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
Over the last couple of months, I've really been leaning toward stepping in and taking on this responsibility, ... I'm really excited about it. I'm really excited to be back in the locker room and back on the ice. I'm sort of back on the hot seat. And I'm looking forward to it. I don't have to sit up top anymore. I can be on the ice. That's the part I'm looking forward to.
If this is not decided in the next few days, I'm scared we could be looking at a year, a year and a half, two years, not just three months like a lot of people thought in September. From April to October, the players don't get paid, so I can't see us coming to an agreement in August or September. If we don't find a way to make everyone who is part of this sort of happy and get a deal done, we could be looking at a long, long time before hockey is played in the NHL and that's very alarming too. I hope in the next couple of weeks we can come to an agreement.
I basically told him he's been a big part of our team, and we're not going to just give him away; we're not going to loan him to any team. I was honest with him. If we were offered a couple of really good, young players that would help us for a long time we'd have to seriously consider it . . . . But we're not phoning people, we're not calling teams. At this point in time, I don't anticipate moving Curtis.
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.
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.
My best friend had a hockey scholarship at Ohio State, so I would get a couple of pairs at the beginning of the season and send them down to him. They practised two hours a day. He'd skate in them for three weeks then ship them back.
We finally feel like we have a pretty good hockey club here and I wanted to be a part of that, simple as that,
We have a lot of hurdles to overcome, but there's a definite light in the tunnel here. Are we satisfied with what's happened (this season)? Absolutely not. But more and more pieces of the puzzle are in place.
Our Achilles' heel has been killing penalties at home. They get a power play goal and it's a 2-1 hockey game. You get the number of points they have as a team by hard work, and we knew they weren't going to quit by any means.
You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
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.
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.
I won't let my son go on the ice without a helmet and a visor on.
We didn't get into it, other than she was concerned about Rick and she felt that it was a tough situation for him and that she would sit down at some point and answer questions that everybody has for her and be her own person.