E471 Wayne Gretzky

0:00At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Today's guest is a legend in the sport of hockey and a legend just in humanity, in human history. It's a name that's synonymous with being victorious. He's a four-time Stanley Cup winner. He has more records than Sun Studios. This guy has more records in hockey than anyone. You can catch him on the TNT NHL panel. I'm so thankful to spend time with him today. Mr.

0:46Wayne Gretzky. Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me And I will find a song I've been singing I love this

1:15Who's your accent? Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, man. It's pretty good. We didn't ever have... We had a team. I think it was the Algae or something. I don't know what our... It was the East Coast League, probably. Yeah, it was like, are the Mudbirds or something. Some team. Mudbirds. Yes, it was definitely like, even the mascot sounded like it wasn't going to survive. You know, it was like, I think it was the, um. That's funny. I think it was like. Even the mascot got traded. I think it was the oil spill pigeons or something. Like, cause there was, we had a lot of issues down there. That was very funny.

1:52So I think our mascot was, uh, yeah, it was bad. The mascot always had bandages on and stuff. I remember they break, it was just, it didn't do well. Yeah. timing probably wasn't great it's kind of grown now like there's a team here in atlanta that does pretty well like it's like comparable to double a in baseball it's not triple a and they do pretty good here they're and they're talking about bringing another nhl team to atlanta no way be the third time in 40 years but yeah they tried it twice i know over the over the over the history of time and do you know like yeah why doesn't it succeed you think in certain markets is it just not the is it well does it just take people to be there or does it take something special to be in a market for hockey to survive it's a little bit of both because we don't have you know we don't have um like baseball and football it's been in the south and the southwest forever right oh yeah hockey's just kind of getting there so back in the 70s when the flames first came in the expansion rules were different the owners wanted the money the league wanted the money but they gave you the worst teams so they would go five six seven years and go well it's not a hockey city well people get tired of paying to watch a team lose right yeah so then they came back again it was kind of the same expansion rules and it failed again the everyone who got wiser and when vegas came in they got the ninth best player on every team they got low draft picks and they built a foundation and people got excited look our team's good Seattle got the same sort of thing as Atlanta or as Vegas if Atlanta gets another team they're going to get that advantage again yeah they're going to get good treatment and maybe this will become a good hockey city because people are saying Jesus we're winning and let's go to the games yeah so it's not fair to people of Atlanta, their teams were so bad, you just say, I'm not paying anymore.

