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  In a sport where a fifty-goal season is considered excellent, he had a fifty-goal weekend. Granted, it was a long weekend and he was in a hockey tournament, but even so, fifty goals in four days is an astonishing achievement.

  He was thirty months old when he started skating, and he played on his first organized team when he was six. It was a team of ten-year-olds, and Gretzky made the cut as a five-year-old. But when the organizers learned he was only five, they told him he was ineligible. They did, however, let him play the next year.

  That was his first season in organized hockey. He got one goal. In his second year, he got 27. In his third year, he got 104 goals and 63 assists in 62 games. In his fourth year, he got 196 goals and 120 assists in 76 games. In his fifth year, he got 378 goals and 120 assists in 72 games.

  If you’re going from one goal to 378 in the space of five seasons, you’re doing it with a lot more than just hard work. If mere hard work were the answer, every one of the NHL’s six Sutter brothers would have scored 300 goals every year he was in the league.

  It should also be noted that throughout the developmental phase of his hockey career, Gretzky was always playing against kids who were older than him—up to six years older. Most NHL players have birthdays in the early months of the year because, when they were growing up and being selected for rep teams, an extra few months often made a significant difference in development. Gretzky has the ideal hockey birth month—January—but having a few extra months on his side made no difference. He was giving away years.

  As most people know, that’s why he tucked in one corner of his sweater. The rest of the kids on the team were always bigger, so to avoid having his sweater around his ankles, he would tuck in one corner.

  Years later, when Nike paid vast amounts of money to have NHL teams use their sweaters, they were horrified to learn that the side of the jersey that featured their trademark swoosh was the side that Gretzky tucked into his pants. They redesigned the sweaters and moved the swoosh.

  Like many youngsters, Gretzky worked to develop his hockey skills, but it appears to be his mental approach to the game that set him apart. First of all, at every stage of his life, he was determined to succeed in his chosen field. But he also had an intuitive sense about the game, an awareness that can’t be taught.

  Coach Mike Keenan saw it firsthand during the 1987 Canada Cup when his team was playing against the United States.

  “Wayne was just so incredible,” he said. “It was in Hamilton and the building is full and everybody is cheering and he was coming down the ice in the neutral zone on the far side from our bench. He was going down the boards as fast as he can, and all of a sudden, he just makes a ninety-degree turn at the red line to the referee and says, ‘They’ve got too many men on the ice.’

  “Sure enough, they did. There wasn’t one person in the whole building who knew it, but he did. I got the sense that he knew where all his friends were sitting in the building as well. That was scary, but that’s how perceptive he was.”

  Gretzky’s good friend and longtime teammate Paul Coffey had no doubt Keenan’s recollection was accurate.

  “I saw him do that umpteen times during games with Edmonton,” he said long after both of them had retired. “He’d be skating down the ice and yelling at the ref, and I’d say, ‘What the hell is he yelling about?’

  “He’d be going down the ice with the puck, yelling, ‘Too many men on the ice. Too many men on the ice.’ ”

  That was the factual part. Then Coffey started laughing and added the bit that has become part of the standard embellishment as the story grew over the years. “He’d say, ‘I’ve just gone around five guys. I’m going around my sixth …” Gretzky and I talked about that faculty during a chat in 2013, and I mentioned his ability to both evaluate players and recall all the aspects of every game. “I could pick that up pretty quickly,” he agreed. “I was like Scott Bowman. I could remember every player in the game.”

  Then he laughed and said, “Now I can’t remember anything in life, but I can still remember everything that happened in a hockey game. My wife tells me that I’m supposed to pick up some milk on the way home and I forget, but I can remember everything about hockey.”

  His uncanny ability not only to know where everyone was on the ice, but to be able to recall it has often been demonstrated. When he started with the Oilers, videotape equipment was expensive, so the Oilers didn’t have any. Most games weren’t televised, so the team couldn’t get a tape from the broadcaster.

  If the Oilers’ coaching staff was mulling over a botched play from the night before, coach Glen Sather would go to Gretzky and get him to describe where everyone had been on the ice at the time things went wrong.

