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Lord of the Rink
After 18 Seasons in the NHL, Wayne Gretzky Still Plays Hockey With Passion and Drive
by Ken Shouler
When he was six he was skating against 10-year-olds. At the ripe
age of 11, he scored 378 goals in 69 games--not a misprint. Soon after
he was signing autographs and screening phone calls from national
magazines. Despite being selected Rookie of the Year with the World
Hockey Association, scouts in the National Hockey League had
doubts. "Too small, too slow," some scribbled in their notes. "Won't
survive the rough play," came other sage predictions. Because he was
just five feet eleven inches and 170 pounds, one wag cracked that "he
could wear a fur coat on Halloween and go out disguised as a pipe
cleaner." Even when he silenced the critics with Rookie of the Year
honors and amazing scoring feats over his first four NHL seasons, the
skepticism persisted. They said he wouldn't win a single Stanley
Cup. They were right, of course. He won four of them, all coming in a
five-year period with the Edmonton Oilers.
Now in his 18th NHL season, Wayne Gretzky has long since thrown
away the old record book and written a new one. He owns the
single-season and career records for goals, assists and points--the
greatest hat trick of them all. He began this season owning 61 NHL
records.
A mention of his vast accomplishments and a word of praise is
likely to draw a downward glance of embarrassment and a blush from
Gretzky, now sitting across the table at a diner on New York City's
Upper East Side. He picks up a box of Partagas and says, "Thanks for
the cigars." But the most he'll admit about his historical standing
right now is, "My numbers are noncomparable."
No question. A Grand Canyon exists between Wayne Gretzky's totals
and those of anyone who ever played hockey since the dawn of the
National Hockey League in 1917. While he practices, boards planes and
plays 84 games a year plus playoff contests, Gretzky's accomplishments
transcend ice surfaces and arenas. His career is nothing if not a
rendezvous with numbers, numbers in bold black ink shouting off a
page. Even Michael Jordan, a hardcourt messiah without a weakness, has
not lapped the competition to the same degree that Gretzky has. No one
has ever played hockey in Wayne's World. Moreover, it is highly
unlikely that anyone ever will. Wayne Gretzky is irrefutably the
greatest hockey player that ever lived.
But Gretzky can't rest on his laurels. His 18th season is a new
beginning. Last July the New York Rangers signed him to a two-year
deal worth $5 million a year. "I had a little extra motivation; coming
here I knew there was going to be pressure and that all eyes were on
me. I knew I just couldn't be average. So I really had to be
ready. For me, I had a little more motivation and a little more fear
in me than a lot of other guys." Part of that motivation comes from
his disappointing experience with the St. Louis Blues last season.
Gretzky had been traded to St. Louis from the Los Angeles Kings on
Feb. 27, 1996, which allowed him to hook up with his friend, the
high-scoring right winger Brett Hull. Gretzky suited up for 31
regular-season games with the Blues, then helped them beat the Toronto
Maple Leafs in the first round of the playoffs. After the Blues lost
the first two games of the next series to the Detroit Red Wings--the
best team during the regular season--coach Mike Keenan ripped Gretzky
in front of his teammates and the press for what he saw as a subpar
peformance. Several teammates knew Gretzky was suffering from back
pain, but he kept it to himself, blaming himself for the two
losses. Although the Blues rallied to win the next three games before
losing Games 6 and 7 to drop the series, Gretzky was still chafing
over the comments. He wanted the Blues to issue a no-trade guarantee
on Hull's status. They refused. He skipped the final team meeting and
withdrew his offer on a home in the St. Louis area. On July 21, he
signed the two-year deal with New York.
This season, Gretzky started strong, edging up among the
leaders in points for the first six weeks. Right before Christmas, he
led the league in scoring with 52 points, two ahead of the Pittsburgh
Penguins' high-scoring duo, Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux. But
an NHL season is a marathon, not a sprint. As funny as it seems, even
Gretzky must prove his mettle over the long haul. People will be
looking for, nay demanding, the elusive skating and slick passing that
have built the Gretzky legend. New city, new pressures, New York.
It was three years ago that the Rangers finally won the Stanley
Cup and served their long-suffering fans a drink. They also made new
converts. Sure, there were always puck heads, folks who always just
loved the game. But others never got with it. To them, hockey's
aesthetic comprised a never-ending series of fits and starts. An
intercepted pass here, a deflection there, another futile rush up the
ice--the rhythm of the game seemed to define frustration. To the
uninitiated it was a game of one-nothing and two-one scores, starring
guys named Henri, Claude and Sergei skating around in short pants. You
still heard that old joke: "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke
out." Great game? Sure. But to many, hockey was professional wrestling
on skates--a kind of vice on ice. Nothing more.
But the Rangers rose up, quieting enemy chants--and chants in
their own arena!--of "1940! 1940!" That was the pre-war date when they
had last won the Stanley Cup. They elevated the game. Since then there
have been high expectations. The guys in the green seats are getting
hungry and need feeding. They still have the captain of the 1994 team,
Mark Messier, and with Gretzky tossed in they have to be saying, "Why
not us, again?" They'd like to get another cup.
