Hockey icon Gordie Howe (1928-), who held the previous record for most career points with 1,850, was surpassed by Wayne Gretzky, affectionately referred to as "The Great One," who also became the first player to win the Hart Trophy eight years in a row.
Gretzky’s Personal Life
The 26th of January 1961 saw the birth of Wayne Douglas Gretzky in Ontario, Canada, to parents Walter Gretzky and Phyllis Leone. His father was a "Bell Telephone Canada" employee. The five kids in the family were all hockey players when they were little.
Wayne first held a hockey stick at his grandfather's house when he was two. He played with the teenagers in his neighborhood when he was six. He occasionally performed as well as players who were more than twice his age, according to his coach Dick Martin.
Wayne excelled when he played with boys much older than him in his first junior season. He soon developed a gaming obsession and insisted on playing against the team's more experienced players. Wayne accomplished a remarkable record for a young lad his age when he scored 378 goals in his first junior season.
As he entered his teenage years, his popularity began to spread beyond the region, and the Wayne wave began to sweep across Canada. His family moved him to Toronto when he was 14 years old so he could develop his skills and have access to better facilities.
Wayne was selected third in the midget draught for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Major Junior Hockey League (OMJHL) in 1977. He made it to the major leagues because of his outstanding performance at the "World Junior Championship" in 1978.
His Career
At 17, Gretzky began playing hockey professionally for the Edmonton Oilers of the World Hockey Association (WHA). A year later, the WHA folded, but Wayne followed the Edmonton Oilers when they switched to the National Hockey League (NHL).
He won the NHL MVP award in his first season and went on to win it each of the following eight seasons. In terms of scoring, he was tied for first. Wayne didn't look back after that and helped the Oilers win four Stanley Cups.
Wayne Gretzky holds many records. His main ones are listed below:
- Two hundred fifteen points are the most in a season.
- Ninety-two goals are the most in a season.
- One hundred sixty-three assists total within a season.
- The most playoff points are 47.
He is the first player to have a season with more than 200 points. He repeated it four times. He recorded 894 goals, 1,963 assists, and 2,857 points in his NHL career.
Wayne was not the classic excellent hockey player at 6 feet tall and 180 pounds. He was also thought to be a little slow. He wasn't widely regarded as being in any way a decent NHL player. But no athlete in the world played hockey like Wayne, who had an uncanny aptitude for it.
It appeared as though he had eyes in the back of his head because of his ability to predict where players would be and make passes and adjustments accordingly.