Big Phil
Registered User
- Nov 2, 2003
- 31,703
- 4,147
The Hockey News had an article about it the other day. Remember when Gretzky was on Saturday Night Live in 1989? The whole "Wayne's World" skit and the "Waikiki Hockey" skit? Just hard to believe a hockey player doing that nowadays but it was no different than if Lebron James (has he ever hosted SNL?) would host. That's how big Gretzky was at the time. Especially after his first season in L.A. But it was more than that, in 1982 he was on Johnny Carson, there was Pro-Stars cereal. I don't mean he was on the front of a Wheaties box, I mean he had his own cereal.
The question they ask in the article is how did Gretzky have this popularity and notoriety? There was no Twitter or Facebook, no Youtube where you could watch his highlights over and over so why was he so much more famous than any hockey player before him or since? I know, I know, he broke records he was the greatest and he won Cups and helped the game in the Sun Belt. So maybe that is the reason and to top it all off he dominated the game so well that perhaps only Babe Ruth ever did that well (and even then.......) in his sport.
That could be the reason, he was just too great to ignore. But go beyond sports. You knew the name "Wayne Gretzky" like you knew the name Babe Ruth or Muhammad Ali or names like Walt Disney, George Lucas, Luke Skywalker or even whatever President was in the Oval Office at the time (Reagan for a lot of the time). If said either of these names and then said Wayne Gretzky, was it out of place? Was it any different than Michael Jordan?
So it brings me to today's game. How can a player get that sort of overall appeal? The best players in the game over the years have been Crosby, McDavid, Malkin and Ovechkin. The first two, while popular, are more quiet, seem like they would rather prefer to have quiet nights at home and to this day I've never known the name of either girlfriend they've had. We knew Janet. We watched the wedding like it was Prince Charles and Diana getting married. We knew Walter like he was our own dad. Malkin and Ovechkin may have the language issue in the way, although not Ovechkin by any means because he is flamboyant in the sort of way you'd like to see for the game. And there is another thing, Gretzky wasn't flamboyant, he wasn't a braggart, he didn't even fight. All he was was sociable. Crosby and McDavid are more like someone such as Joe Sakic. Nothing wrong with that, but they were different than Gretzky in that way.
So the question I am asking is, does the NHL not promote their stars as good as they used to or was it the fact that Gretzky was just so cartoonishly good that he couldn't be ignored and we've never seen one like that since?
The question they ask in the article is how did Gretzky have this popularity and notoriety? There was no Twitter or Facebook, no Youtube where you could watch his highlights over and over so why was he so much more famous than any hockey player before him or since? I know, I know, he broke records he was the greatest and he won Cups and helped the game in the Sun Belt. So maybe that is the reason and to top it all off he dominated the game so well that perhaps only Babe Ruth ever did that well (and even then.......) in his sport.
That could be the reason, he was just too great to ignore. But go beyond sports. You knew the name "Wayne Gretzky" like you knew the name Babe Ruth or Muhammad Ali or names like Walt Disney, George Lucas, Luke Skywalker or even whatever President was in the Oval Office at the time (Reagan for a lot of the time). If said either of these names and then said Wayne Gretzky, was it out of place? Was it any different than Michael Jordan?
So it brings me to today's game. How can a player get that sort of overall appeal? The best players in the game over the years have been Crosby, McDavid, Malkin and Ovechkin. The first two, while popular, are more quiet, seem like they would rather prefer to have quiet nights at home and to this day I've never known the name of either girlfriend they've had. We knew Janet. We watched the wedding like it was Prince Charles and Diana getting married. We knew Walter like he was our own dad. Malkin and Ovechkin may have the language issue in the way, although not Ovechkin by any means because he is flamboyant in the sort of way you'd like to see for the game. And there is another thing, Gretzky wasn't flamboyant, he wasn't a braggart, he didn't even fight. All he was was sociable. Crosby and McDavid are more like someone such as Joe Sakic. Nothing wrong with that, but they were different than Gretzky in that way.
So the question I am asking is, does the NHL not promote their stars as good as they used to or was it the fact that Gretzky was just so cartoonishly good that he couldn't be ignored and we've never seen one like that since?