Gretzky’s Grit and Toughness Paying Off

The Rangers’ badly-needed win against Vancouver last week was already a foregone conclusion. Mark Messier’s second return to Madison Square Garden would have neither the in-your-face ending nor crackling excitement his visit a year before had evoked. This time, the Rangers routed the Canucks, 8-4, and it was Wayne Gretzky who authored the time-capsule performance. Gretzky scored a historic goal.

In the first period, he threaded two brilliant assists. But with six minutes left in the game, disaster seemed to strike the Rangers with a boom: Gretzky took a sideboard-rattling hit from Canucks rookie right wing Bill Muckalt.

The Plexiglas panels rimming the rink shivered like a strong breeze had just run through them. And Gretkzy slid to the ice like a raw egg running down a wall.

He would eventually struggle to his feet, but he remained jack-knifed in pain as he skated off clutching his left side. It was well-known that Gretzky was already playing with a badly strained rib muscle. For the second straight game he’d taken a doctor’s needle in the ribs rather than take the night off. Now even the pain-killing shot wasn’t enough. The door to the Rangers’ bench swung open and Gretzky didn’t consider taking a seat. He just duckwalked straight down the tunnel toward the dressing room with a worried trainer scurrying close behind. Gretzky didn’t return.

Asked later why his 38-year-old star was even on the ice that late in the win, Rangers Coach John Muckler shot reporters a sideways glance and said, “You don’t tell Wayne Gretzky to sit down.”

Then, “Wayne said he wanted to play.”

Of all the plaudits that have been thrown Gretzky’s way over the years, Tough Guy isn’t one of them. And it should be. This season--especially Gretzky’s doggedness in the past week as the Rangers cling to their fading playoff hopes--have underscored that. Gretzky has never missed a game in 2 1/2 Rangers seasons, a streak of 218 contests, and counting. Despite the hit he absorbed from Muckalt, who was called for boarding, Gretzky was back in the lineup three days later when the Rangers lost in Boston. Not that playing hurt was any big deal to him.

“You just ice it. We need wins,” Gretzky said.

On paper, anyway, it sounded more like something Messier would say, probably with those enormous incisors of his bared and his eyes narrowed into slits.

When people think of Gretzky, they don’t mention his steel spine. They usually think of his seeing-eye passes and the way he circles the ice in the offensive end, seeping into open spaces like a wisp of smoke. They think of his 92-goal season and his dynastic Edmonton teams. They think of the glamor and the glory and his actress wife. Or they mention record-setting moments like last week, when Gretzky tied Gordie Howe’s record for career goals by a pro with a first-period wrist shot against Canucks goalie Garth Snow. The Garden scoreboard cut away from game action just long enough to show a Rangers equipment man swaddling the puck with white athletic tape and writing “goal #1,071” on the side. And the capacity crowd roared.

Gretzky owns enough record-book pages to wallpaper the Garden. What isn’t appreciated about him as much are the workaday resolve and backstage moments that made it possible. The nights when you play even though your ribs are in such pain it hurts to laugh, it hurts to sneeze, it hurts to even reach out your stick to corral a Brian Leetch pass. What outsiders don’t understand--not really--is the mental strain of being locked into the marathon NHL schedule, and the creeping despair that you have to fight when the season begins to feel irredeemable and there’s no cavalry about to come charging over the ridge; no Pavel Bure or Mark Recchi to come lend a hand. The Rangers are a 10th-place team fighting for one of the East’s eight playoff spots.

Gretzky’s wife, Janet, alluded to all of that after Gretzky’s MVP performance two weeks ago at the NHL All-Star Game. “At this point of the year, with everything he’s gone through, with the disappointment of not getting Pavel, Wayne needed a little shot in the arm to pick him up,” she said. “He was let down [about Bure’s acquisition by Florida] more than he let on [publicly].”

Looking ahead to the second half, Gretzky still sounded a bit melancholy as he tried making sense of the Rangers’ inconsistent season. He said one thing the team lacked was a “true goal scorer.”

The impulse was to shriek, “What? Gretzky says the Rangers don’t have a true goal scorer ... and he’s him--he’s Gretzky?!”

He’s also 38 years old. He rings up more assists now than goals. Once Denver quarterback John Elway sidewinds off into the sunset, Gretzky immediately becomes the next big retirement story in sports.

And yet, rather than invoke some superstar privilege, Gretzky took those two pain-killing injections and played last week against Vancouver and Washington before that. (Several Rangers said he shouldn’t have played at all against the Capitals.) Even after two more days to heal, watching a weary Gretzky walk off toward the Garden exit last week after his three-point show against Vancouver was to wonder how hard it would be for him to sleep when the stabbing pain in his ribs returned sometime between the Letterman and Conan O’Brien shows.

“When you see someone like Wayne playing through something like that,” linemate Adam Graves said, “it can’t help but have an effect in the dressing room. And it helps you understand why Wayne is who he is.”

Even at this juncture, maybe Gretzky’s image needs revising. When Vancouver came back to the Garden last week, it revived the story of how Gretzky was so disgusted with the reverence his Rangers teammates showed for Messier last season, he screamed at them between periods of the eventual 4-2 loss. “Are you all done watching Messier now?” Gretzky shouted. “Now can we go out and play?”

A year later that competitiveness still hasn’t ebbed. Asked if he ever thought about taking an early seat against the Canucks, Gretzky crinkled his forehead and scoffed, “Nah ... You always want to play.”