Meanwhile, Gretzky and his wife, actress Janet Jones, and their
three children, Paulina, 8, Ty, 6, and Trevor, 4, have moved from Los
Angeles to an Upper East Side condo. While New York may represent his
last dramatic stop in hockey, it is no more fascinating than his
first.
Born in Brantford, Ontario, on Jan. 26, 1961, Wayne Gretzky was
skating at the age of two. He writes in his autobiography,
Gretzky, that when he was six his father, Walter, couldn't find
a league for him to play in, 10 being the minimum age for league play
in Brantford. But he got his chance with the 10-year-olds after
passing a tryout. He skated on the third line and tallied only one
goal that year, but still remembers his father saying to him, "Wayne,
keep practicing and one day you're gonna have so many trophies, we're
not going to have room for them all." Over the next three years, he
scored 27 goals, then 104, and then 196.
Then the miraculous became real. Just four feet four inches tall
and 11 years old, Gretzky sent ripples through Ripley's by scoring
those 378 goals in 69 games. He won the scoring race by 238
goals. Gretzky demurely attempts to explain the unfathomable by saying
that he had a break on the competition, having started skating at two,
when most kids were getting their start at six or seven. Give it up,
Wayne. There's no explaining it. Not without recourse to words like
"genius." Unfortunately, the feat also ended his innocence.
He went from Brantford boy to world prodigy in the space of a
year. He did dozens of interviews, more than all but a few NHL
players. John Herbert, a writer from a London, Ontario, newspaper,
tabbed him "The Great Gretzky." That name--and "The Great One"--have
stuck. But while his childhood should have been a carpet ride, it was
anything but. In local arenas he drew boos from parents who thought he
was a puck hog. Other "adults" showed up with stopwatches to see how
long Gretzky held the puck. They considered his goal totals flukes and
said he'd be washed up before he saw 18.
No matter. Gretzky already had a foundation with his father,
Walter. "Everything I did revolved around his life," the younger
Gretzky recalls. "We were best friends. There were hard times,
too. I'm not going to say it was all roses and peaches. He never
missed a practice, he never missed a game. We never went on holidays
because he wanted all the money to be put toward athletics and that
kind of stuff. When I was eight years old, I remember my mom, Phyllis,
saying, 'I need a new set of curtains.' And my dad said, 'Hang a
couple of sheets up. We gotta get Wayne a new pair of skates.'
"He didn't push me; he just supported me. Which is a fine
line. There's this sense that, 'If he's gonna push me, I'm gonna
quit.' Because a lot of kids think that way. But he always supported
me, gave me that chance and that opportunity, like putting the rink up
in the backyard."
The rink became known as the "Wally Coliseum." "The amazing thing
about the rink was it wasn't just a rink, it was a great rink!"
Gretzky recalls. "The ice was seven inches thick! He would get the ice
so thick that when it started to thaw in March, our rink would last
three weeks longer than anyone else's. It was about 20 feet wide by 35
feet long. If you were over 10 or 11 years old it became a little
difficult. But as a kid, eight, nine, 10 years old, you could play
four-on-four and have lots of room. I would spend hours on it.
"On Saturdays and Sundays I'd be on the ice at 7 a.m., skate until
7:30 at night and then come in and watch 'Hockey Night in Canada.'
Essentially I was on the ice the whole day. I remember on Saturdays
and Sundays Dad would sleep in. He never drank, but he loved to sit up
and watch old movies until about 3 o'clock. So some Saturdays he'd
sleep in until about 10:30 or 11. But I can remember that he was
always worried that I wasn't going to be big enough. That was always
one of his fears. He was always worried about my eating habits. I can
remember being out there at seven years old, skating by myself. At 9
o'clock in the morning, the window would open and I'd hear him yell,
'Did you eat yet?' And I'd lie and say, 'Yeah.' He'd say, 'No you
didn't. Get your ass in here!'" Gretzky laughs like a kid at the
recollection. "And he'd make me go in and make me eat and then I'd go
back out. He gave me every opportunity, he supported me."
At 17, Gretzky signed his first pro contract with the WHA for
$100,000 a year plus a $250,000 signing bonus. After playing just
eight games of the 1978-1979 season with the Indianapolis Racers, they
sold him to the Edmonton Oilers, at that time a member of the WHA.
His 43 goals and 61 assists brought the 18-year-old Rookie of the
Year honors. Edmonton then joined the National Hockey League. Despite
some predictions that he would not flourish in the NHL, Gretzky
let his play do the talking. Right from the start, Gretzky was
passing and teeing up his left-handed shot, scoring and assisting. In
his first four years his point totals (goals plus assists)
were 137, 164, 212 and 196. No one before him ever had more than
152 in a season! As a team, Edmonton won 47 games in 1982 and 48 in
1983. But the years 1980 through 1983 belonged to the New York
Islanders, one of hockey's greatest dynasties. Edmonton would make the
playoffs and even the NHL Finals in 1983 with an offensive machine
that cranked out 424 goals--5.3 per game! But the Islanders dumped
them four straight in the Finals. Now the cry became, "Gretzky can't
win a cup."
