A Great Time to Learn

Wayne Gretzky doesn’t pretend to know all the answers. He didn’t sit at Scotty Bowman’s knee and divine what makes a coach successful or how to compel players to adopt a game plan with their hearts as well as their minds.

“The basic fundamentals of the game, to actually sit down and teach,” Gretzky said, “my dad could teach them much better and with a lot more simplicity than I can.”

He didn’t add the coaching duties to his title of managing director of the Phoenix Coyotes because he wanted an ego boost. Nor was he attempting a stunt to sell tickets for a franchise that emerges from the lockout with questionable prospects financially and competitively.

“You dream, ‘If only he could do it, that would be amazing.’ But at the same time, you also realize that he doesn’t need to,” Coyote captain Shane Doan said. “That’s almost more encouraging as a player, because you realize he’s doing this out of just a pure love of the game and a desire to win and a desire to be in there with you.”

Although he’d been an executive with the Canadian Olympic and World Cup teams, it took Gretzky six years of retirement to realize he felt incomplete without being closely involved in the game he played like none before him. He returned to Staples Center on Sunday not wearing his familiar No. 99, which was retired by the Kings three years ago, but wearing a gray sports jacket and an air of determination to teach not what he did, but what he learned about diligence and dedication.

“I don’t expect a guy who’s not a goal scorer to score 50 goals. But I expect that guy, every time there’s a guy in the way, to knock him over,” he said. “We’ve got to become a hard team to play against. None of this easy team to play against, 40 shots a game. That’s just not going to work. And that’s the reputation this team has, and that’s what we’re going to eliminate.”

On a visceral level he missed the locker-room chatter, the quick surges of emotion, the chance to test himself. On an intellectual level, he missed his ritual of analyzing players and teams, which contributed more to his singular career than most people know. Marty McSorley, his teammate in Edmonton and with the Kings, recalled they’d often break down plays from their game or discuss players they’d seen on TV.

“I don’t think you’ll find a bigger fan of the game than Gretz,” McSorley said.

Or a more passionate one.

“People say to me all the time, ‘What do you enjoy doing?’ It’s pretty simple,” Gretzky said. “Other than my family, my only real enjoyment in life is being around hockey. It’s what I love to do. By no means could I say I’m a real estate guru, or I have stock deals. My life is hockey.

“I’ve enjoyed the teaching aspect of the game, the first couple weeks. It’s an interesting process. It’s completely different than being a player. As a player, for myself it was you get yourself ready, you come to the rink, you prepare, you work hard, you practice hard, you get yourself ready for that game. As a coach, as a staff we’ve got to put a game plan together, we’ve got to talk about what they’re going to do. We try to get each and every guy ready and focused and make sure their commitment to what we’re trying to do is the best that it can be.

“You end up worrying about everything, not just yourself as a player, getting ready. I’ve enjoyed it.”

Mike Barnett, formerly Gretzky’s agent and now the Coyotes’ general manager, said becoming a coach was a natural progression for Gretzky.

“As dominant as he was in his career, he seldom overpowered guys or blew by guys,” Barnett said. “He was a cerebral talent that worked very, very hard at skill development, but first and foremost paid attention to the opponents by studying them, pinpointing their weaknesses and then trying to find ways to exploit them. That’s what good coaches do.”

But that doesn’t guarantee Gretzky will be a good coach. Few great athletes excel as managers or coaches, perhaps because what they did was instinctive and beyond their ability to explain. As Laker coach, Magic Johnson found that players couldn’t or wouldn’t immerse themselves in the game as he had, and he walked away frustrated.

And even the best coach will find some players unreachable. Gretzky must learn to handle that too.

“It’s not going to be easy, but if anyone has a clue and they don’t listen to him, then they’re not really smart,” said winger Brett Hull, who agreed to play for the Coyotes only if Gretzky agreed to coach.

Gretzky has surrounded himself with able assistants in Barry Smith, formerly an assistant to Bowman in Detroit, Rick Tocchet and Rick Bowness, the former Coyote coach. They don’t have much to work with, though, and the Coyotes lost his first three exhibition games behind the bench, including Sunday’s 7-4 loss to the Kings. Gretzky watched the team’s first two exhibition games from upstairs.

“It’s a lot more time-consuming than being a player, but that’s OK,” he said. “To me, this is still not ‘working.’ Working is what my dad did, working for Bell Telephone eight hours a day for 35 years. This is enjoyment and it’s really been intriguing.”

He has accepted that he will face some disappointments, as he expressed last week after the Coyotes were outworked in a preseason loss to the Kings at Phoenix. He will be open to criticism too: He probably erred by playing goaltender Brian Boucher in the shootout that followed the first exhibition because Boucher aggravated a pulled groin muscle and might not be ready for the Oct. 5 season opener.

He is prepared to learn from his mistakes and asks only that his players do the same.

“Maybe it’s a good thing that losing will not be easy for him,” McSorley said. “I think this franchise needs that. If he can’t live with losses, you know that the team is not going to get comfortable losing.”

Gretzky didn’t appear entirely comfortable behind the bench Sunday. Arms folded across his chest, he paced restlessly, occasionally peering up at the clock or tapping a player on the shoulder to indicate a personnel change. But he’s sure that’s where he belongs, at least for now.

“It’s my life,” he said. “I love my family. I love hockey. I just truly want to be back in the game. Simple as that.”