99

by Al Strachan

  After the game ended in a 2–2 tie, Ottawa’s Igor Kravchuk skated over and asked Gretzky for his stick—and got it. All the other Ottawa Senators skated over to shake his hand. The crowd clapped and cheered like a concert audience awaiting an encore. Janet was at the game, as were Gretzky’s three children—Paulina, Ty and Trevor—and seeing the adulation from the fans, Janet broke into tears. Before long, the boys joined her. Gretzky came out to acknowledge his selection as the game’s “only star”—the usual three-star selection was put on hold for the occasion. Then, because the ovation continued, he came back to do another quick turn on the ice in front of the bench.

  The crowd was still not content. The ovation continued. Eventually, Gretzky came out for his third curtain call. By this time, he had taken off his skates, so he simply stood on the players’ bench and waved to the crowd.

  “When I went back out for the third time, I got kind of emotional,” he said, “because that was the first time it really hit me. Before that, it was in the back of my mind. Now it was real.”

  Next came a nationally televised news conference, which followed the usual Gretzky formula. His minders announced that only two more questions would be allowed, but Gretzky kept answering them as long as the media wanted to ask them.

  “I didn’t expect this kind of response from everyone to say, ‘One more year, one more time.’ It has been tremendous,” he said after the game. “It has been a fun day. I even talked to the prime minister, which was very nice. He encouraged me to come back, too.”

  Even then, Gretzky didn’t make his retirement official. But he came close. “I really feel right about which way I’m leaning,” he said. “At this point in time I haven’t heard anything that has swayed me a lot. I thought about this for a long time.

  “I told Gordie Howe (who played in the NHL at fifty-two) that his records were safe unless a miracle happens in the morning, and I’ll probably make it official.” He did. The next day, at a press conference in New York, Gretzky summed up the situation in the simplest of terms.

  “I’m done,” he said.

  There was still one game remaining in the Rangers’ schedule, the Sunday-afternoon affair against the Pittsburgh Penguins, but after that, Gretzky’s remarkable career would be over.

  “Probably, that will be the emotional time for me,” he speculated, “when I take my skates off. Up to this point, I’ve been pretty calm. I’ve been encouraging people to smile and to be upbeat, people around me, my teammates. But that will be the tough part.”

  In essence, the decision to retire was a gut reaction. He always had an uncanny ability to sense the moment on the ice, and with that same prescience, he sensed that this was the moment to end his career.

  We will never know if he was right or wrong. We will never know if he could have come back with the Rangers or another team the following season, had a 100-point season and won a Stanley Cup. On the other hand, what if he had come back and suffered a serious injury? Millions of people would have been asking, “Why did he do it? Why didn’t he quit when he was ahead? He stayed around too long!”

  The fans might not have known the answer to this conundrum, but Gretzky did. “My heart is telling me this is the right time,” he said. “I don’t think there’s ever going to be a day that goes by that you don’t love the sport and love the game. And as I said to Janet yesterday, a year from now, I could be in the exact same situation with everyone saying, ‘Just go one more year. You can still play.’

  “I’m at peace of mind. It’s the right decision. This is the right time. This was not something that was decided in a week.”

  And although he would never say it on the record, there’s no doubt that he wasn’t terribly happy about winding down his career playing for a team that couldn’t capitalize on his remaining skills. During the season, the Rangers had tried to acquire Pavel Bure but couldn’t pull off the deal. Had they done so, Gretzky would almost certainly have played another year. There were even times when his natural ebullience had seemed to be fading, something that had never happened in his younger days.

  The losses mounted, as did the number of hits he had to absorb. The game had become more of a grind for him. Every summer, he had to work harder to get ready for training camp. In the previous few years, a personal trainer had kept him in shape during the off-season, and while his dedication to the game never wavered, he found it increasingly difficult to return to the level of conditioning he had exhibited the previous season.

  So after some pensive, solitary moments in darkened hotel rooms and some quiet discussions with friends who were sworn to secrecy, he made the decision to retire.

  We were reminiscing on the day he announced his retirement, and he said, “I wanted to leave the game with everyone saying, ‘He could have played one more year.’ I know I could have played one more year.”

  There were some sad moments. The loss in the Nagano Olympics had hit him hard, and he had been sure he would earn another Stanley Cup ring when the Los Angeles Kings appeared to be in control of the final series against the Montreal Canadiens in 1993.

  But most of his memories were happy ones, a reflection of a long, productive career that is unmatched in hockey history.

  He laughed about playing in the World Hockey Association in a Minnesota rink that had transparent glass boards that made life miserable for goalies who often lost sight of incoming shots.

  He remembered the old Calgary Corral, where the Flames played when they moved north from Atlanta. It had a two-tier bench, the rear one about four feet higher than the front one. One time, he had just returned to the bench when Dave Semenko, on the upper bench, yelled, “Hey Gretz, come up here quick.” Gretzky climbed up and said, “What is it, Sammy?”

  “Nothing,” said Semenko. “I just wanted you to have to make this climb for once.” Because Gretzky was so often double-shifted, he had never been on the upper bench.