"We had respect for the Islanders," Gretzky recalls. "They didn't
like us because we were young and brash. We never showed that we
respected them; we didn't want to give an inch and kept poker faces
out there. I'm not sure how quickly we would have won a championship
if we had not studied their team and followed their example. I thought
the cornerstone of their team was [defenseman] Dennis Potvin." The
following year the Oilers hit a breakaway stride, winning 57 games.
"The most rewarding season was 1984, the first year we
won. Because after the loss to the Islanders in 1983, there was so
much talk of breaking up our team. So much media pressure saying,
'That system can't win, that style of player can't win. Trade this
guy, trade that guy.' Even though we lost in the Finals, we were
scared to death! First of all, we were young--22, 23 years old. We
were scared something would happen. We didn't know if I would be
traded or if Paul Coffey would be traded. Fortunately, Glen [Sather,
the Edmonton coach] really believed in what he had. He stuck with that
team and that group heading into that next year and there was really
nothing that was going to get in our way. We had so much respect for
the Islanders that we had learned how they beat us and what they had
to do to beat us; by the time we got back to the Finals the next year
to play them, we were so focused and ready. We were fresh and
hungry. We stole the first game, 1-0. The fourth-line guy, Kevin
McClelland, scored the goal. You can't win championships without the
14th, 15th and 20th guys contributing. He scored a huge goal."
But the Islanders, who had won a record 19 consecutive playoff
series, had no plans of going gently into that good night. "The next
game we lost, 6-1, on [Long Island]. And I remember thinking on the
bus, 'Well, we split. Let's go home and win three games.' We got back
to Edmonton and Glen just skated the shit out of us in practice. He
was screaming at us and got us so fired up. He believed in bringing
every individual down and then bringing them back twice as high. First
he told us how embarrassing we'd been in Game 2, and he really grinded
us out. After he's done all that he brought us back up. We were on
such a high that we won all three at home." Gone was that line, "Yeah,
that Gretzky is great but he hasn't won."
The Oilers won again in 1985, lost to Calgary in the Finals in
1986, and won again in 1987 and 1988. They wore Champagne and drank
from Lord Stanley's Cup four times in five years. It was after the
1988 Cup that Gretzky got introduced to cigars. "It was a
celebration. Glen got me started," he recalls. Gretzky's
father had been a cigar smoker. "My father smoked all kinds of
cigars. I used to say, 'When I make pro hockey, I'm going to smoke
cigars.' He said, 'You're not going to do either.' " He laughs again,
the child in him never far from the surface.
The celebration over a fourth Stanley Cup didn't last long. Oilers
owner Peter Pocklington was having cash problems, and to help solve
them on Aug. 9, 1988, he traded Gretzky to the Kings, along with Mike
Krushelnyski and Marty McSorley, in exchange for Jimmy Carson, Martin
Gelinas, three first-round picks and $15 million. Prior to Gretzky's
arrival, the Kings had turned in 14 sub-.500 campaigns in 21
seasons. L.A. wasn't exactly a hockey town back then. "I remember that
first summer, I spent every day going to hockey clinics and doing
interviews trying to sell the game," Gretzky told the Los Angeles
Daily News. "It didn't happen overnight, and a lot of people put
in a lot of hours. The one thing I worried about was being a $15
million bust."
He wasn't. Sharing the league scoring title with Lemieux, Gretzky
led the Kings to a 42-31-7 record in his first season with the
team. Season ticket sales soared to a club-record 14,875, and during
the next season the center was named "Athlete of the Decade" by the
Associated Press and United Press International, garnering more votes
than Joe Montana, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird combined. For the
1991-92 season the Kings sold out every game, a feat never
accomplished by the Lakers or any other L.A. sports team. The
following season, behind Gretzky's leading playoff totals of 15 goals,
25 assists and 40 points in 24 games, the Kings reached the Stanley
Cup Finals, losing to the Montreal Canadiens in five games.
The next three years, however, the Kings reverted to
mediocrity. By the middle of the 1995-96 season, Gretzky wanted a
commitment from management that it was going to make the kind of deals
necessary to produce a winner. Since the Kings wouldn't make such a
commitment, and because Gretzky was scheduled to become a free agent
after the season, the team decided to get something for him while they
could, trading him to the Blues that February for three young players:
center Patrice Tardif, forward Craig Johnson and center Roman Vopat.
At the same time Gretzky was leading the Oilers to Stanley Cups
and putting people into the seats in Los Angeles, he was also
demolishing old records. In the 1981-82 season he established
records for goals in a season, when his 92 shattered Phil Esposito's
mark of 76. The old record for points, 152, also belonged to
Espo. Gretzky blew it to smithereens that same season by posting 212!
In the 1985-86 campaign Gretzky crushed his own record of 109 assists
(Bobby Orr had held the previous record of 102) by accumulating an
amazing 163. When there were no records left to break, he broke and
rebroke his own records. Aside from holding the career marks in
goals, assists and points, Gretzky now owns eight of the top 10
seasonal marks for points, four of the top 10 records for goals and
nine of the top 10 marks for assists.