3:54Yeah, at a certain point, you can't go and be really supporting some of the teams. I think in the South, well, the South is also kind of religious. There's more religion there. And the only person we've ever seen even kind of, or the only person that people believe behaves or gets wild on water is Jesus, really. So I think the second you see a guy saying, hey, look what I'm going to do out here on this frozen lake i think it makes you wonder what's going on here well in canada we call our arenas churches oh yeah really you know in canada it's hockey and religion those are the two biggest things right so you can be you know sports is very popular in our country football canadian football baseball the blue jays do well the raptors have done really well so it's kind of canada's team the raptors and the blue jays yeah but hockey is everywhere right so you can be driving in your car in july and if you're listening to talk radio it's still 90 hockey that they're talking about right july and august because you can still do it and it's so popular right oh yeah people love it people i think it's unbelievable yeah it's you know like down down in the u.s i always encourage parents to tell their kids play every sport tennis baseball football basketball soccer uh field lacrosse and they're all so big and if you sat down here you would say okay baseball is probably the most popular sport or no it's basketball is the biggest sport yeah and then you're like well football is pretty big but in canada there's no definition it's one it's one it's ice hockey that's it yeah i think i'm trying to think of why we never uh yeah i think yeah up there if everything's frozen you it you know yeah well we got a big advantage because you got free ice yeah you got free ice right you know it's a big thing you know oh yeah ice is i think 18 a bag where i'm from yeah it's it's ice is expensive and you know parents a lot of parents it's hard for them to afford hockey equipment ice skates uh paying for ice time but in canada most of the places you can play i grew up in southern ontario which is uh basically between niagara falls new york and uh detroit oh yeah that's i mean that's the third self of the freezer section buddy that's it gets pretty chilly yeah so we had an ice rink in my backyard from the time i was yeah yeah i saw i saw some lore about that so my dad would go and he would buy a sprinkler head in december which they always thought he was crazy who's buying a sprinkler at christmas time anyway and he would put it out in the middle of the ice and he would let it go back and forth for like two hours and then go move it another part of the ice and his ice was always about this thick and it would last till probably the end of march did he lay a good rank oh he had the best really yeah and he was funny people used to stop by the house and say how does walter get his grass so green what do you do what are you putting in your grass my dad didn't do anything it was just probably from the ice being so good for the the grass he always had the greenest grass in the neighborhood and didn't do anything that's pretty classic man yeah we had some uneven areas i remember i played baseball i mean i didn't i don't know if i was you know mom signed me up a couple seasons man and it wasn't great for me but um our field was uneven we had an uneven field yeah so every ball if you hit anything second base it was all ended up in right field right we probably had 25 gradient on the field so we had at least two right fielders always at least well that's probably now listen i grew up loving baseball i went and saw my grandson play the other day he had his hat on backwards i think he was picking danny lines always yeah oh yeah there's always that kid out there who ends up being a gardener or something yeah and then i took him to we went to watch him play ice hockey the next day and they're out there sweating and skating for an hour loving it yeah and they got to figure out a way to get these kids more enthusiastic about baseball because it's not a lot of fun for some of them who are standing out in the outfield yeah i think and i think that's one of the reasons may i don't know if baseball is i guess it's always america's sport because there's something rooted in tradition about it there's something i mean you give an american a hot dog they'll sit there and do anything for a little while you know but i think it's true yeah it's and i you know i do it if somebody's like and the history of the game you know the history of baseball from babe ruth what he did to what jackie robinson right for everyone right there's so much history and let's face it it's economically easier to buy a pair of shoes and a baseball glove than to have to buy a whole entire hockey equipment sort of yeah to set that up in certain parts right and then in other parts it's the other way around you know like it would be tougher to like heat a basketball court in the winter in canada yeah so that people have the opportunity to be there and play as much yeah we don't you know although the raptors have really found a niche in our country yeah like they're huge yeah people love them i was in your country when they won the championship yeah and i wasn't in vancouver but people were like oh yeah beating each other and hugging each other at the same time so like in our country like you're in vancouver you're canucks fan and you're in alberta you either flames oilers and all the way across right right but if you're in vancouver newfoundland you're a blue jays fan or a raptors fan it's just it's canada's team and they just all cling to it yeah it's something pretty special about it and i always see when guys get traded up there more basketball than baseball and guys well i don't want to play in canada i want to stay in my own country but the guys who go there will tell you they get treated phenomenally it's a great city to live in it's a great country and people are nice okay people's always so nice in canada even if somebody was angry they may i bet they would they'd come across the street and they'd just say hey i'm angry but but i'm sorry yeah you know there's a lot of stories yeah yeah they're just too kind well i noticed even like you know i grew up in the south there's a lot of like i don't know if there's still as much but especially when i was growing up there was like more racial disparity down there you know because there's a lot of history of like black and white racism down there and um and when i was in canada i don't feel that energy i i don't everybody seems the same it's like i often say that to people that we just we don't seem to have racism in our country people all seem to get along yeah you know and it's that's why people always come up to me and say you're from canada right and i say yeah you're like canadians are all so nice and i go yeah i think they are and i said but you know i got five american kids five american grandchildren and they're all nice kids too so you can meet a lot of nice people in the united states right yeah well i think if you're coming out of that Gretzky lineage I think you guys have to see you guys I mean it seemed pretty just like nice folks you know um well they had a good mother so yeah you know listen when you're when you're working and playing hockey you know it's hard you know the schedule's tough oh yeah you can't be like playing on the west coast in LA and Edmonton we're always either playing or in an airplane right so listen uh I love my kids dearly but it was the mother who was around them the mothers are so so vital it was like my my relationship with my mom and dad was very close my dad was sort of this hockey father of the country you know people loved my dad walter gretzky man but i would always say but it was my mom behind the scenes that kept her family she was a wonderful lady and she always kind of stayed out of the limelight like when i was a kid and i'd play all the parents used to sit sort of together and my mom would sit in the corner by herself so what did she like to do your mom like what were some like when she had time for herself what were some hobbies that she liked because i i mean from what i hear from what it sounds like your dad probably got pretty involved with you once you started playing hockey as much so a lot of people don't know this but i had a down syndrome aunt and she was born in the 50s and back in those days they would take these kids and basically they put them in asylums and medicate them and oh yeah yeah people didn't know what to do so my grandmother said you know i'm not sending her to school so she never went to school day in her life um she was by the end she was a little bit blind she lived till she was 63 and my grandfather was from uh russia belarus mints russia my grandmother was from ukraine and the kids were born in canada and my grandfather would speak to her in Russian my grandmother would speak to her in Ukrainian and we all communicated with her in English oh and that'll give anybody down syndrome I feel like and my dad used to always say if you don't believe in the good lord there's a great example right here but so when she was trilingual then she could understand but she spoke only English and right if you didn't know her you'd have a hard time understanding her but we grew up with her so we were fine so when my grandmother was passing she said do me one favor don't put her in her home and of course my mother said i'll take care of her so she lived with my parents for at least 12 years i guess and then um uh wow yeah and then you were a child too it was when you were a kid no she so my grandmother would have passed in 88 um and that's when she moved in with my mom and dad so she had her hands full with her own kids, grandkids, my aunt.

13:25Her enjoyment really was Friday nights going with her mom, who's my grandmother, they'd go, they loved bingo. That was a big thing in our hometown. And she could, my dad said she could play bingo every night. She loved it that much. And I used to go, how'd you do today? I won$7. I'm like, okay, at least you're winning. so her her life was around our kids and the grandkids but her enjoyment was going to bingo wow so she was kind of she just found a lot of joy in her family and then yeah some simple pleasure sounds like just simple pleasures kind of she was very simple like she was um i'll tell you when i turned pro um i said to my parents i'm gonna buy you a house and my mom and dad said we don't need a house we we're we're fine right here and i so there was a little piece of property was an acre just down the street from where where i grew up and where they were living so i went and bought it secretly and i took them over there and my mom said what are you doing i said well i'm going to build you this house here you're going to something really special she goes no no my house is fine she goes but if you want to do something you can put a pool in her backyard so i put a pool in the backyard and sold my piece of property because they didn't want to move into it.

