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From
Sports Illustrated: 1978-79
Excerpt from: WHA PREVIEW INDIANAPOLIS has Center Wayne Gretzky, but not much more. The Racers signed "Great Grits" to a seven-year, $1.7 million pact after the 17-year-old flash scored 70 goals last season for the amateur Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. Whatever he does for the Racers, Gretzky cannot possibly do enough to cover up the WHA's worst defense. Issue date: October 23, 1978 1979-80
Excerpt from: NHL PREVIEW Edmonton has sold more than 15,300 [season tickets], which means that the Edmonton Coliseum will be filled to capacity every time the Oilers play there. The Oilers' main attraction is 18-year-old Wayne Gretzky, who signed a 21-year contract at center ice on his birthday. To protect Gretzky, who scored 46 goals and had 64 assists last season, the Oilers gave a second-round draft choice to Minnesota for the Friendly Giant, Dave Semenko , who is billed as the the undefeated heavyweight champ of the WHA. Issue date: October 8, 1979 1986-87
Excerpt from: HOT SHOTS ON ICE We should all be so fortunate to slump the way Wayne Gretzky slumps. When the Edmonton Oilers' No. 99 went without a goal in five straight Stanley Cup playoff games, his scoring drought took on the tenor of a national emergency in Western Canada. Newspapers ran big headlines: WHAT'S WRONG WITH WAYNE? Maybe he hadn't recovered from the mugging Dale Hawerchuk had given him during the Winnipeg series. The talk shows rang with speculation that the 26-year-old Gretzky had lost it. Why, he hadn't won a new automobile in almost a week. On Sunday night in Philadelphia, Gretzky was ethereal against the Flyers as Edmonton scored a solid 4-1 victory to take a three-games-to-one lead in the Stanley Cup finals. The Great One's play shone with the glow he takes on when everything's working and he's seven steps ahead of everyone else. After Jari Kurri , Kevin Lowe and Randy Gregg each scored off pinpoint passes from Gretzky, both locker rooms paid tribute to the man who has been named the NHL's Most Valuable Player for a record seven straight seasons. "There will never be another player like him," said teammate Kent Nilsson . "He dominated," said Flyer goaltender Ron Hextall . "I had it pretty good tonight," Gretzky admitted. "I don't know what happens or when it happens ... the night before the game, the morning of it. Sometimes it takes a hard hit on your first shift to get your head in the game. I felt confident tonight. I wanted the puck." Issue date: June 1, 1987 1988-89
Excerpt from: A KING IN EDMONTON Wayne Gretzky was back in Edmonton last week, an outsider visiting the city he put on the map. "I'd really rather not have to go in there," said Gretzky, with a sigh. "We were the closest team, I think, that's ever been assembled in pro sports. It's going to be extremely tough." It is estimated that Gretzky this season will generate an additional $15 million for [Kings owner Bruce] McNall 's and the league's coffers through increased ticket sales, greater licensing revenues and a sweetened cable television deal. The hottest piece of merchandise around is the new black, silver and white Kings jersey with Gretzky's famous 99 on the back. Everyone in L.A. seems to own one. In Edmonton, too. The Oilers did not exactly savor the notion of having to clamp down hard on the guy who had scored or set up 1,669, or 48%, of their goals since 1979 and had led them to four Stanley Cups. "I've been wondering what I'm going to do the first time he comes up my wing," said hulking defenseman Steve Smith . "Do I take him hard into the boards? Do I just hold him?" And Oilers general manager and coach Glen Sather said, "I've got enough aggravation as it is. I sure wouldn't mind having this one over with." Issue date: October 31, 1988
Excerpt from: WHERE HE REIGNS, GOALS POUR Gretzky -- and most everybody else -- had underestimated the magnitude of the effect he would have. Says left wing Luc Robitaille , "You see him working so hard every second. This is the best player in the world, so how can you not try to work that hard?" (Bobby) Carpenter , 25, is clearly buoyed by Gretzky's faith in him. "Wayne has helped me in a lot of ways," says Carpenter. "Just by his being here, we have 20 new players; it's like we're a different team in the same city." Issue date: December 19, 1988
Excerpt from: DYNASTY UNDONE In a week marked by tragedy and triumph, Wayne Gretzky's heroics in the Stanley Cup playoffs stood out as Los Angeles beat Edmonton. Did Gretzky really think he might be booed? The instant he stepped on the ice for the pregame skate, he was showered with full-throated expressions of adoration. Later, the cheers came to a deafening crescendo when the Kings took the ice just before the national anthems. For almost four minutes, 17,503 people stood as one and paid lusty tribute. Would they cheer? Indeed. Would they ever stop? "[Oilers owner Peter Pocklington ] said after Game 3 that the people of Edmonton had told him the trade was a good trade," said Gretzky. "We'll see what they say tomorrow." Issue date: April 24, 1989 1989-90
