The Great One

What discussion of the great game of ice hockey does not begin and end with Wayne Gretzky? You may or may not be a fan of the Great One, but you can no easier deny his dominance and the impact he had on the game than you can convince Rosie O’Donnell that subtle is better.

Growing up as a huge NBA enthusiast (my tenure as a fan began when I was about 8-10 years old with Julius Erving and ended with the retirement of Sir Charles Barkley), I was no Chicago Bulls fan, but once Michael Jordan entered the scene, you just knew you were seeing something special.

And like Gretzky (indeed perhaps the only viable similarity to Gretzky), whether you loved him or hated him, you certainly had to grant the man his place in sports history.

Over the years, many have been tempted to compare the likes of Wayne Gretzky’s dominance in the sport of ice hockey to Michael Jordan’s own personal statistical stranglehold on professional basketball.
Still others are tempted to compare Tiger Wood’s dominance in professional golf to the statistical marvel of the Great One.

Any such comparisons are done in vain.

Yes, each of the aforementioned superstars dominated (or is dominating) their respective sport. But no one did it with the sheer inescapable magnitude of Wayne Gretzky over his twenty year career in professional ice hockey.

To put Gretzky’s feats in perspective, if Michael Jordan were to match the Great One’s single-season scoring record---statistically speaking---he would have had to average over 70 points per game.

Gretzky started playing Junior B hockey at 14 years old, winning a challenge to existing Canadian amateur hockey rules. That first season, he won rookie of the year, totaling 60 points in 28 games.

As many well know, over his career in the NHL, Gretzky had more assists (1,963) than second place on the all-time POINTS list (Mark Messier with 1,887).

His record of 2,857 points will never be surpassed.

All said, Wayne Gretzky holds:

40 regular season records

15 playoff records

6 All-Star records

He won 4 Stanley Cups (Oilers), garnered 9 MVP awards, and was the leading scorer in the NHL 10 different seasons.

Not only is he the only player to ever tally more than 200 points in a single season, he accomplished the feat four times. He scored over 100 points in a season 13 consecutive times, with a total of 15. He also turned 50 hat tricks.

Arguably there has never been a player with such a natural sense of puck flow, ice position, and the ability to create time and space. It was said the Great One had eyes in the back of his head.

In one game, he scored on the drop of the face-off puck twice, against the same goalie.

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 Reilly, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, once proclaimed the biggest challenge of interviewing Wayne Gretzky was getting him to say anything about himself.

Whether you loved him or hated him, to deny him his place in history is impossible. He was an ambassador for the sport, and reinforced the notion that hockey could be (and is) a game of grace, skill, and honor.

The buzzer has sounded.

A Place For All Things Ice Hockey

I grew up with sports as a central focus in my life. Varsity football in the fall, varsity basketball in the winter, and track in the spring. Though I grew up in Wyoming, where the saying goes something like “colder than a witch’s breast in an iron bra”, there was no ice hockey (at least not in the early eighties). The closest I ever came to playing hockey was floor hockey in P.E., lasting for a couple of weeks each year.

Thing is, I loved it. Of course it involved no skating (which was good for me, because as a tight end and basketball forward, I felt more comfortable with my feet guiding me across terra firma)---but what it (and hockey in general) did involve was hand-eye coordination, teamwork, great game flow, and---in real ice hockey---bone-crushing hits.

Still, I knew not what I was missing. Now flash forward twenty-four years or so. My son, who just turned 16, is an ice hockey player.

Now I did not choose the sport for him, because frankly, as much as I enjoyed floor hockey in high school, to me the “real” sports were still American-style football and basketball---not to mention the fact that my son, who’s now already 6’ 3” and 190 pounds, was always a prototype build for either aforementioned sport. No, he chose it. But I find it ironic, because watching him play, and being a huge hockey fan now, I find it’s all I watch, and I have said many times, could I go back in time, and were the sport available, it’s the only sport I ever would have played.

Hockey has it all, aside from the same levels of popularity (which is ever changing). In fact, my old hometown in Wyoming even has a youth hockey program.

So this site, while it may have a flavorful blend of my own (and my son’s) experiences in ice hockey, is mostly dedicated to furthering the love and popularity of the world’s greatest sport.

Hopefully this is a site where, as it evolves, you can find a lot of useful links, reviews, information, and even some insights and anecdotes. If you’ve got a hockey story to share, links you'd like to see, or a comment to make, all are welcome here. My only request is that you be respectful and if you don’t like hockey, that’s cool---just surf somewhere else. This is a place where hockey is lived and breathed.

This is Guthrie Home Ice.

The puck has dropped.