14:41And they lived there to the very end. And when my dad passed recently, I bought the house. And so now I own my house. Oh, yeah. I was going to ask, actually, what that was like. So your mom was like, now that all that skating is done, I want a pool back here. Yeah. Oh, yeah. She said, your father's not building a hockey rink anymore. I want a swimming pool. She loved having the swimming pool in the backyard. There is something nice about it, isn't there? Yeah. And she loved the barbecue. I was telling a story. you know now they have everything's so regimented right so back in back in when you win the stanley cup they have these two guys that travel with the trophy because it's so special like they don't want anything to happen to it and they don't want it to break and so they keep a good eye on it right like kind of like uh like a net like a little bit of like a um like um little uh gargoyles kind of like perfect like yeah and they just protect yeah they just watch it they travel with it like hit men or whatever yeah oh my mom got pissed if we got by our nice dishes yeah so there they are in those days um when i when i won a championship i remember one day was the summertime i was at my folks house my mom was doing a barbecue my both grandmothers were there and i'm sitting there and i said to my dad geez i should just i should get the stanley cup here and get some pictures so i called the hall of fame and i said hey i'm having a barbecue this afternoon can you guys drive down the stanley cup and they said yeah yeah we'll be down in an hour they got in a car put the cup in drove down gave me the cup we took pictures in the backyard and then they took the cup back to the hall of fame now it's all organized right now each guy gets a day with the cup yeah it's all organized and the guys travel with the trophy but back then it was just like hey uh can i have the cup this afternoon they say yeah no problem they bring the cup down yeah so some of the best pictures i have with my grandmother and my mom my dad in the backyard just holding the Stanley Cup.

16:34Yeah, plate of beans in one hand and the Stanley Cup in the other. Corn. Oh, yeah, that was big, huh? Yeah. Oh, wow, yeah. I can only have so much corn in there. I wish I had some beans usually. Yeah, dude, you're like an ice master. Do you ever realize, like you kind of mastered like a, or anyway, to me, it seems like, you know, like do you ever go to like, are you ever at like Disney on ice? You ever take your kids to Disney on ice and you're just like, you know, you're like, those chipmunks are off sides, you know, like. No. Like, do you have that much of a, or when you see an ice maker on a fridge, you just growl at it.

17:08I feel like you just have that. No, that doesn't happen. You're a frozen water master. I will tell you this. So I said to somebody the other day, we were on a lake and they said, do you want to jump in? And it was kind of a cold day. I said, you know, I'm way better when that water's frozen. I'm not going in. But I did go to Disney on ice one time because my friend and neighbor, Scotty Hamilton, I went to see the show one time. Scotty Hamilton, he's a dancer? He was a, yeah, he was an Olympic gold medalist. Oh, he's an Olympic gold medalist. Yeah. And then he did - Figure skater. Yeah, figure skater.

17:38Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was really phenomenal figure skater. Oh, there he is right there. Yeah, and a wonderful guy. So I think he was either Disney on ice or one of those shows. And we went to see it and we sat down by the ice. And I think the time Katarina Witt was in it. Oh, yeah. And it was pretty, yeah, it was pretty phenomenal. Like what they can do. It's so different than ice skating. like i think there's a lot of figure skaters that could transfer to ice skating but i don't think there's a lot of ice skaters that could put on figure skates and do well yeah it's a whole different thing they're so athletic i live with a guy for like probably four months and he was uh i don't know what he was he was pretty tall but he would he was a figure skater and he took us outside one time they had a volkswagen rabbit outside and he ran and jumped over it from one side to the other side that's pretty amazing it was just unbelievable and it was just an afternoon yeah it was just like it just blew my mind man well they're they're you know the training and the techniques that they have because they have to do those turns and they have to get high in the air to be able to do a triple yeah so they probably in the off season they probably do a lot of squat training you know so that when they do get on the ice they're they're much it's much easier Oh, yeah.

18:52But, yeah, they get out there. Yeah, those guys really can do it. I think ice skating is pretty incredible. Yeah, I think we just miss, being in the southern part of the U.S., we miss all of the lacrosse. We miss all of the sports, really, the whatever it's called, the difference of sports just changes as you go down south. But, you know, I was talking earlier about how popular hockey is, and it's definitely huge in our country. but if you were to go around anywhere and interview people outside of canada and say what is the national sport of canada they'd all say ice hockey or 90 of them but it's lacrosse but it's actually lacrosse lacrosse was invented in six nations reserve which is just outside of my hometown of brantford so a couple things we're very proud of alexander grain bell made his first phone call from brantford my hometown did he really yes who'd call he called somebody in paris ontario which was like a 15 minutes away 15 miles away probably a chick i bet that was who you're gonna call if you get your first call you're gonna call probably some woman you or you know some lady you might want to say you know so they actually have the telephone i don't in in brantford oh yeah and uh the other thing is we're very proud of is that lacrosse was invented in in canada it was a great sport yeah dude i didn't even know about can i I mean, I didn't even, when I was growing up, we didn't even really believe in Canada.

20:17Listen, I will tell you this. In Canada, and I don't mean this to be controversial, we learned growing up the geography of pretty much the world, but a lot of Canada and the United States. When American kids kind of grow up, they didn't learn a whole lot about Canada, that there's provinces. A lot of Canadians can name every state and every capital, but there's only a handful of people I know that can name all the provinces in Canada. Probably 70 people I've had in America. I'm not even joking. I remember in our school, we learned about America, right? Yeah. Some kids can barely do that. But then above it, on the map, they had a picture of a, it was like a wolf chasing a boy, you know?