While fine players such as Lemieux and the Philadelphia Flyers'
Eric Lindros have come along, they have not--and in all probability
will not--even remotely approach Gretzky's totals. "You know, when I
was doing it, I didn't even realize what I was doing," Gretzky
says. "Some of the records that I have, some of the things I did. I
wish..." He pauses. "I really didn't savor any of the moments. You
know what I mean? The only time I really savored it was when I lifted
the Stanley Cup, the four times I got to do that. I can remember each
time what I was thinking and how I was feeling when I lifted the cup."
The comparisons had already begun. He was being measured against
players like Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Maurice Richard, Guy
LeFleur and a handful of others in the pantheon of hockey greats. The
comparisons are instructive. But one gets the eerie sense that the
comparisons are old already, like the stuff of museums. Everyone likes
to recite the skills of players of his region or era. New Englanders
tend to favor Orr. Chicagoans recall the blistering 100 mile per hour
shot of Bobby Hull. Hockey aficionados from the 1940s through 1960s
sing the praises of Gordie Howe. Has Gretzky eclipsed them?
And Howe. There was a time when you could make a case for Howe or
Orr. That time has passed. Nearly a decade ago, Gretzky had already
locked up the hockey record book like Bill Gates locked up
computers. An all-around player, Gordie Howe had 1,850 points in 26
years of NHL play. Gretzky broke that record on Oct. 15, 1989, at
Edmonton, at the very beginning of his 11th season! Orr was a
great defender and an extraordinarily exciting player who, by virtue
of his dazzling skating, could play defense offensively. He is a Hall
of Fame player. But his goals and assists give him 915 points, about
one third of Gretzky's total of 2,660 (through Dec. 22). Knee
injuries forced Orr to retire early; his career was essentially over
in 1975, when he was just 27. Howe himself once surmised, "If you want
to tell me Gretzky's the greatest player of all time, I have no
argument at all."
Gretzky demurs. "I don't think there's any question that the two
greatest players of all time are Gordie Howe and Bobby Orr. They were
special for the game, they excelled, they were champions, they carried
themselves with class. There's no comparison to those two guys; they
were the best. There are a lot of other guys who have done so much for
the game. Mark Messier is a great example. Can you say he's better
than Gordie Howe or Bobby Orr? I don't know. That's up for other
people to debate. But what he's done for the game has been special. No
one else has done that. He's captured a city, he's won six
championships. He's one of the ultimate team players of all time. He's
dedicated to the game."
But, uh, Wayne, what about the numbers you've put up? "I was
fortunate, I really was. I came along at the right time. I was with
the right group, the right teacher, the right coach. For me it was
perfect." But your assists, your points..."I'd rather talk about other
guys. Hey listen, when I'm at home and lying in bed with my wife, I
tease her a little bit, I can have my moment. I can have my moments of
telling her how good I think I am." And no doubt she agrees? "No, she
doesn't. And that's why I like to tell her!" he says with a laugh.
"I'm just not a big believer in people who like to brag. I know
what I've accomplished and I'm proud of it. I love the game and I'm
proud of what I've done. I'm not going to tell you I'm not. Some of it
amazes me, I can honestly tell you. There are some records that I
don't think will ever be broken--92 goals will be tough." Not to
mention nine Hart trophies (given to the league's most valuable
player each season) and 10 Ross trophies (given to the player with
the most points).
While Gretzky may not be prone to boasting, there's no shortage of
praise from players and coaches who have seen him perform. Former
Kings head coach Parker MacDonald said "trying to stop Wayne is like
throwing a blanket over a ghost." A case in point was the night he
became the fastest 50-goal scorer of all time. Entering the Dec. 31,
1981, game--his 39th of the season--with 45 goals, Gretzky scored five
that night against Philadelphia. "This was absolutely crazy," the
Flyers' Bobby Clarke said afterwards. "At least with Bobby Orr you'd
see him wind up in his own end and you could try to set up some kind
of defense to stop him. Gretzky comes out of nowhere. It's scary."
The Great One likes to set up behind the net, a place that has
come to be known as "Gretzky's Office." From there he tallies
many of his assists. "Once he's there," says former Hartford Whalers
goalie Mike Liut, "your mind is on the guy he's going to pass to, but
you can't take your eyes off Wayne." Liut found that out firsthand one
game, in memorable fashion. "He once flipped it from behind there, off
my neck and in," recalls Liut, who played against Gretzky for 12
seasons. "Wayne's two favorite plays are finding the guy no one else
but him can see, and losing himself in your end. He's a genius." Even
his skating made opponents wary. Says Liut, "I'd see him come down the
ice and immediately start thinking, 'What don't I see that Wayne's
seeing right now?' "
Janet Jones walks into the restaurant, taking a seat as Gretzky's
arm curls around her. While he continues talking, she scoops up
a morning paper to see what's being said about the Rangers'
early-season performance. Of late they have been playing like the New
York Strangers. They lost the previous night to Vancouver and the
headline writers are starting to warm up, printing banners like
"Broadway Blews." The Rangers are scoring one, two or three goals a
night. Their offense seems headed nowhere. Gretzky has been passing
well, so well that his slick maneuvers have at times surprised his
mates, who haven't exactly performed like Power Rangers. Madison
Square Garden analyst and former player John Davidson has said that if
Gretzky had a scorer on his line, he'd have another 20 assists. "You
can use an analogy with Magic Johnson," says the affable
Davidson. "When Johnson was at his best and dished the ball off, he
didn't really know where it was going, and as a receiver you might get
surprised by it. Here, with the way Gretzky moves the puck to his
teammates, you kind of don't expect it. It takes a while to get used
to it."
