TORONTO — He laced up his skates and took to the ice for the first time in more than nine months Saturday at Maple Leaf Gardens for a friendly game of shinny with friends like Mike Barnett, Eddie Mio and Darren Pang.
This was one day after he took a 90-minute ride from his downtown hotel to a pond at a tiny place called Uxbridge, Ontario (home, incidentally, of Jeff Beukeboom) not to shoot the puck on net, but rather to shoot the brilliant and poignant opening for ABC’s telecast of yesterday’s All-Star Game.
There on Friday was Wayne Gretzky at a pond, but not on skates, at a little town called Uxbridge, Ontario, where he combined with Gordie Howe, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Paul Kariya, Eric Lindros and Pavel Bure in a passing-of-the-torch, three-minute slice of Canadiana, a three-minute slice of what hockey means not only to this country, but to all of us who love the great game.
More than nine months after his April 18 Great Goodbye at the Garden, he was back on the ice. After a pregnant pause, we believe it is safe to say that no country, no sport and no league has ever had such a wrenching time trying to wave farewell to an athlete as Canada, hockey and the NHL are in dealing with the retirement of The Great Gretzky.
There is, of course, a season for everything. Still, 1999-2000 somehow still seems too soon for this, even after a professional career that began in Indianapolis in 1978. Rather than stepping onto the ice in civilian clothes here yesterday to accept the formal league-wide retirement of No. 99 and to drop the ceremonial first puck in the 50th All-Star Game, it still seems as if he should have been wearing that number on his back.
He doesn’t say so, he doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, but Lord, does Wayne Gretzky miss playing the game he sincerely believes he should still be playing and still would be playing had the Rangers made him feel welcome for the millennium celebration. It is our loss, hockey’s loss and New York’s loss that they did not. It is his loss, too. He misses the game.
Pavel Bure, who scored three times and won the MVP award in yesterday’s 9-4 World victory over Team North America, is an electrifying athlete, the Russian Rocket as the latter-day model of the original Rocket, Maurice Richard. Jagr is a wondrous player. Lindros, somehow overshadowed by expectations placed upon his wide shoulders at age 17, is a special pro. The only problem with Kariya is that back East we don’t get enough opportunities to watch him skate.
All around the NHL there are great players and estimable individuals, men like Martin Brodeur, Curtis Joseph, Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic, Brendan Shanahan and Teemu Selanne. But not one is Gretzky. It is not even fair to ask any of them to try to be.
It is still Gretzky whose singular personality dominates the sport, still Gretzky whose absence from North American rinks has created a void in the heart of the game, no matter how noble the work of others who, a year later, go about their business of competing and entertaining in a wholly professional manner.
He is the son of his exceptional parents, Walter and Phyllis Gretzky, has always been that. It is why yesterday he had no trouble whatsoever explaining why the Canadian public stands so overwhelmingly against government aid to its six franchises, even if not providing such revenue jeopardizes the very existence of four of those teams.
“It’s pretty simple. The whole country is based upon hard working, nine-to-five parents who do the best they can to provide their families. Then you have a small percentage of the country as people who are making over a million dollars a year and the average person can’t understand how people who are making $5 and $6M a year need tax benefits,” he said. “If you’re making $30-35,000 a year and working your rear end off, the last thing I would vote for is giving a guy making $5 million tax benefits. So it’s pretty simple why they rallied around it. How can you blame them?”
Gretzky always has brought the same insight to life as he brought sight to the rink. If it is killing him to watch, it will kill him to see the Flames and Senators and Canucks and Oilers, most especially the Oilers, leave their respective cities and relocate to the States. Ironically enough, had it not been for No. 99, the NHL’s move toward U.S. manifest destiny never would have been possible.
It is undeniably time to move on, no matter how wrenching the process of doing so. It is, not surprisingly, Gretzky better than anyone who understands this. So this was his answer, when asked if he were ready to become involved at an ownership or management level as Jordan is now with the NBA Wizards:
“I need to take a step back from the game and get away from it for a little while,” he said.
Problem is, with No. 99 hanging over the ice at every rink in the league, there always will be something there to remind us.