I'm apparently old on here, considering how many people are mentioning they never saw him play. I certainly didn't see him in his prime, but I still saw some unbelievable things.
I remember him breaking Howe's all-time goal record, I remember him playing against my Leafs in the "Western" Finals (and high-sticking Doug Gilmour), I went to his last game in Ottawa, and I vividly remember his last game against the Penguins. My teacher actually cancelled a project that was due on the Monday after the game and encouraged everyone in the class to watch.
How good was he? I've posted about him a couple times, probably worth a read through the comments to see other people sharing facts and memories about Gretzky.
Wayne Gretzky scored 50 goals in 34 games
Five incredible things I learned looking at Gretzky's game logs
But those don't really get at the heart of why he was so good. You look at Mario Lemieux and it kinda makes sense why he was good. He had incredible skill, but he was also huge, and strong, and fast. He had a decent shot at some Gretzky records if he had started a little earlier, didn't get injured, cancer, etc. He may have even passed some of them. They were very close in their production.
But Gretzky, to look at him, you think - this is the greatest hockey player ever?
But that may have actually been his advantage. See, Gretzky was not just the greatest NHL player of all time, he was the greatest at every level of hockey he competed in. When he was 6, he played against 10 year olds. His jersey was so big, he had to tuck it into the side of his pants (something he did for the rest of his career). He scored all of 1 goal that year, but by the time he was 10 (playing in the same league) he scored 378 goals and added 120 assists. In 85 games.
Gretzky was never the biggest guy, but he thanked those years playing as a 6 year old against kids twice his size for his ability to skirt checks when he played pro. There was a rumour that you "couldn't hit Gretzky". And in some ways that was true. If you did happen to hit him, you had to take a canoe ride with McSorley/Semenko. But that's only if you could hit him. You see the whole "couldn't hit Gretzky" was actually because he was so good at slipping checks. He wasn't a great skater, he just made all the right moves at the right times.
He had a deceptive shot, too. Not a cannon, just much harder than it looked coming from this little wimpy guy. And his accuracy was ridiculous. He shot 25-28% for most of the 80's. Usually those numbers are put up by a guy with 10 or 12 shots, not 400 per season.
But as others have mentioned, his biggest asset was his vision and hockey sense. He knew exactly where everyone was headed. He knew where the puck was going to bounce. He knew what his teammates were going to do before they knew they were going to do it. There's a reason Jari Kurri scored 601 goals in his career, because Gretzky assisted on 364 of them. His shot went away later in his career, but his passing didn't. He led the league in assists 2 of his last 3 seasons. At age 36/37, with a broken back, he put up 90 points in the lowest scoring, clutchiest, grabbiest era in hockey history
Lots of people just say "lol goalies" when referring to 80's hockey, adn that is 100% true. Goalies were awful, and so were defensive schemes. Look at this garbage that gave him 50 goals in 39 games. But you can see his shot in that clip. You can see his skating ability. Not fast, just being in the right place, always.
So yeah, it's easy to dismiss his accomplishments because of the era. And it's also 100% that if you dropped Sidney Crosby, with the benefit of 15 years of professional training and nutrition and technology into the 80's he would probably score 250 points a season. But that's a pretty disingenuous argument. It's like saying a Navy Seal can probably take on a Civil War Batallion. Well, no duh.
But if you want the true measure of Gretzky, look at what everyone else was doing. Yeah, there were more than a few players with 140-150 points in a season, something we might not see again. But while they were doing that, Gretzky was putting up 215. When they were scoring 60-70 goals, he was potting 92.
You can adjust for the high scoring of the era, but Gretzky still has 7 of the top 13 seasons, nobody else has more than two.
There's also a lot of people that say "well, if his records can't be broken, they must not be legitimate". And that is also true. It is very unlikely someone will score 215 points in a season, barring significant changes in the game. Nobody is going to score 2000 assists in their career. But he could still be "surpassed". Wilt's records in the NBA are untouchable, yet most people consider Jordan (maybe Lebron) to be the best of all time. They won't be grabbing 40 rebounds per game, or scoring 100 points, but they dominated like he did, in a much more competitive game.
So when we see 2nd and 3rd place in the scoring race getting 100-110 points, and there's that one motherfucker with 150-160, then we can talk about it. Until then, Gretzky's the Great One. The Greatest One.