Gretzky reaches across to read the morning paper. "What deals are
they making?" he asks his wife. The Rangers are on a losing
streak. "Everyone has been saying, 'You are the only one that is
playing well,'" he says. "But the goaltending has been good, too. When
you are going through a tough stretch as a team, you all look bad as
individuals. The bottom line in sports--I don't know about basketball
but I do know hockey--when things are bad as a group, you all look
horrible as individuals. In our sport you've gotta all be on the same
page."
Jones checks out the box of Partagas. "Unfortunately, you can't
light up here," I mention. "Aw c'mon; it's New Yawwwk," she says,
kiddingly. Can Gretzky light up at the Official All-Star Cafe in Times
Square? "Sure, you can smoke there," he says, "they don't have a
problem with that." Being a part owner helps. He recently
brought his teammates to see a tape of the Holyfield-Tyson fight after
hours and the smoke was probably as thick as a curtain that night. But
the Cafe doesn't allow smoking. Does he smoke in his home, around
Jones and the children? "Never," he says.
"I like a nice small cigar. It's funny, because when I go up to
Canada, people will say, 'We need good Cuban cigars.' I find that the
cigars are good here, you know. They're mild. I smoke with the guys;
it's a chance to relax. It's one of these mental things. You've got to
find the right time to relax." To be sure, Gretzky is not a two-a-day
smoker. He smokes irregularly, but he enjoys a range of cigars. "I
like Ashton 898s, Dunhills, Cohibas, Hoyo de Monterreys and
Macanudos," Gretzky says. "I like mild, creamy cigars, usually about a
44 ring size." Jones recently bought him a humidor. His agent,
Mike Barnett, recalls that after Kings games in Los Angeles, where
Gretzky played for seven and a half seasons, they would go to
places like Adrianos and Mateos and smoke. Since he doesn't frequent
his smoking haunts in Los Angeles anymore, he is apt to smoke on the
golf course.
He also had more space in California. He and his family moved from
Thousand Oaks, California, where space is measured in acres, to an
Upper East Side condo where space is parceled out in square
feet. "It's a big change; we had a pretty big house in L.A., on a golf
course. I like [the change]. My father was blue-collar. I grew up with
four boys in one bedroom and my kids are going to grow up
differently. I like the fact that everything is a little more
condensed right now. Coming into the apartment it's different; they
can't kind of go this way or that way. They had their own rooms in
L.A., a lot of freedom, a lot of free space, open space," he says,
sounding like a man who has made his career finding and negotiating
that open space.
"Now it's a little more compact; it teaches them how to live and
work with each other more in this environment. In California it was a
lot tougher driving them to school, because you travel more in L.A.
[In New York] I'm able to spend more time in taking them to school,
picking them up and that sort of thing."
Being just one star among many, Gretzky once said that he could
get lost in Los Angeles. "In New York, it's totally different. But I
really do enjoy living here. I like the energy. Before I came to New
York, people said, 'You can't go there, people are crazy. Are you
foolish? What are you thinking about going there for?' I've honestly
found it to be the exact opposite. I really enjoy the people; they
can't be nicer. People on the streets are very polite. They're sports
fans and they wanna talk. And that's okay. I don't mind talking
sports. I'm a big fan myself. Unless I've gotta go somewhere or do
something, I don't mind. People know who I am and sometimes stop and
say, 'How you doin'?' and want to talk and want an autograph."
His family is adapting to the New York life. "We do a little bit
of everything. We went to the World Series, go to the movies. Since we
moved we're trying to reorganize our lives and get situated. It's kind
of a hectic time, organizing the apartment and getting the kids in
schools and then getting them involved in activities from piano to ice
hockey. My daughter's on the swim team. She's been swimming for a
couple of years and she's the most competitive. She has mine and
Janet's competitive level."
For Jones, relocating to Manhattan has its advantages. "I'm more
involved with the kids being in New York," she says. "I'm walking them
here and I'm taking them there. And I think it's good right now,
because the adjustment is so different than an L.A. life that it's
important that I'm there for them. So Wayne is with the Rangers and
the kids are in school and I'll be the third wheel to get my life in
order. But it's important that they get settled first."
While the family is getting acclimated, Jones, who once
graced the cover of Life magazine, is trying to get back in the
swing of things as an actress. Though she grew up in St. Louis, the
trip back to New York is a bit of a return home: she did A Chorus
Line and The Flamingo Kid in the city. But with a
family to look after, "I haven't really gotten my routine together
yet. But it will come," she says. "I'd love to break back into the
business somehow. No one really knows I want it; I have to get back
out there."
