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 don't understand it. We played two tremendous games Thursday and Saturday. The success of this team is pretty simple. We're not a great goal-scoring machine, so if we think that we're going to play that way we're never going to be successful. The success this team has had is when it has played methodically well, sound defense and doesn't give any chances to the opposition.
I'm not going anywhere. I'm still going to coach the Phoenix Coyotes. I've done nothing wrong.
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,
The biggest difference between L.A. and Edmonton was that instead of people looking at me I was looking at them.
I don't think that we as a group worked as strong early in the game as they did, and that was the difference. If you look at a team like Los Angeles, they are successful because they are pulling together in the same boat. Everybody is going in the same direction, everybody knows their responsibility and does their job.
It's the easiest thing in the game of hockey, and I was a player, that you always turn back and try to blame the goaltender. There's no excuse there. Curtis will be fine. It's not Curtis' fault that we got beat 8-4.
The last uniform was unique. And it was so different from any other team in the National Hockey League. But this one is very much of a classic look. We wanted to make it something kids would want to wear and minor hockey league teams across North America would want to wear.
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.
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.
I felt like the last three days I've defended myself over something that absolutely and unequivocally never happened, that I was not involved with. The three days have been horrible and I'm too tired, mentally and physically to talk any more about it. There's nothing for me to talk about.
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.
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.
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.
Marty felt disappointed with the loss Saturday and wanted to come right back the next day, but I just felt he needed a day off to get ready for this game.