Wayne Gretzky
Wayne Gretzky
Wayne Douglas Gretzky CCis a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former head coach. He played 20 seasons in the National Hockey Leaguefor four teams from 1979 to 1999. Nicknamed "The Great One", he has been called "the greatest hockey player ever" by many sportswriters, players, and the NHL itself. He is the leading scorer in NHL history, with more goals and more assists than any other player. He scored more assists than any other player scored total points,...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionHockey Player
Date of Birth26 January 1961
CityBrantford, Canada
CountryCanada
He was an exceptional leader who was unselfish, hardworking and dedicated. He truly loved the game. He was the best player I ever played with.
He works harder than any athlete I've ever been around as far as off-season conditioning goes. He's a maniac . . . I see him playing another three years no question. He could be our ( Julio ) Franco .
He just has to get off to the kind of start that he's capable of and it's as simple as that.
Let me tell you, if Luongo doesn't play the way he did in the Czech game, we don't win the World Cup. It's as simple as that. And we now know what a guy like him can do.
That second goal sort of broke our back. Lenny probably would like to have that one back and keep it a 1-0 game. The intensity level from their team was a lot higher tonight than when we played them a few weeks ago in Phoenix.
Their goaltender made some key saves in the second period. If not for that, we could have been tied up.
I'm truly honored to be the first person to appear on the Campbell's Soup can. I intend to score a lot of points this year to help the Rangers and to feed the hungry.
I'm happy for Todd, ... He worked his rear-end off he was at every meeting and invested his own money and his own time. I hope this does great, because he's put a lot of time and energy into it. My son has seen this movie 21 times.
I'll be honest with you, when I was 22, 23, 24, I never thought I'd be a coach in the NHL. But I'm excited about the challenge . . . . The last couple of weeks I've been following my son's baseball team around and I kind of got the itch to coach, as silly as that sounds.
Not much really to add to what I said two days ago. Nothing for me to talk about. I'm not involved. It's been a hard week for my family.
In our game, every now and then we get very lucky that we get a true superstar, great team leader and great person -- and he's that guy,
By no means am I Scotty Bowman, but I know the game, I love the game, I have a really good staff and we have a really good team. It's exciting. I haven't felt this way since I was 17.
But you know it's time to move forward. We will invite him to our training camp. He's an elite player and I expect him to have a great year and be part of Team Canada come February in Italy.
If I bet on sports ? I would never embarrass Team Canada or the country or hockey ? I would phone (NHL commissioner) Gary Bettman and Bob Nicholson right now and say you know what, I resign, it's over, even if I made a $1 bet.