Jones has been away from acting for eight years, since her first
child was born. "I think once you've done it," she says, "you always
get that feeling to go back out. It's hard to let go. Being in New
York or Los Angeles makes you feel like it's in your back yard and
that you should be involved, and you feel like you're left out of the
party if you're not working." Whether she makes her comeback on screen
or stage or TV makes no difference to her. "Of course, everyone wants
to be on the screen, but sometimes it's more important to try to be on
the stage or TV."
While it was hard to give up her career, the rewards were
substantial. "The kids have been great," says Jones. "But I think they
would have fun watching me work, too. Wayne would love for me to work;
a lot of people think that he wouldn't, but he really would."
Jones' transition to New York has been eased by Gretzky's
connection to sports. "I love sports, I love athletes," says the
actress, who has dabbled in aerobics and kick boxing. "I always felt
that I would have been a better athlete than an actress or a
dancer. Because I have that mentality; I like being around it, and I
love it, I respect it." Sports, in fact, was responsible for bringing
her and Wayne together; they began dating after a 1987 National
Basketball Association playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and
Boston Celtics.
Will Gretzky steer his kids toward hockey? "Both my wife and I
think that sports are good for kids for a lot of things--having fun
with other kids, if they're busy doing sports it means they're staying
out of trouble. We're kind of big believers in athletics for kids. But
I really have to be careful, especially with my first son, Ty; I
didn't want him to think that I would ever pressure him into being a
hockey player.
"I was telling my wife the other day about when I was six how much
of a passion I had for the game. I would design an ice rink on a
page. I was six years old and I would sit down in front of the TV with
a pen and I'd watch the puck on TV and I'd follow the puck for the
whole period. And when there was a whistle I'd stop. And my dad would
say, 'What are you doin'?' And I said, 'I'm following the puck.' I
just wanted to see who's got the puck more, where all the play is,
where all the action is. At the end of the period, you would see heavy
lines in one certain area, or maybe on one end if a team is
dominating. I was telling my wife, 'I don't know why I did it.' " No
wonder, then, that his father saw his greatness coming before Wayne
did. "He knew," says Gretzky. "He said, 'I don't know why or how you
have this passion, but if you don't lose your love for the game,
you'll be something special. You have this passion for the game and
you'll go far.'
"On Saturdays, the games would come on at 8 o'clock. My father
would say, 'You can watch two periods and then you gotta go to bed at
9:30.' I used to live a lot with my grandparents. [My grandmother]
lived on a farm and I used to spend part of the summers there. I just
remember begging my dad to take me out there Saturday and pick me up
to take me home Sunday. Saturday night my grandmother would let me
watch the whole game! That was the biggest reason for me wanting to go
there. I'd sit there and watch the whole 'Hockey Night in Canada' game
for three hours."
There may be an athlete in some time or some place who loved his
sport as much, but it is difficult to imagine one loving it more. But
can that love be sustained, 30 years later? Is his love for the game
as great now? "It's a different kind of love, now," he says,
attempting an explanation. "I love the game. I always have really
enjoyed myself on the ice."
"Do you love me as much as you loved me when you married me?"
Jones cuts in. "Nine years?"
"I always rate hockey one, hockey two and you three," Gretzky
says. She laughs. Then he reconsiders. "I think hockey one, hockey
two, hockey three and you four. The hockey itself is kind of easy,
that's the funny part. You know what I mean? When you get to play the
game? You never lose that. That's what we love to do, that's our
enjoyment. What's hard about it is everything we go through, like
travel, the hotels. That part becomes tougher. I don't dislike it; I
love being around the guys."
"As you get older, you get more set in your ways," Jones
adds. "When you come home it's your own bed. You know how when you get
older you want to do things the way you want to do them. When you're
young, you're more flexible."
"The other side of it is, it's not like I dislike it," Gretzky
explains. "I never have not liked every part of the game. I don't mind
flying right now, whereas 15 years ago I hated flying. I couldn't get
on an airplane. So I hated that part of the game at that time."
When it comes to flying, Gretzky was every inch as bad as Dustin
Hoffman's autistic character in Rain Man, who would only fly
Quantas or else he went screaming out of the airports. "I was that
bad," Gretzky affirms. "If it wasn't for Air Canada, I probably
wouldn't have been able to play. Because in those days Air Canada--and
I think still the way it is now--when I got on the plane, I knew every
pilot in Canada, and they'd say, 'You want to sit up here? You want to
relax?' I used to sit in the cockpit on every trip!" Gretzky got peace
of mind and the pilots got autographs.
"I can remember--this is no lie--I can remember playing a game
Sunday night at home in Edmonton and literally not being to sleep all
night because we were going to fly the next morning at 7! Not being
able to sleep, just lying there, getting on the plane and being so
tired and having a four-hour flight to Toronto, and yet I couldn't
sleep. I sat there talking to the pilot, scared to death, and getting
off the plane and going to practice for an hour. If I wasn't 22 years
old.... I couldn't do it now. But fortunately I got over that fear of
travel. That was probably the closest reason for me not liking it. The
other side is that I love getting on the back of the bus and sitting
with all the guys, rubbing shoulders with the guys."