20:58And that was, and we're like, well, what is that? And they're like, that's, you know, that's Canada. One of the first things I learned was the capital of Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Oh, yeah. I always remember that. I don't know why I remember that, but I did. It's a pretty good place. They had a hockey team for a little while. Didn't do well, but. I think hockey's going to start going back there now. You watch. Because people are, the greatest thing about our sport are the people who are in the game. Like Ovechkin and Crosby and McDavid and Matthews. And some of the Bruins too. Yeah. They're just good kids.

21:30You know, like they understand, like they're hardworking and they love, they're unselfish to their teams, but they're unreal for the league and in their communities. Like these kids are good kids. So our sport is growing and expanding all the time. And more and more kids are playing hockey in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Florida. So Nevada. Nevada is a hotbed right now because the hockey team has done so well. Yeah, people, it gets infectious. Yeah, and everybody loves it. Yeah. So I think more and more kids will start playing hockey, and I see our game just growing all the time. um what was was there a part of the game that you like did you ever play goalie like because every time i see clips of you and everything you're always not playing goalie right which is fine if i was a goalie i'd be more like playing dodgeball right i got out of the way did you ever did you ever do it to uh to learn about what it was like like did you ever like um the only time i ever did it was when i was a kid we played ball hockey so ball hockey's played with the tennis ball in running shoes okay unlike a sport court or gymnasium all right and so the only time i would play goal where i wasn't scared to get hit by a puck yeah it was a tennis ball every now and then i played gold but i was listen people used to ask me do you ever block a shot and first of all do you know how hard that puck is and for the average hockey fan they don't realize those pucks are every puck is frozen so the pucks that you're using are not only hurt but they're frozen too who froze them so they're in the referee's box and so they're frozen so they don't bounce so they so it doesn't bounce really right because it's made out of what rubber rubber yeah so my god and so they used to say it was cobalt do you ever block a shot and i said why would i that's why they pay the goalie.

23:28That's not my job. I don't ask him to score goals. He doesn't need to ask me to block shots. I kind of faked it. You think you're in the lane, but the guy had a lot of room to shoot around you. When I started podcasting, an online store was probably one of the furthest things from my imagination or my mind. But over time, we've created one and it's been super easy thanks to Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at any and every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million order stage.

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Included in this special package is the Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra, the Weed Whacker 2.0 Ears and Nose Trimmer, manscaped's liquid formulations and two free gifts get 20 off and free shipping with code theo at manscaped.com that's 20 off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code t-h-e-o manscaped get your jingle balls ready for the holidays was there uh um you had so many records man was there something that you felt like you wanted to get that you couldn't get kind of was there are were you even keeping tabs on that kind of stuff yeah i didn't really keep tabs on it um i never i did when i retired i knew it was time to retire and i didn't think back and say gosh i wish i would have done this or accomplished this but i did i did look back and say okay because people ask me what is your favorite record and they're all they're all yeah fun they're all you know i'm proud of them all but i got my favorite record is the year i scored 50 goals in 39 games and for me it's my favorite record your third season or something yeah and that's my favorite record because listen all records are made to be broken but to me that's going to be the hardest record to break to get 50 goals in 38 games so from that point of view it's my favorite you seem like the kind of guy that if somebody broke it you would even be you would applaud the fact that they did that well yeah you know listen i learned from two of the best people in the world my dad who is a wonderful man and gordy how and gordy how was my idol when you when you're oh yeah when you're a kid and you have an idol a lot of times you meet them and you go i was just okay maybe like i had a bad day or whatever and you go well i met gordy how when i was 10 and my dad said to me i was meeting gordy how and i said i i can't believe it he goes what i said he was bigger better and nicer than I ever imagined in my little brain at 10 years old you know and so when I was breaking records Gordie Howe was always there he was the first guy to shake my hand and give me a hug and so you know Ovechkin's going to break my record uh which is going to be great for our game and when he does I'll be there for him I hope I'm on the ice and I hope I get to be one of the first people to congratulate him uh because it's a it's it's a special record and it's good for our game if he does break it yeah um oh that's him right there it was so exciting because i got the afternoon off school and i got a new suit that morning so it was a big day oh yeah dude look you know you look you know who you look like a little bit who's that you know who i'm gonna say or no no no idea princess diana a little like no just the fact that she's a female i don't know if that that's a compliment or not and i just mean look man and the i think it's very much comment and she was a tough lady i've heard it before yeah you have yeah yeah man i think god every now and then when my hair is a little whatever some guys say gosh you got rod stewart hair oh i think there's i bet a couple of men played on your team just because they wanted to be near you but no gordy was so nice he was just so it was a dinner it was a charity dinner this is an incredible story uh-huh and 700 people were at the dinner and that was the year i scored 400 goals so the city wanted me to be part of it and you know when you're 10 years old you can't even stand up and do a speech in front of your classmates right so they had told the guy so you're only 10 at this time yeah so they had told the emcee wayne's just introduce him he's not going to talk and so um joe theisman was there what yeah gordie howe when you were 10 yes sandy holly a famous jockey and so they all get up and they kind of talk for seven or eight minutes and people laugh and giggle so the guy announces my name and i'm like oh no and i'm already frozen and gordy says to me now listen when you go up there just tell him you're lost without your skates and your hockey stick and so i got okay okay so i got up there and i was shaking and i i remember i said thank you and i started bawling i got a standing ovation i went and sat down so years later i called a friend of mine called me and he said gordy's hometown of saskatoon they're doing this charity dinner which like a lion's club which was very similar to the one i did in my hometown yeah we had lion's club in our town yeah so i called gordy and his son mark and i said listen gordy came to my hometown when i was 10 i'd really like gordy to come with me to saskatoon and i want to surprise everybody so we were in saskatoon this dinner and they'd sold i think there was about 3 000 people there and the prime minister of canada happened to be in town and he called me and he says, okay, if I come over there and sort of emcee this and ask you a few questions for the people.