Excerpt from: A BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT When 11-year-old Wayne Gretzky met Gordie Howe at a sports awards banquet in 1972, Howe gave him a piece of advice: Work on your backhand. Fast forward to Sunday, Oct. 15, 1989. Gretzky takes the puck on that backhand and flips it into the net with 53 seconds left in the Los Angeles Kings' game with the Oilers at Edmonton's Northlands Coliseum. In that instant, the NHL career scoring record of 1,850 points that Howe built over 26 seasons was surpassed. Gretzky's momentous shot not only broke Howe's record but also tied the game 4-4. He then won the game for the Kings in overtime with still another goal, and he did all this against his old teammates, in the city where he led the Oilers to four Stanley Cups before being traded to Los Angeles last year. And he did it in 780 games to Howe's 1,767. Gretzky never saw a record he didn't want to break, but he wishes somebody else had owned this one. He insists that Howe will always be the greatest. Uneasy at the thought of diminishing a legend, Gretzky told Howe months ago it would mean a lot to him if he could be there when -- gee, Gordie, sorry -- the inevitable occurred. Howe was equally gracious. "I kissed that record goodbye a long time ago, when Wayne started getting 200 points a year," said Howe. "He's good and I know, because I played with him. If you want to tell me he's the greatest player of all time, I have no argument at all." Issue date: October 23, 1989
THEY SAID IT Issue date: November 6, 1989
Excerpt from: SHOCKER! Inspired by Wayne Gretzky's return, the Los Angeles Kings upset the defending Stanley Cup champion Calgary Flames in six games. "Some things are to be," said Calgary defenseman Ric Nattress , "and some things are not to be." That is an observation that can be made whenever Wayne Gretzky appears in a postseason series. On his way to becoming the NHL's alltime point producer, Gretzky never failed to rise to the occasion. The series against the Flames further embellished his mystical reputation. Once Gretzky, at first as stiff as Frankenstein's monster, staggered off the table, the Flames became vulnerable. "Is that luck or skill when I beat him on the face-off, and he still plays the puck off my shins for the tying goal?" said [Joel] Otto . "I guess his skill brings luck." Issue date: April 23, 1990 1990-91
Excerpt from: A GREAT 30th FOR THE GREAT ONE The kid turns 30 this week. "Yes, but two weeks after my wife did," Wayne Gretzky says, laughing. See, no crisis there. After last season, which brought him personal distractions, physical pain and the first flirtations with mortality in a career of epic achievement, Gretzky is now living more happily ever after than he thought possible. There is no need to wait for his retirement to declare him the greatest player of all time. None of the big scorers of other eras -- Gordie Howe , Maurice Richard , Jean Beliveau , Bobby Hull or Phil Esposito -- dwarfed their contemporaries the way Gretzky has his. From the 1980-81 season through '86-87, Gretzky won the scoring title each year by an average of 66 points. Someday, he will retire. And no matter how distant Gretzky is making that time appear, it's not too early to begin dreading it. Issue date: January 28, 1991 1991-92
THEY SAID IT
Issue date: October 28, 1991
Excerpt from: LOOKING TO A GREAT RECOVERY Wayne Gretzky was not depressed. No. For instance, last month he only thought about quitting hockey twice a day -- a.m. and p.m. "This is the end," he told his wife after another in an assembly line of odorous performances. "This is the end of the end. I never, ever dreamed I could play this bad." At first his wife, actress Janet Jones , thought he was kidding. So did his coaches. So did former teammate Mark Messier . But Gretzky was serious. "I hate mediocrity," he told Los Angeles Kings assistant coach Cap Raeder . "If there's one thing I can't accept, it's mediocrity." Actually, "mediocrity" was overdoing it a bit. The way Gretzky was playing, mediocrity was still two floors up. Gretzky was just slightly above horrid and just below rotten. Here it was the 10th game of the season, and he had no goals. Wayne's World without goals? No way! In Canada people checked their calendars to be sure it was hockey season. The Great One had become the Great None. In one 0-4-2 stretch for the Kings in November, Gretzky contributed