At his age and stage Gretzky can wax philosophical about his
career and what led to his success. "You know what the biggest gifts
of the great athletes are? Their love and passion for the game. If you
said to Larry Bird, 'You know what, Larry, you gotta go out and shoot
baskets and practice for two hours.' You know what he'd say? 'Take a
flying hike!' But if you say to him, 'Are you going to go to a movie
tonight, are you going to go out with the guys for dinner?' 'No I'm
going to shoot baskets,' he might say. That was his passion. He didn't
think he was practicing." To Gretzky, hitting the ice never felt like
work; never 'I have to' but more 'I'm going to.'
"It's like me. Parents come up to me all the time and say, 'I've
read your autobiography. I tell my son he's gotta practice, practice,
practice. Will you talk to him?' I say, 'Hey listen, lady, it wasn't
practice for me. I never one time got up on a Saturday morning and
said, "I gotta go practice for eight hours today.' If I would have
thought that, I would never have gone on the ice! My friends would
say, 'We're going to go watch a game or my dad is taking us here, what
are you going to do?' 'I'm gonna go skate,' I'd say. I just loved
it. I got up in the morning and went and did it. That's what God gave
them, that's their gift. That's the extra special thing they have, the
extra passion and love to want to excel.
"And the other thing is great athletes have a fear of not wanting
to be a failure. I know myself that I have this fear that drives me; I
don't want to embarrass myself. You don't want to not be
successful. And I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the great athletes
have that. It's a fear--'I'm gonna be ready, I've gotta be ready.'"
But what else does he have that many others don't? People say that
Johnson and Bird saw the game unfold before other people did, that
they had a sixth sense. NBC broadcaster Matt Guokas once said that
Larry Bird "saw the game in slow motion."
"Everybody tries to figure it out," Gretzky says. "Everybody tries
to figure out this concept of seeing more than other guys. Or 'seeing
it from above.' They tell me that if I do something on the ice and I
come back to the bench and they say, 'That was a great play. How did
you do that?' Or, 'Can you do that again?' I don't know; it's
instinctive. I can't; I couldn't go out there and recreate it.
"My dad was a great teacher of the game. I can't teach. My wife is
always saying to me, 'Teach your boys.' And I'm not a good teacher. I
know it's in my head and I know what I'm thinking. But taking it from
here to here," he says pointing to his head and then to his arms,
"with a pass to there is hard for me. It really is. The basics of
stick handling and all that--anybody can teach that. But the game
itself." He pauses. "I think the biggest thing is that I have the
ability to slow everything down. The game is high-speed, it's
played at a high level. So everything is created of an instinct and
quick decisions. And when athletes have that ability to make that
decision, whether it is to be ahead of everyone else or to slow
everything down to be ready for that--I don't know exactly what it
is."
How long will he play before retiring? How will he handle it? "The
hardest thing of all is to find the same high," he says. "Something
that's really going to absorb you. And I don't think I'll ever find
that. I think that whatever I do, I have to make it secondary. I can't
engulf myself in something that is going to be time-consuming and is
going to take over my life again. I can honestly say for myself that
when it is over, it is going to be a huge change. Because, like my
wife says, 'I'm used to the routine.' Every day for the last 20 years
of pro hockey, I've been getting up and going to practice at 11
o'clock. Basically my day consists of about 8 to 2; those are my work
hours on non-game days. And on game days it's about 4 to 11. It's
going to be a huge change between morning and night.
"My family--my kids and my wife--have been so good to me and
understanding my focus in what I'm doing right now, so when I am done,
my focus, my attention should be number one on them in whatever I
do. I don't know what that'll be right now. Someone asks me if I want
to coach. I don't want to coach right now. No, I don't want to be a
GM. I couldn't tell a guy, 'You're going to be traded.' I can't do
that. General managers are the ones that have to stand up and tell the
truth. But I love the game and I'd like to stay involved at the
ownership level."
For now, Gretzky is in good health and could probably play
until he's 40. "I can, but I don't know if I want to," he says. What
about statistical markers, like 3,000 points; will they motivate him
to stay? "I'd like to get 3,000 points. But it's not one of those
things I get up in the morning and say, 'This is what I need to
accomplish before I retire.' In baseball people say, 'When I reach
3,000 hits, it's really special.' I haven't really thought about
it. After this two-year contract I'll sit down and think what I'm
going to do with my life and what's going to happen. When we're
playing well and we're winning, I say, 'I can play a long time here,
another 10 years, I hope.'
"I haven't really talked about this before. I don't think the
reason that I retire is going to have a lot to do with hockey. For me,
a professional athlete has to be selfish. You really do. You have to
put everything you do ahead of anything else in your life. Practice
time, workout time in the off-season, travel for the team--everything
has to be focused on the game itself. For me that has been my
priority. What ultimately would drive me away from the game is that I
would no longer want to be selfish with my time. That will be more of
a deciding factor than anything else. My daughter had a
father-daughter day at her school. And I told her, 'I'm going to be
out of town.' And it bothered her a lot that I couldn't be
there. Every athlete has to do that.
