Teammates Happily Join Gretzky’s Chase

As Wayne Gretzky embarked anew Thursday night on his pursuit of Gordie Howe’s National Hockey League scoring record, his teammates looked forward to sharing the experience.

“I think, if anything, it will help us,” defenseman Marty McSorley said. “When great things happen, you can’t help but enjoy it and feel a part of it, especially if it’s something as big as this.”

In the first few weeks of his 11th NHL season, Gretzky is expected to eclipse a record that required Howe 26 seasons to accumulate.

His assist on rookie Hubie McDonough’s second-period goal Thursday night at the Forum in the Kings’ season-opening 4-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs left him only 13 points shy of breaking Howe’s all-time record of 1,850 points.

“What he’s done in 10 years is unbelievable, and everybody knows it,” teammate Luc Robitaille said. “But once he gets (the record), it will be the cherry on the sundae.

“I remember watching on TV that one year (1982, Gretzky’s third season) when he beat Phil Esposito’s record for goals (with 92 in one season, 16 more than Esposito’s 11-year-old record). I couldn’t believe it.

“But being there on the ice--or on the bench--is going to be something. It’s a tough feeling to describe. You just say, ‘Wow, how could he keep doing it for so long, every year doing the same thing?’

“It’s an amazing thing. You play one year with him and you know he’s great, but you look (at the statistics) and say, ‘That’s a lot of points.’ He really is incredible.”

His teammates, obviously, don’t begrudge Gretzky his extraordinary accomplishments.

“He’s the type of player you want to help achieve those goals,” Robitaille said. “A lot of times stars are just (jerks). Don’t write that, but that’s the truth. And he’s not like that.”

But will Gretzky’s pursuit of the record, and the hoopla surrounding it, become a distraction to the Kings, who have set their sights on a Stanley Cup championship?

Robitaille thinks not.

“Because it’s not goals,” he said. “When it’s goals, you feed the guy because you want him to score and he might feel (pressured). This is points. You might get mad if he gives you a pass and you miss an empty net, but we know he’s going to get the record, so I don’t think it will disturb the team.”

If it does prove to be a distraction, “it will be a good distraction,” Tom Laidlaw said. “There’s a lot expected of the team this year and maybe this will take some of the pressure off the team and put it on Wayne’s shoulders, which will be tough on Wayne. But he’s been under pressure since he was 12 years old, so he’s used to it.”

It seems that, almost from the time he established a record with a staggering 212 points in only his third NHL season--a record he broke in 1986--Gretzky has been asked about the inevitability of beating Howe’s record.

Still, when it finally happens and Gretzky passes Howe, it will be a special moment, McSorley said.

When Gretzky eclipsed Howe’s record for assists in a 5-3 Edmonton Oiler victory over the Kings on March 1, 1988, “everybody on the team ran over and had their pictures taken with Wayne and the puck,” said McSorley, who also was Gretzky’s teammate at Edmonton. “Nobody said a lot, but you sat there quietly and realized the magnitude of it.”

When Gretzky gets within a few points of this record, McSorley expects the pressure on Gretzky to increase dramatically.

Not from the fans or the media, but from the opposition.

“The guys who are checking him aren’t going to want to be the guy who is burned for the big point,” McSorley said. “And no goaltender is going to want to be the answer to a trivia question.

“Everybody will be bearing down and everybody will be conscious of it.”

That includes his teammates, who seemingly will relish any small part they might play in it.

“I’ve played with some great players--Phil Esposito, Carol Vadnais, Barry Beck--but obviously Wayne’s in a different class,” Laidlaw said. “Obviously, the ultimate is to win the Stanley Cup, but to be a part of things like this is something you can talk about 20 years down the road, when you’re sitting out on your front porch in a rocking chair.”