three whole points. The greatest player in hockey history suddenly couldn't dump a puck into a swimming pool. "I'm the weak link on this team," he told reporters. Issue date: December 16, 1991 Excerpt from: TEN LIVING LEGENDS By Steve Wulf Pretty frightening, from a goalie's point of view, is the sight of the 30-year-old Gretzky coming down ice. Just ask Mike Richter of the New York Rangers. "His threshold of panic is extremely high," says Richter. "He'll hold the puck so long that you'll think, God, he should've done something by now. So you'll go down, and he'll flip it over you or set somebody else up. I know there are only so many options a player has when he has the puck, but it seems like Wayne always has two or three more. "The thing I most admire about him is his love and respect for the game. We're talking about the best hockey player ever, and he never acts like it. He has never taken his skills for granted." Issue date: December 23, 1991 1992-93
Excerpt from: A STAR IS REBORN Gretzky, for his part, has come around to thinking that the 39 games he missed may have been a blessing in disguise. "Mentally, it may have been the best thing that could have happened to me," he says. "I'd played so much hockey in my career that it gave me a chance to recharge my batteries. I found that I missed the game. Not just the hockey -- everything. The traveling, the dressing room, the people, the peaks and valleys. And it was good for my teammates, too. They got to gain their own identity, gain confidence in each other and themselves. I learned a long time ago that one person can't win a championship in sports. But you can feed off each other.'' Issue date: May 17, 1993
Excerpt from: KING OF THE KINGS In a steamy passageway beneath the stands at Maple Leaf Gardens, Wayne Gretzky brushed the sweat from his famous forehead, took a swig of beer and allowed himself a moment to gloat. It may not have been the greatest night of his life, but it was close. The Los Angeles Kings would be playing in June, and for the first time in a long time, all was right with Wayne's world. "I don't think I've ever had as much personal satisfaction," Gretzky said last Saturday night, after his three goals and an assist had lifted the Kings to a 5-4 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs in the seventh game of the Campbell Conference finals. "When you're Wayne Gretzky, you take the roses that are thrown at you, but you've also got to take the heat. Well, I took the heat, and I answered the bell." Issue date: June 7, 1993
THEY SAID IT Issue date: June 21, 1993 1993-94
THEY SAID IT Issue date: February 8, 1993 1994-95
Excerpt from: LESS THAN GREAT Wayne Gretzky, unshaved and unapologetic, stood in a dim light outside the Los Angeles Kings' dressing room last week and addressed the question, Is this the twilight of a god? The prospect that it is might haunt the NHL, which has not produced any other stars who are bankable in the U.S., but it is not haunting Gretzky. Gretzky never has tried to kid himself. He knows the end is out there somewhere. Some days it seems distant, other days it's as close as a mirror. In the first third of this season, the Great One has been easier to find in the athletic actuarial tables than among the NHL's scoring leaders. Gretzky, who won last season's scoring title with 130 points and has averaged 2.17 points per game in 15 NHL seasons, had four goals and 17 points in 17 games through Sunday. A point a game is acceptable for almost everyone except Gretzky. But the King center had just two even-strength goals, and his -14 was the worst plus/ minus rating among NHL forwards, which is acceptable for no one. The slump would be an insignificant blip but for one thing: Gretzky turned 34 on Jan. 26. The day he retires, which is the day every team should haul 99 to its rafters because no NHLer should ever again be allowed to wear that number, is no longer somewhere over the rainbow, although Gretzky isn't ready to slip into his anecdotage, a lifetime of banquet speeches detailing hockey's most fabulous career. "I'd be lying if I didn't stand here and say, yeah, there are nights when I don't know if I am near the end," Gretzky says. "Am I a different player? Has the way I play and the style of my game deteriorated that much in six months? I'll have to fight through it. I'll have to work to a point, give it my best effort, and if I come up short, I'll have to figure out what the next stage of my career is." Issue date: March 6, 1995 1996-97