  “If you ever stop and talk to him about a game, he can recall every play,” Sather said. “He could tell me not only where everybody on our team was on the ice at any time, he could tell you where everybody on the other team was on the ice. He always knew. He was like a human videotape machine.”

  Gretzky laughed when I mentioned Sather’s observations to him. “It was fear,” he said. “I was always the smallest kid on the ice. I wanted to know where everyone was so that I could stay away from them. People say I’ve got great peripheral vision. It’s just awareness. I was always so much smaller than everyone else, I had to be alert.”

  Let’s face it, hockey—more so then than now—is riddled with headhunters. As long as Gretzky played, there was never any shortage of opponents who were quite willing to take him out using illegal tactics.

  Whether we like it or not, physical violence is part of hockey’s heritage, even at the highest level. Bobby Clarke’s premeditated slash that broke Valeri Kharlamov’s ankle in the 1972 Summit Series is a prime example.

  During the 1994 NHL lockout, there were whispers that some players might break union ranks and play for replacement teams. “They can do it if they want,” said NHL Players’ Association vice-president Ken Baumgartner, who had been a teammate of Gretzky’s, “but the rest of us will be back someday and they should remember that hockey is a game which lends itself well to retribution.”

  Anyone who understands hockey accepts that intimidation is part of the game. Hockey is a physical sport, and to many of us, that is one of its attractions. But unfortunately, the level of violence often exceeds reasonable bounds, and that is why Gretzky had to stay alert. It is not an exaggeration to say that if he had not done so, he would never have made it to the NHL. The injuries would have taken too great a toll.

  Steve Ludzik saw it first-hand. With the exception of Gretzky’s immediate family, there are few people who had more direct involvement with Gretzky’s hockey development than Ludzik. He too was born in 1961. They were ten when they first faced each other, playing with mostly twelve-year-olds, and two years later, they participated in the same Quebec Pee-Wee Tournament, although their teams didn’t play each other. Both graduated to the NHL, where, during his six years with the Chicago Blackhawks, Ludzik was usually assigned the job of trying to keep Gretzky under control.

  “We first played against each other on March 17, 1971,” recalled Ludzik. “It was a hockey tournament in Brockville, and I played for a team called Jack’s Pack. We were the cream of the crop in Toronto and lost just one game in two years. We had heard of this kid from Brantford who had scored three hundred goals or something, but that was before the internet or videotape, so we figured it was just some kid playing against really weak teams and getting inflated numbers—if it was even true.

  “We thought this had to be a bunch of BS about this guy scoring all these goals. I was looking forward to it because I always liked to compete, and I thought I could give him a good go because we were a good team, and I was sure I could skate as fast as him.”

  Gretzky was playing for the Nadrofsky Steelers, and in those days, he wore number 9 because it was the number worn by his hero, Gordie Howe. He also wore white gloves and used four wraps of white tape on his Koho stick. He didn’t use any tape around
the butt end, which was unusual, but Gretzky had played a lot of lacrosse and was accustomed to a stick with no tape on the shaft.

  Even though Gretzky was only ten, he had already developed a following and the arena was packed.

  “I remember he got hit by a guy on our team named Bob Patterson,” recalled Ludzik. “He blasted Gretzky right at centre ice. I don’t know if he lost any teeth or not, but he shook himself off, got the puck, and he had this look of determination about him.

  “He zigzagged through the whole team, and to put emphasis on it, he went by Bob Patterson twice until he fell down. He went around him once, then came back around and beat him again. He went in and out, and put so many moves on our goalie—east-west, north-south and head fakes—that the poor goalie wound up in the corner of the rink and Gretzky just slid the puck in. He had an empty net by the time he finished with everybody.

  “People don’t understand that Gretzky would play forward, then when he got tired, he’d go back and play defence. If you look at programs from that year, Gretzky is listed as a defenceman.… He’d play the entire sixty minutes.”

  Jack’s Pack beat the Steelers 4–3. Gretzky scored all three of his team’s goals.

