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
I like how hard this team played (on the trip) and how unselfish it was. . . . We're playing as a group and that's most important. The outcomes have been better because we're playing better as a group.
I'm really excited about the team we've put together in the last 12 months, ... We've added speed, skill and character, and I really believe we're going to be a good team.
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.
It was a hard fought game, our guys played a tough game. They're a team that plays really hard and our guys really came to work tonight.
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.
There is so much parity in the game, there are so many teams that are stronger, and it is much tougher to get 400 wins now. There is such a fine line between winning and losing, so to accomplish something like that in this era is pretty special.
This team seems to be more talented. Whether we win or not though remains to be seen.
What records show is consistency, and that's what he's been in his career. He's been a professional and been liked with every team he's been with.
The success of Team Canada got me interested in teaching again which is something I really enjoy doing,
Rick worked with him a little bit and showed him a couple of things. It was a nice deflection, nice goal, and that's the way you're going to beat a team like that. You're going to get kind of a weird goal, crash the net. Fancy plays aren't going to work against that team; they're too good.
They played like a team that was desperate to win and we played like a team that was standing around. Not battling and taking penalties. You win and lose as a group. No question tonight it's a total team effort as far as the loss went. We had no battle and had no fight.
It's nice to see that line going. It takes a lot of pressure off the whole team when you have a line that can be that strong.
When your leading goal scorer and your best player has 15 goals, you've got to play airtight. When we play airtight, we're a tough team to play against. When we believe that we can throw pucks in the middle, backhand passes, plays like that - and it's not one guy, it's a group effort - then we're in trouble.
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,