NHL ALL-STAR WEEKEND

January 23, 1999

Wayne Gretzky

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, I just think the excitement of being part of the NHL All-Star Game makes it fresh. I think that every guy who gets a chance to come here really enjoys being here. You look at the guys that, unfortunately, can't make it here because they got hurt, and the guys they asked to come, nobody ever turns it down. Everybody's excited to come and be a part of this weekend. I think it's one of those things that if you can be part of a National League Hockey All-Star Team, it's a privilege. Nobody ever turns it down. It's always exciting. We always have a lot of fun.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, if I had an answer to that, I'd be a genius. Right now Dominik is one of the greatest players in the game. He's kind of transcended his position to a point where people will pay a lot of money to go watch this guy play; he's that good. I think what he's done for our game, although he's been tough to beat, he's taken our game and given it some great exposure. He's been wonderful for the sport of hockey. And, as I said, there haven't been too many guys in the game that have been better than he has in the last couple of years. He's tough to play against. It is frustrating to play against him, but, you know, no different than anyone else. You got to get a lot of traffic in front of him; you got to try to rattle him as much as you can and hope for the best.

WAYNE GRETZKY: First of all, I don't really know much about the challenge that him and Bobby Clarke seem to have had. I really kind of am in the dark about that story. But, you know, I was saying earlier that you play a sport that, for whatever reason, people believe that 22, 23 years old, you're old. And that's not true. Everybody who is 21, 22 years old thinks they know everything in the world. We're all the same that way. Fortunately, we all kind of grow up and we all kind of mature. To me, Eric is coming to the game, he's had to deal with a great deal of pressure from a very young age. The expectations that were put on him were extremely high. All of a sudden, when you're 23 or 24 years old and haven't won a championship, people are saying why haven't you won a championship, or why can't you win a championship. It takes more than one guy to win the Stanley Cup. I think he's handled himself well; he's faced a lot of pressures. Obviously, he's had a tremendous year. Maybe one of the best years of his career. But he's still very young and he's got a lot of years ahead of him, and I think sometimes we tend to forget that.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, I don't think, as we've said many times before, there's no one player that's bigger than the game; the game is just a wonderful game. Obviously we go through peaks and valleys where some days it's better than other days. That's normal in any kind of work or any kind of business. All in all, the game, to me, I think, is better than it was in the past in a sense that I believe the players are better today than they were ten years ago. I don't mean that to be critical because ten years from now I believe the players will be better than they are today. It's just evolution. We grow; we get more mature. I think the equipment, the teaching, the technology of the game is much more advanced than it was years ago. We see superstars like Selanne, Lindros, Jagr, Kariya, Hasek; these guys are great players. It's great to see that we still have the traditional teams, the Torontos and Montreals, the New Yorks. It's great to see that we're going into new places like Tampa Bay, into California. And now we're into Columbus and Atlanta. The game is growing, and I think the NHL has done a wonderful job at selling our sport not only nationally, but worldwide, and that's great for the game. I hope they go back to the Olympics in 2002. I think it's beneficial for our sport.

WAYNE GRETZKY: I'm not sure I understand the question. But any time you go to Tampa Bay in the sun, it's always great. (Laughter) It's rated up there as the best game so far. Everyone loves warm weather. And we were talking today, I can remember playing the old fairgrounds here, where they jammed people into a small arena, 6,000 people. And in those days you say, oh, we're going to build an arena. Everybody thought they were crazy here. It's great to see they built this facility, the NHL came here. People in this area are going to see some great players. My first All-Star Game, though, is always the one I'll remember. I got a chance to play Gordie Howe; I was 18 years old. Those are what dreams are made of. I grew up dreaming of playing in an NHL All-Star Game, and I got to play with Gordie Howe. So I'll never forget that.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, I think the League works hard at trying to sell not only the sport but individual stars. I'm not sure how far the League can actually go in selling the players. That might be more of a responsibility to the player, maybe the player's agent. But, you know, exposure comes in a lot of ways. It just doesn't happen because you score 50 goals. You have to do a lot of work, you have to spend a lot of hours doing things and travelling, and it's a lot harder than people think to get a lot of exposure. As I said, it's a lot of hours and a lot of work, but I think the League works hard at trying to make sure everyone is sold to the best of their ability.