  “I tell people he was emotional after the game,” said Ludzik, “but the real story is he was crying because he had never lost that year. They were unbeatable. He was really upset, and people were sticking microphones and TV cameras in his face, and flashbulbs were going off.

  “I wanted to go over to him and say, ‘Man, you’re game.’ There were three thousand people in that building watching a ten-year-old kid play against twelve-year-olds and we were a better team. That’s why we won. We were from Toronto and he was from the little town of Brantford. He put on an unbelievable display. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I just stood there and said, ‘Wow.’

  “I remember jumping on the ice with my teammates when we won the game. I really wanted to go back to touch Gretzky and tap him on the pads and say, ‘You’re the real thing,’ but I didn’t do it because, being a ten-year-old kid, that wasn’t cool.

  “I always regret not having done that. I remember coming home, and my dad had cut out a picture of him that had been in the paper, and my dad said, ‘That’s the greatest player that’s ever going to play. You watch. This kid is going to be great.’ ”

  The next time Ludzik encountered Gretzky, they were in the 1973 Quebec Pee-Wee Tournament. By that time, Ludzik had made a uniform adjustment.

  “I was a smaller guy as well,” he said, “and I used to tuck my sweater in, too, because I didn’t want anybody grabbing on to my sweater, but once I saw that Gretzky was doing it, I said, ‘I can’t tuck my sweater in now.’ That’s how kids think.”

  Even though he kept it to himself, Ludzik was enthralled by Gretzky and, while they were in Quebec, watched him play as much as he could. Once again, he was in awe. “At one point, he killed an entire two-minute penalty by himself,” recalled Ludzik, “just zigging and zagging and weaving back and forth. For some reason, the crowd booed.

  “One game he played against a team from Dallas, Texas. I think the score was 20–1 and Gretzky scored, I’ve got to say, fifteen goals. After the game, he had to motor to get off the Quebec Colisée ice because people were trying to pull his stick out of his hand and pull his gloves off his hands.”

  In fact, all the sticks Gretzky had taken to that tournament got stolen by souvenir hunters—even the one that was entrusted to a security guard while Gretzky did an interview—and Walter had to go out and buy some more.

  “He ate in the mess hall with a thousand of us,” said Ludzik, “but he couldn’t even get his supper down because he spent so much time signing autographs.”

  When Ludzik got to the NHL, he had to treat Gretzky like any other opponent. “I checked him all the time, and I tried to get under his skin,” Ludzik said. “It was fun to play against him. I’d try to pin him against the boards and he’d say something like, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy, meathead.’

  “When we played in Edmonton I’d take that train that goes from near the hotel and get out to the arena early for the Oilers’ morning skate because I was just mesmerized by Gretzky’s skills. I used to just love to watch him.

  “All along, people had been saying, ‘He’s too skinny … he’s scared … he can’t skate … he can’t shoot.’ I always say he’s the greatest player ever because he wasn’t strong. As a matter of fact, he was kind of weak. He wasn’t fast. He was just an average skater. His shot wasn’t that great. He wasn’t quick. There was no one thing you could point at and say, ‘That’s what makes him great.’ But he could put it all together like nobody else ever could. He had the heart of a lion.”

  Gretzky will admit that, away from hockey, he’s not a particularly competitive person. But for as long as he can remember, he knew he would never be satisfied with merely getting to the NHL. He wanted more. Much more.

  “I’ve always had this feeling that I didn’t want to be known as just a hockey player,” he told me when he was only twenty-two. “I never wanted to be known as just a guy who played hockey and you read in the papers that he scored a goal last night or got an assist or got into a fight. It had to be more than that.

  “A lot of hockey players have had the opportunity that I’ve had. Some of them have carried it through like Gordie Howe did, but there have been other people who have said, ‘Hey, this is great. Tomorrow I don’t have to practise.’

  “What happens is that when they start losing their hockey skills and they’re not playing well, they lose the other part, the fringe benefits, the fun of travel, the meeting people. When you forget that, you’re in big trouble.

  “I’m not stupid. I don’t get invited to go on TV shows and do charity work because I’m a nice guy. I get invited because of my name in hockey and what I’ve done the last three or four years. When I stop doing that, I probably won’t get all those invitations.

