The greatest hockey player of all times Wayne Gretzky turns 52 today. You never can say ‘we will never see another player like [fill in the blank} but I feel safe to say we will never see another Wayne Gretzky. The only athlete that I can compare Gretzky to is Babe Ruth. Gretzky is the Babe Ruth of hockey.

Where to start with Gretzky?He is the leading scorer in NHL history. He has more assists than anyone else has points. Only four times in NHL history has a player scored more than 200 points in a season. Gretzky is the only member of that club he did it four times. He scored over 100 points in 16 NHL seasons, 14 of those were consecutive seasons. When he retired in 1999 he owned 40 regular season NHL records, 15 playoff records and 6 all-star records.

Gretzky is a marvel. He was looked at as being too small, too slow, not strong enough. What really put him in another zone is his intelligence and reading of the game. He saw things no one else saw. He seemed to know what was going to happen ahead of time.

I remember well the first time I heard the name Wayne Gretzky. Growng up a sports fanatic I listened every night on the radio to a sports talk show out of Cleveland “The Pete Franklin Show” I remember Pete talking about this hockey player who had just signed with the WHA’s Indianapolis Racers named Wayne Gretzky. Gretzky signed with the WHA because the NHL had a rule at the time saying they couldn’t sign players under 20. Gretzky was 17. I took notice when Pete said that his Gretzky kid was going to change hockey. Did he ever prove to be correct on that.

Gretzky only played 8 games with Indianapolis. Indianapolis had finanacial problems and he was traded to Edmonton. He played that season in the WHA until the WHA folded and the Edmonton Oilers joined the NHL. There were a lot of people who thought, ok this kid scored 46 goals in the WHA but the NHL is a rougher, more physical league he isn’t for real. In his first season in the NHL he scored 51 goals. Things would only get better. During his seasons in Edmonton 1978-88 Gretzky led the Oilers  to 5 Stanley Cup Championships in a period of 7 seasons.

Gretzky’s 1981-82 season looks like science fiction. He scored a record 92 goals,  120 assists for 212 points. Actually most of his seasons with Edmonton look unreal on paper. In 1985-86 he scored 52 goals and a record 163 assists for a record 215 points in a season.

After the 1988 season something mind blowing happened. Edmonton traded him to the Los Angeles Kings. He would take the Kings to one Stanley Cup final -they lost but the key to this trade was expanding the popularity of hockey to other areas. Without Gretzky going to Los Angeles I have no doubt we wouldn’t have hockey in places like Phoenix and other areas of the south today.

He would play briefly in St.Louis and then finish his career with the New York Rangers in 1999.

During his career Gretzky won nine Hart Trophies as league MVP, Ten Art Ross Trophies as the leagues leading point scorer, 5ive Lady Byng Trophies as the leagues most gentlemanly player. two Conn Smythe Trophies as Stanley Cup Playoffs MVP. The NHL record book should just be named “The Wayne Gretzky Story.” There will never be another Gretzky.