31:16And I said, absolutely, no problem at all. So I said, oh, by the way, nobody knows this, but I flew Gordy and he's at the hotel and Gordy's going to come tonight and we're going to introduce him. Well, it was like, I wasn't there anymore. The prime minister was like, okay, maybe somebody will do you and I'll do Gordy. So anyway, when I got up on stage, I said to everybody, I got a great surprise. I met him in my hometown. I figured I should come to his hometown. And Gordie Howe came out. And I swear to God, if people didn't stop clapping, they'd still be clapping today because it was the most, it was the longest, nicest standing ovation that I've ever seen somebody get.

31:58And he was so genuinely loved. And he was such, he was a really, people don't realize this, Gordie Howe was a dirty player. first time i play against him i took the puck from him and next thing you know i got a whack i was 17 years old and he cracked my thumb he said don't ever take the puck from me again i said okay never gonna happen again anyway so he got such an evasion and after the event we went back to the hotel and gordy's had brought back a couple of his buddies that he knew they hadn't seen in a while a couple older gentlemen and we just sat around and he he had a he had a remember he sat there and he had a cold beer and he said this was one of the greatest days greatest nights of my life so it was very cool when you when you look at like um like when you were a kid was most of your relationship with your dad like hockey like was it tough to because if you became like if you excelled at something early right and a lot of times fathers and sons will it's tough for fathers and sons to find like a common ground sometimes to connect on on things you know parents are always putting their kids into different things and and dads are always trying to connect with their children you know was there other ways that you could like was that most of y 'all's relationship like i'm just kind of like i guess i'm curious like what it was like we had a normal relationship like normal father son um he was both parents tremendously supportive um you know by the time i was 10 11 12 years old i was playing in arenas that were selling out that's crazy dude you were like a circuses in town a little bit and i mean not like that but i know what i mean but in those days too it was such a big world because there was no internet there was no cell phones and so yeah a kid might be three hours away and you would hear about them and then when you play against them my dad would be in the car and after the game he would say to me his favorite line was always no matter how good you think you are there's somebody out there better than you and i'd say okay and even when i was 15 16 when people said okay he's going to be a professional hockey player my dad never one time said you know oh he's a can't miss or he's going to make it i mean he hoped because he knew how much i loved it but he never pressured me the only thing he pressured me about is he would call me say you didn't miss any classes today so really oh yeah he i said dad i don't miss class because if i miss class the team so i was playing junior hockey and it was hard because we practiced every day and we travel a lot yeah and so they were the team was always on you like you better be in class so he was more concerned that I was in class I remember I was uh 17 and I had this uh school teacher and he it was I was taking a physics class and I hated physics and chemistry was I kept thinking now where's this gonna where am I going to use this in the world yeah that's all I kept thinking um anyway and he said if you just put the work in I'll pass you so I did I went to class I went to an extra class every day with him and he worked an extra half hour every day he passed me and that was the year that month I got offered to turn pro and I signed a pro contract and I remember I came back and I bought him a gift it wasn't a whole it wasn't a big thing it was like a briefcase or something thanking him for for being so patient with me and being so nice to me.

35:24He was so grateful. And it was always sort of, when I signed, my dad said, you're going to stay pro hockey. You're going to stay in high school until you're 18. I don't care what you do, but you're going to school until you're 18. So here I am playing pro hockey. And going to high school? I was picking up my teammate's daughter. We were in the same class. No way. The guy's name was Jim Nielsen. And I would pick his daughter up. We were in the same school, same class. then I go to practice you were like ice vs presley so the principal called me in one day and he said son I don't know you're not going to amount to anything you're missing too many classes and I'm like well and he said you know I should just kick you out and I said listen it was like early January and I said listen do me a favor and he goes what I said give me till January 26th and if I haven't changed my act by then you can kick me out but I knew I couldn't go to class because we're always traveling and playing I was playing pro hockey playing in quebec city and going to cincinnati and did you have an ego were you in class were you like the fonds at this point i sat in the back corner i just mind my own business so the day i turned 18 i walked into the principal and i said i just want to thank you for not kicking me out but i quit i'm done and i quit school and my i said i called my dad and my dad said well you promised me to stay to 18 because the contract wasn't valid unless he would sign it because your father would sign it because i wasn't 18 yet and so he said i'll sign it but you got to stay in high school so did you ever finish high school technically um no but i'm a doctor yeah does that mean anything i'm an honorary doctor um hey it counts to me bro so if you get most of the 12 grades i think that's a lot people are always like you got to do all of them yeah um i always yeah you know what i i'm an honorary doctor it's funny i i did the commencement speech for i said okay i'm gonna pick one and people have been kind enough to offer me and i said you know what i'm gonna do one and so i picked the university of alberta which is in edmonton which i thought was fitting and i have it's so funny because i have different nicknames so in the hockey world they call me grats gretz great one no just grats and in the golf world they call me doc because i was telling the guys one day he was playing with i think it was dustin and jordan spieth and i said you know i'm a doctor something to that effect so the golf world calls me doc in the hockey world calls me grats do you you ever get to play with sheldon sorry you know sheldon i play a lot with them yeah we're next door neighbors oh that's awesome sheldon's a friend of mine he's just gonna have a baby right now yeah that's so exciting no he's an unreal guy uh he's a beautiful guy like i'm not saying he's beautiful but somebody said he's got a big heart he's got a huge heart he's so mellow sheldon's not gonna have a heart attack like he's always mellow he's always happy he's never upset a very calm person um yeah he's one of him and his wife are great people yeah he's handsome dude i think that's the weird thing about And he's big.