Excerpt from: THE GOOD OLD DAYS "One last hurrah?" Mark Messier repeats, his eyebrows coming alive with rippling menace, like a pair of Doberman pinschers straining at the leash. Let us at him, boss, they growl, arching above the fire of his eyes. With effort Messier gets those two sleek, dark man-eaters under control, and they lie down watchfully. "One last hurrah is not a language I'm speaking," says Messier, the 35-year-old New York Rangers captain. "Sometimes I feel like I could play for another 10 years. And there's still only a handful of guys who can put up the numbers Wayne can. He's skating as well as he has in the last three or four years." The subject, of course, is New York's off-season free-agent addition of Messier's golfing partner, the NHL's alltime leading scorer, fella by the name of Gretzky. There was a time, from 1979-80 to 1987-88, to be precise, when the one-two punch of Messier and Gretzky -- both of whom play center, one like a bull, one like a matador -- wreaked havoc throughout the league. Teammates for nine seasons during the glory days of the run-'n'-gun Edmonton Oilers, possessors of 10 Stanley Cup rings between them, winners of 11 regular-season MVP awards and three Stanley Cup MVP trophies, Messier and Gretzky are hockey's version of Ruth and Gehrig. But time reels everyone in sooner or later, and Gretzky, like Messier, will turn 36 in January. Counting playoff, Canada Cup, World Cup, All-Star, exhibition and regular-season games, these two have logged more ice time in the last 17 years than Canadian Club. Their speed has diminished, if not exactly fled, and injuries (Gretzky's back and Messier's shoulder and wrist) linger ever longer. The Gretz-and-Mess show on Broadway is certain to have irresistible commercial appeal, but how long can it possibly run? "My wife, Janet, asked me if I'd retire after this year if we won a Stanley Cup with the Rangers," Gretzky says. "I told her, 'Nope, I'll try to win another one.'" Issue date: October 7, 1996
Excerpt from: STILL GOING GREAT Were you guilty too? Had you begun to think of Wayne Gretzky as the Great One Emeritus? Did you think it was time to put Mark (Moose) Messier out to pasture? Think again. In successive games last week Gretzky and Messier of the New York Rangers covered themselves in glory, and in so doing covered the Florida Panthers with a white sheet, eliminating last season's Eastern Conference champions four games to one in their first-round playoff series. There was Gretzky, celebrating his 58th career hat trick in Game 4 in New York, followed two nights later by Messier's two-goal, three-point eruption in Florida. Note to both 36-year-old former Edmonton Oilers: Forgive us for suspecting that you were no longer capable of such heroics. We stand corrected and a bit confused. Is this 1997 or 1987? Was that Madison Square Garden Gretzky captivated in Game 4, scoring three times in a span of 6:23 in a 3-2 Rangers win, or was it Northlands Coliseum? Wherever he has traveled in his illustrious 18-year NHL career, Gretzky has amazed his teammates and coaches not just with his ability to amass points but also with his ability to remember the plays that produced them. His recall is also excellent when it comes to slights, which he harbors and uses as fuel. In this way, says Rangers winger Luc Robitaille , Gretzky is like Michael Jordan . "Say something [critical] about him, he scores 50 points. He's telling you to shut up." Whatever Gretzky was telling us with his play in this series, his voice went from a whisper to a scream. Issue date: May 5, 1997 1997-98
Excerpt from: INSIDE THE NHL Wayne Gretzky is still the game's great ambassador. He is still the NHL's most commanding presence and the only hockey player whose name is known in virtually every U.S. household. And on many nights this season the 37-year-old has still been the most magical, awe-inspiring player in the game. As of Sunday, Gretzky had scored more points (45) since Jan. 1 than anyone in the league and had moved into a tie for fourth place in scoring (81) for the season. In the Rangers' 16 games since the Olympic break, Gretzky had four three-point games and one four-assist performance. On March 18, with New York still clawing for a playoff position, he threaded a pass through traffic and onto the stick of winger Kevin Stevens , who tipped the puck past Jocelyn Thibault to beat the Canadiens 2-1 in overtime. Four days later, in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Flyers, Gretzky scored twice, including a goal to tie the game with 1:48 remaining. Then in the 3-2 loss to the Senators on March 25 that essentially eliminated the Rangers from playoff contention, Gretzky set up both of his team's goals. "People say he's lost a step," says Rangers winger Adam Graves . "But I can't imagine anyone playing better than he has the past couple of months. He draws three defenders, and he still takes over games. Playing with him is a privilege." Issue date: April 6, 1998 | |||||
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