"I have a good wife. My family gets put on the back burner,"
Gretzky admits. "When things aren't going well, a lot of guys come
home and they're miserable, they're cranky. I'm the kind of guy where
I kind of wear my emotions on my sleeve. If we do lose, I try to come
home and be happy around the kids. But it's hard, because it's our
life. There are only peaks and valleys, there are no in-betweens. The
other day I was with my daughter, and she said, 'Just because you lost
doesn't mean you have to take it out on me.' She's aware of it."
Whether he retires in two years or five years, Gretzky will be
financially set. He's had the same Midas touch with corporate America
that he's had with the blade of a stick. In the early and mid-1980s he
licensed lunch kits, wristwatches, tabletop hockey games and
bedspreads. He's now doing the big stuff, while those other trinkets
fall off to the younger players. He was the first athlete to host
NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and one of only a handful of jocks to be
painted by Andy Warhol and LeRoy Neiman. He did the first
U.S. network broadcast of a 3-D commercial, for Coca Cola. For Nike
he's done the "Bo Knows" everything but hockey commercial and a clever
bit with actor Dennis Leary.
Putting his name on foods has worked as well. For nine years
Gretzky endorsed Pro*Stars Cereal for General Mills in Canada. He was
also the first human to appear on a Campbell's soup label. His image
adorned 55 million cans in the United States; somewhere, Warhol
regrets missing that particular confluence of product and athlete. But
the artist would have been confused by the a little byline on each
label that read: "Check out the Great One on the Internet at
www.gretzky.com." Gretzky's virtual reality Web site recently went on
line with a company called Sportsline USA.
Speaking of food, the Official All Star Cafe is another Gretzky
venture. Gretzky, Ken Griffey Jr., Andre Agassi, Joe Montana,
Shaquille O'Neal and Monica Seles are equal partners with Robert Earl,
founder of Planet Hollywood. Marry Planet Hollywood to a sports
restaurant and the offspring is the All Star Cafe, a
33,000-square-foot place as gargantuan as Macy's. The Cafe opened in
Times Square in December 1995. "There are 40-plus Planet Hollywoods,"
says Gretzky agent Barnett, "and the plan is to build that many
All-Star Cafes." In 1996, a second opened in Cancún, Mexico,
and a third in Las Vegas. Others are planned this year for Chicago
(what will Jordan say?) and Atlantic City. The stock for the Cafe
came onto the market at $18, after a few days topped at $31 and was
skating along at $24 in December.
If you think that the Cafe is a large enough venture to keep tabs
on, think again. Gretzky is also partners with a group in San Diego
that is building Wayne Gretzky Roller Hockey Centers, each of which
are $4 million projects. Hockey rinks, mini-rinks and bleachers,
target areas for shooting, a retail store and a McDonald's--all will
co-exist under one dome. Construction of the first center in Irvine,
California, was scheduled to be completed in January.
California is a logical choice. Gretzky's arrival in 1988 to play
for the Kings changed the entire West Coast's view of the game. There
are hockey franchises in Anaheim and San Jose where there were none
before. A Minnesota-based-company, First Team Sports,
was in the early development stages of in-line skating and was a
pioneer in in-line boots and skates. Gretzky went with the firm at the
time hockey mania in California was just beginning. First Team Sports'
stock went from $1.12 to $18 on NASDAQ and split twice.
The topper came recently when Gretzky got to appear with his
children in three Sharp View Cam commercials, just as he and his
father once appeared together in a Coke commercial, and he and his
mother in a cereal spot.
Gone is the age when athletes limp toward retirement. "He has been
around this league a long time and won," says sports analyst
Davidson. "Yet he still has a burning desire to continue to play
well. He doesn't have to. He's financially set; he doesn't have to do
what he does. But he still does." And he still does it well.
In a recent game against Philadelphia, Gretzky slid a blind pass
between his legs toward a wide-open teammate. Late in the game he
stationed himself near the enemy goal, causing a Flyers player
shadowing him to take a penalty. "He is still the best passer in the
league," says Norman MacLean, who covers hockey for Reuters and has
written for such publications as The Hockey News since
1955. ["Pitts-burgh's] Sergei Zubov is second. But Zubov
hesitates too long and always tries to pass; Gretzky kind of knows
when to shoot." And is he the best ever? "Oh, yeah," MacLean
responds in about the time it took Gretzky to whip that blind
pass. "He's first, Howe is second.
"He's not what he was; his reflexes are probably a hair off. But
he really has peripheral vision and knows where everybody is. Not
where they should be but where they are. There's a difference."
Gretzky is now 36, not 25, and no longer smears old record
books with Wite-Out every year. But he's still one of the
game's most gifted players, and he has been more
responsible than any single player for bringing hockey to the
prominence it enjoys in the 1990s.
In law, there's something called the burden of proof. In
hockey, that burden falls on any future player who wants to
challenge the Gretzky legacy. Those who love the game can only hope
that someone comes close.
Kenneth Shouler, a frequent contributor to Cigar Aficionado
from White Plains, New York, is the author of The Experts Pick
Basketball's Best 50 Players in the Last 50 Years (All Sports
Books, 1997).
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