sometimes he will release the puck before he appears to be ready, threading the pass through a maze of players precisely to the blade of a teammate's stick, or finding a chink in a goaltender's armour and slipping the puck into it … before the goaltender is ready to react.
However, Gretzky denied that he had any exotic innate abilities. He said that many of his advantages were a result of his father's brilliant coaching, saying:. I've just learned to guess what's going to happen next. It's anticipation. It's not God-given, it's Wally-given. How would Gretzky's scoring have played out had he continued to center New York's top line? I did a study for Hockey Prospectus two years ago to estimate his scoring, which is summarized in the table below.
On what were the estimates based? Gretzky was still the star in New York and would likely have led the team in scoring for one more season and been in the mix all the way up to the lockout by when he would surely have retired. Only once in Gretzky's entire career did he finish a season with fewer points than one of his teammates—the NHL season when he played just 45 games, scoring 65 points. Though ice time was not recorded until , Gretzky led the team's forwards in his final season by playing per game.
By comparison, the team's leading forward the next season, Petr Nedved, played just Gretzky would have most certainly remained in a top-line role for at least one or two more seasons. Quoting the aforementioned study, here's how Gretzky would have measured up among the league leaders in assists. The Great One led the league for two of the previous three seasons and likely would have again once or potentially twice more. Gretzky's concern may have been that the Rangers just weren't competitive.
Other than another back-to-back postseason absence in his final two seasons in Los Angeles, Gretzky had never missed the playoffs until the end of his career.
In , the Rangers finished 18th out of 27 , nine points back of Carolina and the final postseason position.
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