Grand Entrance

The Great One has taken his place among hockey’s greats.

Wayne Gretzky, who gave the NHL an appealingly human face while performing superhuman deeds in Edmonton, Los Angeles, St. Louis and New York for 20 seasons, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday, seven months after his retirement as the NHL’s all-time scoring leader. But no speech or plaque can summarize what the skinny kid from Brantford, Canada, accomplished in obliterating pages of records and transforming the narrowly based, narrow-thinking NHL into a major league that spans the breadth of North America.

“He has been the epitome of the term ‘superstar’ ever since he became a professional player, first in the World Hockey Assn. and then the NHL,” said Glen Sather, Gretzky’s surrogate father in Edmonton during the Oilers’ dynasty of the 1980s. “His character on and off the ice is flawless. And he came at a time the game really needed somebody like that. He’s the guy that really spread hockey throughout the U.S. and Canada.

“There have been a lot of great superstars in sports, but we in hockey had the model superstar in Wayne.”

Gretzky, whose No. 99 has been retired by the NHL, was welcomed by the Hall after a special waiver of its usual three-year waiting period. “I felt so fortunate to be a part of this game,” he said during a nationally televised ceremony. “I felt like a kid every day.”

He shared the stage with Andy van Hellemond, who was voted the NHL’s top referee for 14 of his 25 NHL seasons and is director of hockey operations for the East Coast Hockey League, and Ian “Scotty” Morrison, who was a referee and director of officiating and chairman of the Hall during its move from cramped lakefront quarters to the splendidly ornate former bank building that was the site Monday.

“What makes our game so special is people like Scotty and Andy and other builders, people who truly love the game,” Gretzky said.

In a separate ceremony, Russ Conway of the Lawrence (Mass). Eagle-Tribune received the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award for his contributions to journalism, most notably the Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigative series that helped publicize the illegal activities of former NHL players’ union boss Alan Eagleson, and broadcaster Richard Garneau was given the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award for his distinguished work on French Canadian TV.

However, the day belonged to Gretzky, who vetoed a plan to move the ceremonies to a bigger theater because he wanted his induction to be at the same place as his predecessors. “I’ll always be part of a trivia question,” Van Hellemond said. “Who were the other two that got in with No. 99?” Van Hellemond and Morrison can take comfort in knowing they’re not alone in being eclipsed by Gretzky.

He left the NHL with 894 goals, 1,963 assists, 2,857 points, four Stanley Cup championships, 61 records and the respect of all who played with or against him. Slight of build even in pads and skates and blessed with neither brute strength nor breakaway speed, Gretzky played a game that was brilliant in its controlled subtlety. Taught on the family’s backyard rink by his father, Walter, to anticipate where the puck was going instead of following where it had been, Gretzky saw plays before anyone else. He knew where the puck would go and would find a way to set up a teammate with a breathtaking pass or score a goal himself from a seemingly impossible angle.

“In Junior A he did very well, but to say he was ever going to play pro, you could never say that for sure,” Walter Gretzky said. “He was small. He wasn’t a big person.”

Growing up with the brash but immensely talented Oilers, first in the rebel WHA and then in the NHL, Gretzky elevated the importance of skill in a league dogged by jokes about thuggery. He won the scoring title 10 times, was voted the most valuable player nine times, most valuable player of the playoffs twice and the NHL’s most gentlemanly player five times.

“He came in at a time when it was rough and tough and kind of goofy in our game in the late ‘70s and made the transition into the ‘80s, when the game was more open. He was a terrific part of our game then,” said Pat Quinn, coach and general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs. “Then we went into the more restrictive ‘90s, but he survived and superseded all those styles.”

Gretzky never missed an All-Star game--and probably never missed a chance to sign an autograph for a child. He always saw in them the jug-eared boy he once was, the boy who idolized Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr and Jean Beliveau.

“The way he handled himself off the ice was amazing,” said King General Manager Dave Taylor, Gretzky’s teammate with the Kings. “I didn’t realize the amount of demands on his time and the way he could handle the public. I never saw him treat a kid badly. I’ve seen him sign thousands and thousands of autographs for kids.