38:31Oh, yeah. He's violently handsome. You're like, damn, that dude's handsome, and then he hits you. Yeah, and that's why I always say to people, I looked at guys like him, and that's why I retired. Yeah, because they were getting big? They were getting so big. And today, these guys are so big today, and the equipment is so much better, and the skates are so much better, and the teaching that they get at a younger age is so much better. These guys are incredible athletes, and I'm glad I played when I played. I'm glad I'm gone now. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes it's like you fit in time in a certain space, you know?

39:03Yeah, time means everything. I know. Yeah, you would know, man. I got lucky. You know, listen, I came in at the right time. I came in, when I came in, they had a WHA, which was similar to ABA, AFL, and they were signing kids under 20. Which seems illegal in some place. I mean, it's like how? Well, so I signed. but had there not been that league i might have had to play another three years of junior you never know if you get hurt right i may never have made it right so my timing was really fortunate really lucky do you like to read any books are you reading anything i'm reading one right now uh kenny albert everything i do is sports related oh yeah you love it that much huh so i'll give you an example when i was 15 years old i was playing on a junior hockey team and it was so exciting because my one of my teammates was murray howe who was gordy howe's youngest son oh wow and he's just a wonderful kid and i wore number nine that year because i always loved gordy and so when he came in i said look you should wear number nine your dad's gordy howe switched my number oh and he was no no no no this is wayne this is my last year of hockey i'm gonna enjoy it and i go okay he goes i'm gonna be a doctor he was a really intelligent and he did go on to become a doctor.

40:24So we'd get on the team bus and we'd travel to the city. He'd get on there and he'd have all these books, right? And I'd get on, no books. And he goes, Wayne, you got to get your education. You got to, I go, I'm going to a hockey game. I can't think about reading right now and doing homework. And so about two weeks later, I got on the bus and I had like five or six books. I sit down beside him and he goes, good to see you're taking notes here, Wayne. that's good good for you and he said he goes what do you got geography history i go well i got gordy how hockey my way gordy how hockey tips i said you want to be a doctor christmas you want to be a doctor i want to be a hockey player but he went on to be a tremendous doctor and he actually gave the eulogy for his dad's funeral when he when gordy passed away which was pretty remarkable um do you did you speak at your dad's funeral what was that like yeah i did i spoke both at my mom and my dad's um and sorry to hear yeah sorry about your fault yeah it was you know what it was funny because there's something that just takes over inside you that you get through it right like i remember my mom passed my dad called me and said you know will you speak?

41:41And I said, of course. So when my dad was passing, my brothers and my sister said, will you speak? And I said, yeah. The ironic thing was when my dad passed, we were still in the midst of the pandemic. So it was actually, in a lot of ways, it was nice for our family because there was only 22 of us there. And, you know, because you couldn't - Right, you couldn't invite everybody. Had it not been at that time, he probably would have had to get buried or had the funeral in a hockey arena with so many people. He was so loved by so many people. So I found both times sitting there going, oh, this is going to be hard.

42:21And when I got up there, it just kind of flowed because my dad, when I spoke at his, he was so religious, my dad. And he never missed church on a Sunday when every Sunday, and he used to tease the kids because he tried out for the church choir and they wouldn't let him in it. Oh, dang it. Come on, bro. Yeah. So there was a little boy across the street who was disabled and blind. And my dad picked him up every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. and took him to church every Sunday and then brought him back home. He'd taken McDonald's and then back home. And he did it every Sunday. So when my dad was passing, he's so religious.

43:02But I remember he was still fighting to stay down here, so to speak. he was 22 days basically on a deathbed right and the minister would come every night at our house and he would give him his last rights and i said ride him out again i say to minister my dad's got the biggest hurt you're coming i'll see you tomorrow so anyway when when we did give the uh when i did give the uldg i could feel like he was there and he got me through it wow that's fascinating man yeah i remember i went to my dad's funeral it was like i don't know it's just such a strength it's such a i don't know it's wild seeing something like that happen i think do you think it helped that your father had such a faith did he give you so like oh yeah yeah like he knew there was life after death he was gonna see his mother he's gonna see his father so part of him was probably excited huh yeah i think yeah in some ways but i think he wanted to be here as long as he could he loved being around his grandkids he loved being around people um he was just really special in that sense um you know i don't not too often you can say that people don't have enemies but i don't think my dad had an enemy like he was beloved by everyone um i remember one time i came home when i when i would go home and visit them every now and then you know my dad would tell the whole city right that you're coming yeah so i got smart on that and i i call my mom and i say i'll be home tomorrow don't tell dad so i get there in the morning this is hilarious and i walk in and there's a guy lying on the couch oh yeah i get over to my mom and i kind of know everybody that goes in and out of our house you know my mom was in the kitchen and i said who's lying on the couch who is that she goes i don't know um but he's hitchhiking across the country from newfoundland wanted to see the house so your dad told him to spend the night and have a good meal so that's the kind of guy my dad was and the guy spent the night and got up in the morning and him and i had coffee at the time he got to get a picture with my jersey on when i happened to be home that day and he was hitchhiking the rest of canada that was the kind of dad my dad was wow they should put him they should put him in a jersey and let him hitchhike the country forever and just make it like a thing, you know?

