If Wayne Gretzky wasn’t the best hockey player of all time, he would be the awkward manchild two cubicles down from you. You know the one. The guy who still thinks it’s okay to smack your ass if you bend over to pick something up, or talks about stupid shit like why Batman isn’t really a superhero. He even has the name for it.
But he wasn’t that guy. He was the best hockey player of all time. He set records that no one will ever break. And, perhaps most importantly, he was part of a kick-ass crime-fighting syndicate.
You know what, I’ll go one further. I think Wayne Gretzky was the greatest athlete of the modern era. Any sport. Michael Jordan always had good teams, Wayne didn’t (at least not after he left Edmonton.) Plus, there were no embarassing comebacks with Gretzky. Babe Ruth played in a league that didn’t allow talented players to participate because of their race. I’m reasonably certain Michael Phelps isn’t actually a human being. Roger Federer and Tiger Woods haven’t sustained dominance as long as Gretzky did. Gretzky’s it. He’s the best. And he’s Canadian.
Fuck Yeah.
If that wink and thumbs-up in the wedding photo doesn’t prove to you how much of a dork this guy is, watch anything from the episode of Saturday Night Live he did back in the day. I’ll be damned if it isn’t the most embarrassing episode ever— even the ones with sports celebs.
But, yeah. The guy was so good that he broke hockey. I don’t just mean records— he literally made the rules of the game change because he was too good at them. I miss watching him play back in his heyday.