  “Not everybody forgets, but a lot of people do. It’s a cruel world out there.”

  Wayne’s father, Walter, was—and still is—his idol. Alan Thicke, another Canadian who had made a name for himself in American entertainment circles, was also a mentor to the young Gretzky. These two helped give him the proper grounding in life.

  “Alan and my father have made me aware that the reason I get to meet all these people and the reason that I’m fortunate enough to live the life that I live and travel to the places I travel to, is because of what I do on the ice,” he said.

  “If I stop performing on the ice, all that stuff is going to slip away.”

  At that point, he was three years into his NHL career, but his hockey career had existed for most of his life. He did his first newspaper interview when he was nine, and the headline on the story was “Hull, Richard, Howe and Gretzky.” It sounds like a reasonable quartet today, but at the time, three of those names belonged to hockey legends and the fourth was a nine-year-old kid.

  By the time he was thirteen, he was a poised teenager doing a half-hour interview with Peter Gzowski on the CBC.

  He arrived in Edmonton to join the Oilers when the team was still in the World Hockey Association and he was too young to be allowed to play in the NHL. Dick Chubey and Jim Matheson, the hockey beat writers for the two Edmonton daily newspapers, interviewed him at the airport, and Chubey was astonished by the poise and eloquence of this skinny teenager. At the end of interview, he congratulated Gretzky on the way he had handled it.

  “Well you’ve got to remember,” said the seventeen-year-old, “I’ve been doing it for almost ten years.”

  Gretzky could have played professional hockey when he was fifteen. “My first offer was from Jack Kelley with the New England Whalers,” he told me in 2013. “He offered me a $25,000 signing bonus, then $50,000 a year for three years, and then $150,000 a year for four years. He said he couldn’t justify paying me more than $50,000 the first three years because I could still be playing junior and making $20 a week.”

 
More offers were to come. “I played in the world junior tournament in Montreal when I was sixteen,” he said. “I was really lucky because somebody got injured so they put me on the team. On Christmas Day, when we played the Czechs, I had three goals and three assists. The next day, John Bassett was in Montreal and offered me a two-year deal at $80,000 a year to play in Birmingham right then and there.”

  Bassett was the owner of a World Hockey Association franchise that had been the Toronto Toros. He moved the team to Birmingham, Alabama, where it became the Bulls, and later, perhaps expanding on the idea that had its nucleus with the Gretzky offer, built a team that became known as the Baby Bulls. It featured a number of players who were too young to play in the NHL, including Michel Goulet, Craig Hartsburg, Rob Ramage and Rick Vaive.

  Gretzky was enthralled with the offer. “I would have signed right then and there,” he said, “but my old man said, ‘You’re going back to school.’ ”

  The next year, he went to the Indianapolis Racers. “Nelson Skalbania came along and the offer was $250,000 to sign and then $100,000. Then $175,000 a year for three years, and then a four-year option at $200,000 a year. We never got to that. The $250,000 was the big selling point.”

  Being only seventeen, Gretzky needed his father to handle the money, and Walter kept everything in perspective. After agreeing to the $250,000 signing bonus, a veritable fortune for a teenager in 1978, Wayne told Walter he wanted to buy a car. Walter gave Wayne a cheque for $5,000. “You can go and get whatever you want,” said Walter.

  “That’s $5,000,” said Wayne. “Where’s the other $245,000?”

  “In the bank and that’s where it’s going to stay.”

  Wayne didn’t want his father to think he was extravagant and bought a used Pontiac Trans-Am for $3,800. When he got to the NHL and started shattering records, his approach to life didn’t waver.

  “The big concern was if the league folded,” said Gretzky in 2013. “If it folded, where was I going to play? The NHL was so against young players, and was I good enough to play in the NHL? I couldn’t go back to junior, so my dad really wanted to make sure I was financially taken care of, just in case after one year, I had nowhere to play. It would have been a problem. I would have had to go to Europe and play in Sweden or Switzerland for two years.