45:25Well, you know. It's not the Stanley Cup, but hey, guys, have you met Stanley? And everybody just picks him up. There you go. Yeah, it'd be funny. I'm trying to think about something else that's pretty neat, man. Do you all? Well, we could talk about my wife's family. My mother-in-law's 102. No way. Which is amazing. Y 'all got that long blood in you, homie. She's 102. She's a great lady. She lived with us and helped raise our kids for 30 years. but she lives in our house in St. Louis and when we're there she likes to go for lunch or dinner almost every day and she gets around on her own it's truly remarkable and what's amazing is that unfortunately her her dad passed away at 56 which is awful cancer and two sisters who had breast cancer both passed away and the mom was 102 and still going strong wow that's incredible I got some longevity then in your uh jeans huh my dad always said it's the hours you get before midnight for sleeping for sleeping that gives you longevity and my mother-in-law is asleep by 8 30 and gets up at four i think there's something to that i think there's something to it yeah there's something nice when you're up in the morning and you feel like you like just kind of got up with the sun you just feel like you're kind of dialed yeah and you know it's amazing the older you get the earlier you get up right and the less you sleep for some reason yeah isn't that weird man and my dad used to always say i remember he had a famous quote to me he goes uh you know you spend your whole life as a kid trying to figure out how to stay out of bed and as an adult you try to figure out your whole life how do i get to sleep how do i get in bed it's so true yeah yeah i think sometimes when people are like sometimes if i even think about like leaving this earth you know and passing away from here i think about just getting some good rest you know it's kind of the way i think about it in my head it's like you know some of that will be relieving did you guys ever go on any vacations and stuff when you were a kid because if you're always doing hockey it seemed like you're probably always on the run did y 'all ever go to florida or somewhere or the north pole that's funny the north pole um well two things are are my mom's life this is sometimes she would complain about this uh so in the winter time it was hockey tournaments summertime was lacrosse and baseball tournaments so that was our vacations and then every three years my dad's sister uh because my parents grandparents in the 50s had tobacco farms and people from the south would come up to work in the summer because the season for picking is a little different so they can make money in canada then go back oh that's nice so my uncle was from greensburg carolina he married my dad's sister and every two years we would go down there for two weeks we'd drive down for two weeks and stay there with our cousins and my aunt and uncle.

48:14And that was probably our vacation, right? I remember one time driving back, I convinced my parents to stop in Cooperstown, which was a little out of the way. And my mom was so mad. She said, we spent an extra six hours drying so you could go to Cooperstown. And my dad would say, this is good for him. It's okay. oh that's so much fun man i love it even when you were talking about like the lore like back in the day if you had like if you heard about a kid playing you'd have to go and see him like yeah yeah that was the way it was back then oh there was something so much more magical about like lore like they don't have as much of it anymore because everybody you know everybody i don't know but you know the funny thing is like if you say to kids today like new york to london england's not that far we used to think brantford to windsor ontario which was a two and a half hour drive was like going to the other other side of the world right like the world was so much bigger back then oh we thought florida if we saw somebody had a shirt on in lisaiana if it said florida on it yeah it was like you'd been there was only two places to go you must be the richest guy here yeah heaven and florida here you go yeah like dang you've been to florida we never got to florida yeah but we got to carolina which was really nice it was great going with our relatives and when you guys just all get in the car and just drive down there yeah we had a um old car a station wagon um where would you sit i was always uh in the back seat you know and then it's like school yeah and we would drive and gosh we didn't have air conditioning in our car so every now and then you roll down the window so it wasn't as hot uh but then you get down to Carolina it was so humid right you'd be like oh put the windows up and let's sweat so I my dad used to always tease me when I was 14 13 14 15 he'd always say if you do make professional hockey just remember but I just buy me a Cadillac yeah so I bought one of those big Brits Cadillacs I brought it home right so the summer goes by the year goes by go back home the next summer and I look at the car and there's like 80 miles on it and I will go and I said to my mom.

50:22I said, I bought dad this car. Why is he not driving it? She goes, he can't drive it to work because he doesn't want to have a nicer car than his boss. I think he sold it. I don't think he really ever drove it, but it was a good father-son thing that we had together growing up as a kid, right? Yeah. Is pornography causing a problem in your life? It's a fair question. And, you know, there were times when I was looking at too much and ogling and letting my brain be occupied with things that it really shouldn't. Just things I didn't need to see. It wasn't good for my heart. It wasn't good for my soul.

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55:18Like I knew it wasn't going to be a great student. I knew it was going to be hard for me to get a college degree. I understood that. I knew my forte was going to be hockey. And growing up, playing baseball, track and field, lacrosse, and I encouraged parents all the time, all those sports helped my hockey. And so by the time I got to 16, I was like, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I want to be a professional hockey player. And so I really, that was my focus. And the only advice my dad used to say, give me, really was, you got a great opportunity here to really have a wonderful life. And the good Lord blessed you with a love and a passion like I've never seen before.

