Wayne Gretzky

Origins and early life

Wayne Douglas Gretzky was born in Brantford, Ontario, on 26 January 1961, the son of Walter Gretzky, who worked for Bell Telephone, and of Phyllis Hockin, and first skated before the age of three on the farm of his grandparents, Tony and Mary.

Work and career

In September 2025, on The Be Better Off Show, he said in his own words that his grandfather was 50 percent Jewish, a grandfather who, as The Canadian Jewish News put it, left Eastern Europe when any Jewish blood was a good reason to get out. He is thus Jewish by descent, through one Jewish great-grandparent; no source read for this entry says in which faith he was raised, and the family's roots are usually described as Belarusian, Ukrainian or Polish.

Top scorer of the 1978 World Junior Championships, he went through the World Hockey Association to the Edmonton Oilers, with whom he set many scoring records and won four Stanley Cup championships in ten seasons. On 9 August 1988 the Oilers traded him to the Los Angeles Kings, whom he led to the 1993 Stanley Cup Final, and he is credited with popularising hockey in California before ending his career with the St Louis Blues and the New York Rangers.

Over twenty NHL seasons, from 1979 to 1999, he amassed 894 goals, 1,963 assists and 2,857 points in 1,487 regular-season games, and his assists and points remain the league's career records. He won the Hart Trophy as most valuable player nine times and the Art Ross Trophy ten times, and he is the only player to have passed 200 points in a single season, which he did four times. On his retirement in 1999 he entered the Hockey Hall of Fame at once, without the usual waiting period, and the NHL retired his number 99 for every team in the league.

He later led Canada's men's team, as executive director, to gold at the 2002 Winter Olympics, coached the Phoenix Coyotes until 2009 and, since 2021, has worked as a hockey analyst on TNT.