He is only a boy, 17-years-old, and he has played all of three professional hockey games. He is wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson hat and he is being interviewed in the lobby of a hotel in Indianapolis, where he plays for the Racers of the World Hockey Association.
He is polite but not deferential, impressed but not awed by the prospect of playing hockey against his boyhood heroes. Already, with three games under his belt, he is being called The Great Gretzky.Flash forward 16 years to this weekend where Wayne Gretzky is poised to become the greatest goal scorer in National Hockey league history. With 798 goals, he needs three more to tie Gordie Howe's all-time record of 801 and his next two opportunities will come against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Gretzky and his Los Angeles Kings invade the Stadium Sunday and he is a hat trick away from hockey immortality. If he doesn't get them there then there is always Wednesday night in Los Angeles when the Hawks once more provide the opposition. Gretzky already has 49 career hat tricks and has scored five goals in a game on four occasions. Once he scored four goals in each of two consecutive games.
But, oddly, he never has scored against the Blackhawks' Eddie Belfour.
"That's just good luck on my part," says Belfour. "I think he hit the post once."
Belfour has no wish to be known as the goalie who gave up Gretzky's record goal and says, "you have to be ready to play against Wayne Gretzky. He can sense when a goalie is not on his game and he'll pressure a lot harder. He'll really go after you."
Gretzky long since has eclipsed Howe's record for total points, but politely has pointed out "it's like comparing apples and oranges." Indeed, it is a different game now, but Gretzky himself is partly responsible for that. Now Gretzky is about to accomplish in his 15th NHL season what it took Howe 26 years to do.
Bob Pulford, the Blackhawks' general manager who played against Howe and has seen Gretzky throughout his career, still considers Howe "maybe the best who ever played the game when you take the whole package."
Comparing the two, Pulford says "Howe had everything. He had a physical aspect about him, too. Not only was he a great goal scorer but he put the fear of God in everybody who played against him.
"Gretzky has great finesse and he sees the ice better than any player I've ever seen play the game. I'm a firm believer eyesight has a great deal to do with the difference between a star and a superstar."
Again and again Gretzky's vision is brought up whenever a player, past or present, is asked to analyze him.
"He finds guys nobody else would see," assesses teammate Charlie Huddy, who has played with Gretzky for nearly a decade.
"He sees the ice probably better than anyone who plays the game," says Belfour. "He knows where everyone's at. He's always in the opening planning holes in the ice where no one's at."