"The Great One"

Wayne Gretzky Turns 55 Years Old

On January 26, 2016 it is easy to look at sports and think history. The Golden State warriors are off to a 40 and 4 start, chasing Jordan’s Bulls 72 win season.  The sheriff, Peyton Manning is headed to his fourth Super Bowl and maybe his final game of his record breaking career. On the other side of Super Bowl 50 is Cam Newton, who has looked like a Steve Young on steroids this season. For kids these days, sports are better than ever. Even tennis is being highlighted on sports channels, every interview from your favorite player can be seen on the Internet, and independent reporters with their cell phone cameras cover everything else. Even college conferences have their own TV channels. What else can you ask for in today’s sporting world? Nothing. Well, maybe nothing because the only major sport that is not up to par with the others in America is Hockey. Hockey is struggling, it does not get the attention of other sports. Any other day of the year Hockey can take the back seat in my car, but not today.  Today is the 55^th birthday of the GREAT ONE, Wayne Gretzky.

To kids and a lot of other sports fans in 2016, Jordan is the greatest to ever play basketball, everyone has an opinion on quarterbacks, and baseball has even bounced back to become a standard on household televisions. Hockey has continued to fall down the charts and it is a shame because one of the most dominant athletes to ever play any sport is almost forgotten by this generation.  By dominant, I would compare Gretzky as “better” at his sport than Jordan was at basketball. Gretzky has 40 regular season records, 15 playoff records, and 6 all-star records. The most impressive thing that can be said is that Gretzky has more assists (1,963) than the person in second place on the all time points list (Messier, 1,887 points and assists combined). Scoring his 50th goal just after turning 19 years old, Gretzky is the only player to ever reach 2,000 career points (894 goals and 1,963 assists) and he had over 3,000 career points (1,016 goals and 2,223 assists) if you include the playoffs.

As you can imagine, the trophy case in Gretzky’s house is full, with 9 MVP awards that came within a 10-year period (8 in a row), 2 Finals MVPs, and 4 Stanley Cup wins.  With 50 hat tricks in his career, the records can be typed out until you get tired of typing. The Great One was just that indeed, "GREAT" and maybe one of the greatest athletes in any sport to ever play any game. He dominated his game like nobody has ever done and there is a good possibility that nobody ever will. As some of his records will fall with the new rules that come and go in Hockey, the points record will never be broken.

If you are not familiar with Wayne Gretzky, I challenge every child, adult, male, or female that has a love for any sport to YouTube or Google "The Great One." Find out for yourself that the most dominant athlete to ever play on this earth is one of the most forgot about athletes of all time.  If there is anytime that Hockey should be a lead story in sports, out of respect for Wayne Gretzky, it should be January 26, every year.

MAYDAY JAY JAY

Twitter @MayDayJJSports