Great One embracing coach’s role
LOS ANGELES – Wayne Gretzky doesn’t pretend to know all the answers. He didn’t sit at Scotty Bowman’s knee and divine what makes a coach successful or how to compel players to adopt a game plan with their hearts as well as their minds.
“The basic fundamentals of the game, to actually sit down and teach,” Gretzky said, “my dad could teach them better and with a lot more simplicity than I can.”
He didn’t add the coaching duties to his title of managing director of the Phoenix Coyotes because he wanted an ego boost. Nor was he attempting a stunt to sell tickets for a franchise that emerges from the NHL lockout with questionable prospects financially and competitively.
“You dream, ‘If only he could do it, that would be amazing.’ But at the same time, you also realize that he doesn’t need to,” Coyotes captain Shane Doan said. “That’s almost more encouraging as a player, because you realize he’s doing this out of just a pure love of the game and a desire to win and a desire to be in there with you.”
Although he’d been an executive with the Canadian Olympic and World Cup teams, it took Gretzky six years of retirement to realize he felt incomplete without being closely involved in the game he played like none before him. He returned to Staples Center on Sunday not wearing his familiar No. 99, which was retired by the Los Angeles Kings three years ago, but wearing a gray sports jacket and an air of determination to teach not what he did, but what he learned about diligence and dedication.
“I don’t expect a guy who’s not a goal scorer to score 50 goals. But I expect that guy, every time there’s a guy in the way, to knock him over,” he said. “We’ve got to become a hard team to play against. None of this easy team to play against, 40 shots a game. … That’s the reputation this team has, and that’s what we’re going to eliminate.”
On a visceral level he missed the locker-room chatter, the quick surges of emotion, the chance to test himself. On an intellectual level, he missed his ritual of analyzing players and teams, which contributed more to his singular career than most people know. Marty McSorley, his teammate in Edmonton and with the Kings, recalled they’d often break down plays from their game or discuss players they’d seen on TV.
“I don’t think you’ll find a bigger fan of the game than Gretz,” McSorley said.
Or a more passionate one.
“People say to me all the time, ‘What do you enjoy doing?’ It’s pretty simple,” Gretzky said. “Other than my family, my only real enjoyment in life is being around hockey. It’s what I love to do. By no means could I say I’m a real estate guru, or I have stock deals. My life is hockey.
“I’ve enjoyed the teaching aspect of the game, the first couple weeks. It’s an interesting process. It’s completely different than being a player. As a player, for myself it was you get yourself ready, you come to the rink, you prepare, you work hard, you practice hard, you get yourself ready for that game. As a coach, we try to get each and every guy ready and focused.”
Mike Barnett, formerly Gretzky’s agent and now the Coyotes’ general manager, said becoming a coach was a natural progression for Gretzky.
“As dominant as he was in his career, he seldom overpowered guys or blew by guys,” Barnett said. “He was a cerebral talent that worked very, very hard at skill development, but first and foremost paid attention to the opponents by studying them, pinpointing their weaknesses and then trying to find ways to exploit them. That’s what good coaches do.”