56:04And sort of like, don't blow it, don't throw it away. And so I always kind of thought that, that I never thought I was missing out going to a different city or going here or doing this. My enjoyment was being on the ice. I didn't think I was missing anything else. Wow. It never even fazed me. Yeah, that was the thing. I can remember my dad saying, you're going to have so many opportunities here. For some reason, with your aunt being Down syndrome, and you growing up with that, and the Canadian Institute for the Blind was in my hometown of Brantford. There's more than just hockey. You're going to be, one day you're going to be a symbol for good things.

56:52And so I kind of grew up with it, right? That was kind of my education. What a powerful thing to say to a child, too, that they have the, that they, if they do their best, not even do their best, but if they make enough effort that they have the possibility to be a symbol for good. That's really powerful. Yeah, and so I just, I guess I became Wayne Gretzky, and so I just had a love for it, that's all. Is it hard? Trust me, there was a lot of guys with more talent than I had. Right. There was a lot of guys who were better than I was. Really? And then there's some guys that I just wanted it more than.

57:35Yeah. But by no means was I the best player ever. there were so many great players did any players ever smoke cigarettes like at halftime or whatever no it kind of faded out in the uh late 70s you know 60s and 70s people grew up with that unfortunately that's what happened to my mother she was smoker 16 years old but that was that era right yeah and there was there not a lot of hockey players who smoked but there was a few but by 1980 that was all it was gone sometimes you like to romanticize seeing somebody spark you Well, I think it was Mickey Mantle or Joe DiMaggio, didn't they do ads for cigarettes in the 50s?

58:13Yeah, isn't that crazy? They used to get paid to be on pictures. And everybody just kind of accepted it. And now they get mad if you endorse betting. That's the new big thing. Yeah, a lot of people are doing that now. Everything's kind of become like every, a lot of the ads now are gambling. I think a lot of people are gambling on stuff. And all the owners, a lot of them own their own places and you know all sports baseball basketball football so you know i just did a wonderful commercial with jamie fox for bet mgm and i had a ball doing it with him oh nice guy yeah it was fun did y 'all wear tuxedos or something we wore suits though yeah their ads always had like a polished look yeah it was pretty cool he was it was his first working day after his injury um but he was great he was fine and he was he worked all night the night before and then he worked all night with me that night had you ever worked with him before now no i hadn't worked with him before but you know small world we lived five minutes apart in a thousand oaks so i used to see him periodically at different things but he was beloved in the community and another guy he really didn't have any enemies everybody loved him well he's one of the most telling people forget also that he's a stand-up comedian oh and how great he was and living color was like the best tv show they ever had when i was growing up he he the jamie fox show was unbelievable he was so talented and didn't he win an oscar for uh forget oh yeah muhammad ali maybe no no it was uh ray um ray yeah yeah he was unreal sugar ray leonard no who was it ray lamontaine no no the singer ray charles yeah i was going blank too but he was phenomenal in that so anyway i had fun with him he's a wonderful guy did he seem healthy yeah he's fine he was great he was happy um what i don't even know really what happened he didn't you know it's not my business and he didn't talk about it but but if you didn't know something happened you wouldn't even know no you wouldn't know wow he was doing fine and and like i said he was working late like he'd worked the night before sort of nine o 'clock to five because they got to shut everything down so they can film it in actual place right and so the next night was sort of eight o 'clock to five again he was unreal he was fine did you guys go see a show or anything while you were out there or no no no i'm not big on going to shows although my friend who i work with henrik lundquist went to the opening of the sphere in vegas and he said it's not like anything you've ever seen before first of all you two and then so it's the future huh he says they have these ai robots that when you talk to them you think they're real people it's unbelievable reminds me of this girl outdated for a while so we're gonna have a hockey coach that'll be the first one a hockey coach ai he's our hockey coach you know i always fantasize if it would be pretty cool not fantasize that's a weird word to say to another man but i always thought about wouldn't it be neat if there was a team where people could sit at home and make like as a group vote really fast on what the next play should be and that it would almost be a completely controlled team by like the fans you know you probably would struggle in hockey because it's so quick yeah but you could probably do it football for sure set up the play um yeah football was i think the sport that i thought about it the most yeah hockey be hard maybe even baseball because you could pick the pitch that the pitcher throws yeah and who's pitching that yeah it'd be pretty interesting two of them you could do probably um did you ever get to meet michael jackson or not no but i used to do hot yoga in thousand oaks uh with his brother tito yeah it was fun nice nice guy so yeah but i never met michael jackson though i remember um i got to talk to hulk hogan and he met michael jackson one time it was just interesting i got a great hulk hogan story yeah so people don't know this but hulk used to live in thousand oaks too and it was december 24th we go to this thousand oaks mall and i'm getting last minute christmas gifts for my kids who at the time sort of 10 12 and 14 so i put them all in the car and they had a valet parking for the at the mall so i get up come out and i put all my bags in the car and i drive home so i get a call around seven o 'clock and he goes wayne i go yeah and he says terry i think his real name was yeah terry bolea he goes terry terry he goes hulk he goes we got a problem i go what's the problem he He goes, we got the exact same car.

1:02:47I got your car and your presents. You got my car, my presents. So I go outside and I'm like, oh my God. He goes, yeah, my kids are older. It's probably not going to work. So I said, I'll meet you halfway. So we drove back halfway together and we switched the cars out, got the presents and went home. True story. You guys got in each other's cars? Well, because the valet guy just came out and they were exact same cars. And we weren't really paying attention because they're same colors, same cars. But then your kids wake up in Christmas morning and they all get bandanas. They get bandanas and body oil.