Wayne Gretzky is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of athlete. To date, no one has been able to parallel the NHL Legend. Soon after his retirement in 1999, Gretzky was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Owing to his glorious career that spanned over 20 years, Gretzky is a respected entity in his field. Naturally, he is often called upon to share his experience and words of wisdom. Likewise, ‘The Great One’ addressed the Economic Club of Canada in 2018.

The unexpected offer after retirement

In his speech, Gretzky spoke about the prospects of the KHL- Russian Hockey League and the expansion of the NHL. During that time, people were concerned that the Kontinental Hockey League will pose a threat to the NHL. However, Gretzky rubbished the claims.

He claimed that no matter which new league comes into play, it won’t affect the talents in NHL. NHL will always be the superior league and everyone’s first choice. To support his claim, he shared an incident that took place soon after his retirement. Wayne revealed that after he retired from the New York Rangers in 1999, he was offered a place to play for Europe. However, he declined the offer as playing for a second-tier league after being part of the first-tier one for so long didn’t make sense to him.

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He said, “The bottom line is there’s only one National Hockey League. When I retired, I got an offer to go play in Switzerland and it was a crazy amount of money. I remember thinking, `You know what, it’s all fun, and that’s great but there’s only one National Hockey League.’ And if you can’t play with the best and against the best it’s just not the same,” he added.

How Wayne Gretzky views NHL

As a player, Gretzky has reached the greatest heights in his career. Naturally, he has immense love and respect for his game. He is also very optimistic about the future of the sport in the country. While there have been concerns about its decreasing popularity because of the increased craze for NBA, Gretzky remains unfettered. He thinks that the game is in excellent hands and it continues to attract talents.

According to him, the game is bigger and better than any individual player and team. He added, “We’re lucky enough now in the National Hockey League to have players like Sidney Crosby and [Alexander] Ovechkin. Players of that caliber have carried the mantle and done a tremendous job of promoting the National Hockey League and making our game bigger and better than it’s ever been.”

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Wayne Gretzky is a retired professional ice hockey player. He currently works on TNT and TBS as a studio analyst for NHL broadcasts.