  His greatest goal, he thought, was the one he scored to win an overtime game against the Calgary Flames in the 1988 playoffs, a few weeks before Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington sold him to the Kings.

  But the greatest goal didn’t come in what he considers to be his greatest game. In his greatest game, he didn’t score at all.

  “That was the second game of the 1987 Canada Cup series,” he said. “That was the best game I ever played in my life.”

  With his final NHL game being an afternoon start, the team’s usual morning skate was forsaken. But there was still a regular practice on Saturday, and it turned out to be one more emotional moment in a highly emotional week.

  He got to the Rangers’ suburban practice rink earlier than usual, two hours before the 11 a.m. practice. He always enjoyed everything about the game, even the practices, and for his last one, he wanted extra time to savour the moment.

  He participated enthusiastically, as always, but when it was over, Muckler suggested he hadn’t worked hard enough. The coach told everybody else on the team they could leave the ice, but ordered Gretzky to do some extra skating—red line to blue line, red line to red line, then red line to blue line again.

  Gretzky just laughed. “Screw you, Muck,” he said. “I retire.”

  Then the players gathered on the ice for a team picture. An on-ice photograph was a tradition started by the Edmonton Oilers when Gretzky led them to their first Stanley Cup in 1984. On-ice team shots of non-playoff teams were far from the norm.

  “We’re going to do it again tomorrow after the game,” Gretzky chuckled later. “It might be the only time a team gets its team picture taken on the ice without a Stanley Cup in the middle of it.”

  Up to that point, Gretzky’s final practice had been everything he had hoped it would be. But then, the mood became a bit more sombre.

  “I was good when I woke up,” Gretzky said. “I was fine. But in the room, after the practice, Brian Leetch gave a great speech. It was pretty emotional. I was overwhelmed. When Brian gave that speech, that’s when I kind of caved.”


  “Caved” was a euphemism for saying the battle to hold back the tears was finally lost.

  “It was such an emotional speech,” Gretzky said, “that I had to slip back to the trainers’ room.”

  When he returned, his teammates presented him with a “Steinbrenner chair”—a large overstuffed leather armchair in the shape of a baseball glove. (There had been a good deal of publicity in New York when Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had got such a chair, and Gretzky had mentioned he would like one. His teammates took him at his word.) The trainers made a contribution as well, giving him a gold-plated lifetime pass for two to any major-league baseball game.

  “It was surprising,” Gretzky said. “I didn’t expect any gifts. I had a great day, but it was really emotional.”

  After that, he did a series of interviews, mostly for television, and met with various team officials to discuss the retirement ceremonies. By the time he was able to leave the rink, it was after 4 p.m. That made it a seven-hour practice.

  The retirement game itself did not amount to much. With the Rangers already eliminated from the playoffs, the fans just wanted to get the game finished and say goodbye to Gretzky.

  Gretzky himself felt uncomfortable. The Penguins wanted a win that could improve their playoff position, but they knew it was Gretzky’s day. Out of respect, they didn’t want to hit him or even hinder him more than was absolutely necessary. He, in turn, was aware of what they were doing, but he wanted to play well for his fans without taking advantage of the Penguins’ generosity.

  He got an assist on the Rangers’ only goal of the afternoon, but Pittsburgh’s Jaromir Jagr scored the winner in overtime. Jagr, who also had a sense of occasion, embraced Gretzky and said, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  Gretzky laughed and told him, “That’s what I used to say.”

  As Gretzky did lap after lap around the rink, the crowd cheered lustily. Photographs of those victory laps are still among the most coveted souvenirs of his career.

  “My dad uses that picture for more charity events than any other picture,” said Gretzky in 2012. “They get five hundred to eight hundred dollars at tournaments and stuff for that picture autographed.” Naturally, he still signs as many copies as his dad wants.

  With the post-game celebrations, his speech to his teammates, and some television interviews, it was more than an hour after the game ended when Gretzky, still wearing his Rangers jersey, held his final media conference as an NHL player. He admitted he had found it difficult to play the game, but managed to keep his emotions under control until well into the final minute of regulation time, when Muckler called a time-out.

  “He’s got a daughter who was about to give birth in Edmonton,” Gretzky said. “I came over, and he said, ‘I want to tell you something.’

  “I said, ‘What?’

  “He said, ‘I just had a grandson today and you’ve got to get the winner.’

  “Maybe when I was younger, I might have got that winner for him. I didn’t get it today, and I know it’s the right time to retire.”

  Even so, he admitted, “It’s going to kill me not to play. But time does something to you, and it’s time. I feel really confident about my decision. I haven’t wavered once in seven days.”

  Much later—in 2008, to be exact—Gretzky revealed that the day of his retirement was his greatest day in hockey. My friend Scott Morrison was writing a book in which players talked about their greatest days in hockey, and Gretzky was making a business swing through southern Ontario. One of the stops was at a golf course that was hosting the tournament he sponsored, and he suggested Morrison and I meet him for lunch.