WAYNE GRETZKY: First of all, he's in an impossible situation because you can never satisfy everybody. No matter what he does, somebody's going to be critical of it. But I think the biggest thing about Colin was he's an ex-player, an ex-coach, and he understands what the players go through. And I think he's been more than fair in trying to assess each and every incident to the best of his knowledge. I don't think he has any personal vendetta or anything that is not at all positive for the game. He's just trying to do the job to minimize people trying to intentionally hurt people. And to that point, I think he's done a nice job.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Oh, absolutely. It's always important. You know, we're very proud of our game. Canadians never want to let that go, and it's always going to be there. People are always going to say where's the Canadian guy in that top ten. We want Kariya to be there, Sydor to be there. That's pride. And the other sense, though, is that, as I always said, to me, when you see guys like Jagr and Selanne up there, that means we've done a great job selling our game worldwide. We can take positives out of both people being up there, but it's always good to see Canadian guys in the top ten. We always like that.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Oh, absolutely. You know, I get parents that come to me all the time and say, you know, tell my son how many hours you practiced; I want him to make it to the NHL. Tell him how much work goes into it. I always say, you know, I can't do that because I didn't do it because it was work, I did it because it was my love. I skated six, seven, eight hours a day because I loved it. And I used to sit in school and think what a great life it would be just to get up every day and play hockey and get paid to do something you loved to do. I never imagined it could happen to me. I never imagined I would have the kind of career that I did have. And it's the greatest sport in the world. It's the greatest life, if you can become a professional athlete. The only thing better than that is to be a writer and follow us. (Laughter.)

WAYNE GRETZKY: With Gordie?

WAYNE GRETZKY: No. There will be a respect that I have, maybe that I only have for one other person in my life, and that's my father. And Gordie is a wonderful man. What he did for this game and what he did for the players in this game, you can't even describe. The hours of work he put in, what he did to sell our sport worldwide. Unfortunately, we both have a lot of things that we do. So, we don't -- it's not like we can take a week in the middle of the winter and go to the Bahamas. That doesn't fit into the schedule for us. But Gordie and I are very good friends. I have the utmost respect for not only him but his whole family.

WAYNE GRETZKY: I told him, I said, if there's one person that deserves to do what he wants to do, that's Gordie Howe. He wanted to come back and play one game, and he deserved it. Good for him. I mean, I doubt that I'll be doing that. But that's why he's Gordie Howe.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Whoa! Got me on the spot here, huh? Can I do country? By country? Well, I would say without question, the last two years, that Dominik Hasek has proven to be the best player in the game. Not only what he did for the Buffalo Sabres and for the NHL, but for what he did for his country in the Olympic Games. I think it would be hard for anyone to question that. Until the end of this season, it's hard to sit down -- to me, the last 30 games are the most crucial. You have guys like Dominik and then you have Kariya and you have Selanne and Jagr and, obviously, you have Eric. So it's tough to single out one guy at this point in time. But after 80 games, I'm sure there will be one guy that kind of goes to the forefront that will lead this team. So they're all great players, as I said, and at this point in time it's tough to say which one is best this year.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Uh-huh. Obviously the record we had last year, Neil had a lot of work ahead of him. As I said earlier, he's done a nice job of being able to get this team younger and faster without having to trade away a lot of bodies. So the hard thing about that is youth, you have to be patient with youth. It's a tough situation because we all want to win. The fans in New York deserve to have a team that is winning. Hopefully, that will happen in the second half here. Hopefully we can get a streak together and get it back in the playoff picture.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Two things. Number one, to listen to his coach. I think Jacques Demers has been through hockey enough that he knows what a first round pick or what a first pick overall has to go through. Jacques Demers has won the Stanley Cup. The first advice I would have for Vincent is to listen to him. Second of all, I would spend a lot of time leaning on Wendel Clark, he was the first pick overall, he played in tough situations in Toronto with a tremendous amount of pressure on him and he probably can relate to what he has to go through more than anybody in the whole organization. But I watched Lecavalier. I think he's going to be a good player. I was here at practice and it was nice to see a guy who just enjoys hockey. I saw him on the ice for about an hour after everybody else was off the ice just shooting pucks and skating around. So it's always nice to see a young guy who has a love for the game. And when you have that kind of attitude, it's going to do you a lot of good in the end, and I think he's going to turn out to be a great player.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, you know, because of my situation, because of my age, I guess I'm always going to be asked when are you going to retire, when are you going to be done. And it's gonna happen. I'm gonna have to retire. But I haven't thought a whole lot about it. I think when Jordan retired I became more of a fan. I was disappointed that he was leaving. I didn't look at it as, well, Michael Jordan's retiring and he's younger than I am. I looked at it as a fan's point of view, I'm going to miss this guy play, like everyone else. So we'll see what happens. I don't fib anybody about it. The end of the year I'll sit down and make my decision on what my future is. I got enough going on in my life that I don't need to be sitting down thinking about what I'm going to be doing the next couple of months.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Yeah. But don't take that the wrong way because I thought that last year in Vancouver, that it might be my last game. So I enjoy playing and I love to play. As I said, in June I'll sit down and decide what I'm going to do.