“I think he’s been the most dominant player that ever came into the league. The records he set will never be broken. We got to see firsthand the impact he had here in Los Angeles. He had more impact on the NHL in Los Angeles than he did in Edmonton, even though he won all those Cups there. Having him in Los Angeles meant so many more people saw him, and that created more interest in the game, and that led to expansion teams in San Jose and Anaheim and so many other places. He took our team to the finals and he helped convert a lot of people. He was able to bring casual fans to the rink, and once they came to see him, they became fans of the game.”

Typically, Gretzky deflected the accolades.

“I don’t think any one person is ever bigger than the game. I don’t think any one person can drastically make changes in the game of hockey,” said Gretzky, whose plaque bears no team logo on his jersey. “What I did is maybe I paved the way for a lot of other people. I was told I wasn’t big enough, fast enough or strong enough. Probably some kids can look to me and say, ‘He made it, so maybe I can make it.’ . . .

“What separated me maybe is I had a passion for the game. I prepared for each and every game. I always felt I had never done enough. If I had three goals, I wanted five. If I had seven points, I wanted the eighth. I approached every game like it was a Stanley Cup playoff game, and that was maybe why I was able to get the records I was able to get.”

He got those records despite painful back problems late in his career, despite a traumatic move from Edmonton to the Kings in 1988 in a five-player deal that brought Oiler owner Peter Pocklington $15 million, and the financial downfall of King owner Bruce McNall, Gretzky’s friend and business partner. Gretzky’s 7 1/2 seasons in Los Angeles are fixed on both sides of his ledger of memories, in the plus column for having been his home when he broke Gordie Howe’s record and became the NHL’s leading career scorer and goal-scorer, and on the negative side for having provided one of his few disappointments.

“If I have maybe one regret in my whole career, that was I wish in ’93 we could have won the Stanley Cup that year,” he said of the Kings’ lone trip to the finals, a five-game loss to the Montreal Canadiens. “It’s unfortunate we didn’t, but that’s the way life is.”

His life in retirement is busy, shuttling his kids to hockey practices from his home in Thousand Oaks and endorsing an assortment of products. He acknowledged missing the game--”I wish I could still play,” he said--but added he intends to stay retired. He has been asked to take on ownership and/or management roles with NHL clubs but hasn’t decided when or what his next move will be. “I have a couple of friends who invited me to spring baseball training,” he said, laughing. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

Fans may consider the NHL poorer for his departure, but Gretzky disagrees.

“The game is a great game and it will continue to flourish,” he said. “When Gordie Howe retired, people said, ‘You’ll never see another Gordie Howe,’ and along came Bobby Orr. Then, along came Guy Lafleur. We’ll always have new players to carry the torch and push the game to new levels.

“I’ll probably miss the game more than hockey misses Wayne Gretzky.”

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THE DOMINANT FIGURE

Wayne Gretzky holds or shares 61 NHL records. A look at how he dominates the career scoring categories:

POINTS

1. Wayne Gretzky: 2,857

2. Gordie Howe: 1,850

3. Marcel Dionne: 1,771

GOALS

1. Wayne Gretzky: 894

2. Gordie Howe: 801

3. Marcel Dionne: 731

ASSISTS

1. Wayne Gretzky: 1,963

2. Paul Coffey-x: 1,103

3. Ray Bourque-x:: 1,096

MOST THREE-OR-MORE GOAL GAMES

1. Wayne Gretzky: 50

2. Marcel Dionne: 39

3. Mario Lemieux: 39

MOST 100-OR-MORE POINT SEASONS

1. Wayne Gretzky: 13

2. Bobby Orr: 6

2. Guy Lafleur: 6

2. Mike Bossy: 6

2. Peter Stastny: 6

2. Mario Lemieux: 6

2. Steve Yzeman-x: 6

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Gretzky By The Numbers

League MVP awards: 9

Stanley Cup titles: 4

Most goals, season: 92

Most assists, season: 163

Most points, season: 215

Career goals, including playoffs: 1,016

100+ point seasons: 15

50+ goal seasons: 5