  With just the three of us sitting at an outdoor table on a beautiful Ontario day, we tried to get him to blow off the afternoon and come golfing with us—for the comedy value if nothing else. He was tempted, but as usual, he stuck to his commitments. When Morrison asked him about his greatest day in hockey, we were surprised at the response. We had expected that he would talk about some of his great games or some of his great achievements, but he didn’t.

  “I would say my last game in New York was my greatest day in hockey,” he said. “I knew that would stump a few people, but I thought about it a lot. Everything you enjoy about the sport of hockey as a kid—driving to the practice with Mom and Dad, driving to the game with Mom and Dad, looking in the stands and seeing your mom and your dad and your friends—that all came together in that last game in New York.

  “My dad and I hadn’t driven to a rink in years and years, but we drove to the rink together that morning. It was sort of the same conversation on the way to that game as it was when I was eight years old. Make sure you work hard. Make sure you backcheck. I’m sitting there going, ‘Wow.’

  “It was an emotional day for me to be able to look up into the stands and see my mom and my dad, my family and friends. As an emotional day, that was the greatest day of my life. It put the ribbon on my career, pulled it all together. I knew then there was no difference between playing as an eight-year-old and going to a game and being a professional hockey player at thirty-eight and playing your last game. The feeling was still the same. The excitement was still the same. The relationship with your family was still the same. The game itself was the same. The only difference is I wasn’t quite as good as I used to be. That’s what I remember the most.

  “I had no second thoughts that day about retiring. I wasn’t scared of retiring from the game of hockey and the practices and everything that goes with hockey.

  “What I knew was that I was completely done with preparing for a season—three or four hours a day of getting ready to be physically ready to go in September. I knew I wasn’t mentally ready to do that any more, and that’s why I never had any second thoughts.

  “The last thing my dad said to me when we got to the rink—I think his exact words were, ‘You know, I’d really like to watch you play one more year.’ And I was, ‘Whoa!’ That was the most pressure I felt. You know, because he was a fan like everyone else and he was a big fan of mine, he didn’t want me to retire, and I think it hurt him more than anyone else.

  “But I was ready. I got nine goals that year. That was it. Nine goals. That’s what I got the last year.

  “On the drive home, my dad was pretty down about it, so he didn’t press it again, but I knew it was time and, like I said, I had no regrets. I remember sitting on the bench with thirty seconds left in regulation, and John Muckler called a time-out. I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got thirty seconds to go.’ But that day just brought it full circle for me.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Late one night in 1995, after a Los Angeles Kings home game, Wayne and I were wandering through his garage, on the way into his Encino house for a post-game beer or two, when I spotted a trophy on a shelf alongside some household tools and cardboard boxes. It was a neat little thing, about six inches high and clearly a quality object and a replica of a larger trophy.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Oh, that’s the Campbell Conference Trophy,” said Gretzky. “They give you one of those if you get to the Stanley Cup final.”

  I suggested that the garage was a strange place to keep a championship trophy.

  “It’s a second-place trophy,” said Gretzky. “It means we didn’t win the Cup. That’s why it’s in the garage.”

  Second place has never meant much to Wayne Gretzky, even if you’re talking about second place in the best hockey league in the world. He hides it well behind a calm demeanour, but when it comes to hockey, he has always been driven.

  If you ask him about his superstar skills, he’ll usually say that he wasn’t born with them. He’ll say that those skills were learned, not inherited. That’s his modesty coming through. But if pressed a bit, he will admit that his father, Walter, had a different view. “I can remember my dad telling me that the Good Lord had blessed me with something special,” he said. And we all know that, deep down, Wayne Gretzky very rarely disagrees with the opinions of Walter Gret
zky.

  So which is it? Was Wayne born with God-given skills that made his hockey stardom a matter of predestination? Or was he just an ordinary kid who tried a game and loved it so much that he became its best player in history?

  It would be nice to be able to answer those questions with certainty, but there is no clear answer.

  Even though Walter at times leaned towards the God-given theory, he also recognized the impact of teaching. “My dad always said that kids can be taught how to anticipate what’s going to happen on the ice,” Wayne said. “And he always said that kids can be taught to handle pressure.

  “He says that he really believes that I learned it all. He doesn’t believe that I had it handed to me on a silver platter.”

  In other words, even Walter Gretzky, the world’s leading authority on the talents of Wayne Gretzky, espouses different theories at different times.

  Wayne himself concedes that he always loved to skate, but he was not one of those people who felt gifted the first time he was exposed to his sport. When he was learning to skate, he fell down as often as every other child who finds himself in that situation. But after each fall, he’d get up and go back at it, determined not to fall again—which, inevitably, he did. Still, he never gave up. He says it was this dedicated approach that took him to the top.

  Yet the more you look at Gretzky’s phenomenal achievements over the years, the more it becomes evident that the reason for his greatness goes beyond mere determination. There’s no doubt that Wayne worked hard and spent a lot of time on the fabled backyard rink that Walter built for him in Brantford—Wally’s Coliseum, as the family called it. “The guy who had the yard behind us had about six hundred pucks in his back yard from shots that I missed,” recollected Gretzky with a laugh.

  But lots of kids work hard, and they don’t do what Gretzky did.