WAYNE GRETZKY: I hope so. I think what Toronto has done this year not only for the city itself but for the game has been outstanding. You go to a Toronto Maple Leafs game now and enjoy watching the game. They might win 5-4, lose 5-4 but you're going to enjoy watching the game. We go in cycles, our sport. When the Islanders won the Stanley Cup, everyone said we have to be defensive, we have to be disciplined, that's the way you win a championship. All of a sudden, 20 guys who are kind of arrogant and maybe a little flashy and fancy came along and won five championships as an offensive kind of machine. And that kind of got teams going. And maybe Colorado went down the same road a little bit. So success seems to kind of stir the pot a little bit. And with Toronto doing well and Toronto's system and style, hopefully that will spread through the whole League. I think that will make the game much more fun to watch.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, I don't know how you compare salaries, but I don't think there's one guy in the League that has any reason to complain about how much money he's making. So from that point of view, they're doing well.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, first of all, I think that it's one of the greatest feelings, as a player, that you can have is playing for your country in the Olympic Games. One of the problems we have in Canada is our kids grew up saying I want to play in the NHL. And because you play in the NHL, that almost eliminates your opportunity to play for your country. This game is going to be in the United States, it's an opportunity for the National Hockey League to get some, I think, some tremendous exposure. Maybe not through television, but as far as print media and that kind of stuff goes, I just think that it's one of the greatest thrills that anyone can have. So I would hope that we can participate in 2002 in Salt Lake, and I think it would be great for our sport.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Oh, yeah, absolutely. The players still talk about it today, what a feeling it was to watch him win. Unfortunately, we weren't part of that. But what was amazing, too, was afterwards you could see the celebrations of the people and that the country had, how excited the people were. Unfortunately for Canada and the U.S., we struggled and we didn't do as well as the Czechs did. But when people talk about selling our game, maybe we didn't do as great a job as we wanted to do because of our record in the Olympics in North America, but if you look at what he did and what that team did for hockey in Czech Republic and parts of Europe, I don't think anything we could do would replace the publicity and the PR and the positive PR we got from that team winning the Gold Medal.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Well, every day's a challenge as far as I'm concerned. He's a pretty special player, pretty special athlete, what he did. You can't compare athletes and sports, it's really difficult. My challenge is to go to the rink and do the best I can every day and contribute to the New York Rangers and do the best I can game in and game out. That challenge hasn't changed for me since day one, since 1978 when I turned pro. I sat down and I was told by players and coaches, you just play the best you can play every single day, and that's still the motto I kind of live by.

WAYNE GRETZKY: I would love to play in 2002. But it's not gonna happen. (Laughter) You know, it's just such a great thrill to play for your country in the Olympics. I'm one of the guys, I grew up, I didn't know about it. I grew up dreaming of playing in the NHL; I didn't know what it would be like to play for your country in the Olympics. Everything from going over there, staying in the village, to being part of the Olympic games. And I hope that we go to 2002. I know we have to go through a lot to get to it because there's so many concerns that the League has and that sort of thing. But if it works out, I think it would be tremendous for hockey to be at the Olympic games.

WAYNE GRETZKY: Thank you.