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. Wayne Gretsky.

I'm a singer. Where's your accent at?

Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, man. It's pretty good. We'd never had… We had a team. I think it was the Algae or something. I don't know what that are.

Who was that? The East Coast League, probably.

Yeah, it was like, or the mud, birds, or something.

Some team- Mudburns.

Yeah. It was definitely like even the mascot sound like it wasn't going to survive. I think it was the….

That's funny. I think it was like… You're the mascot got treated. I think.

It was the oil spill pigeons or something. Because we had a lot of issues down there.

That was very funny.

I think our mascot was… Yeah, it was bad. The mascot always had bandages on and stuff. I remember they break. It didn't do well.

Timing probably wasn't great. It's grown now. There's a team here in Atlanta that does pretty well. It's comparable to the AA in baseball. It's not AAA. They do pretty good here. They're talking about bringing another NHL team to Atlanta. No way. It'd be the third time in 40 years.

Yeah, they tried it twice, I know, over the history of time. Do you know? 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 baseball and football. It's been in the south and the southwest forever, right? Hockey is just getting there. 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. 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. Then they came back again, it was the same expansion rules, and it failed again. Everyone got wiser. When Vegas came in, they got the ninth best player on every team. They got low draft picks, and they built a foundation. People got excited. Look, our team is good. Seattle got the same thing as Vegas. If Atlanta gets another team, they're going to get that advantage again of getting - That's their treatment. Yeah, they're going to get good treatment. Maybe this will become a good hockey city because people are saying, Jesus, we're winning and let's go to the games. Yeah. It's not fair to people of Atlanta, their teams were so bad, you just say, I'm not paying anymore.

Yeah, 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 religious. There's more religion there. The only person we've ever seen even, or the only person that people believe behaves or gets wild on water is Jesus, really. 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? Yeah, because.

In Canada, it's hockey and religion. Those are the two biggest things. You can be... Sports is very popular in our country. Football, Canadian football, baseball, the Blue Jays do well. The Raptors have done really well. It's Canada's team, the Raptors and the Blue Jays. But hockey is everywhere, right? So you can be driving in your car in July. If you're listening to talk radio, it's still 90% hockey that they're talking about June, July, and August.

Because you can still do it.

And it's so popular, right?

Oh.

Yeah, people love it. I think it's unbelievable.

Yeah, it's like down in the US, I always encourage parents to tell their kids, play every sport: tennis, baseball, football, basketball, soccer, field lacrosse. They're all so big. If you sat down here, you would say, Okay, baseball is probably the most popular sport, or, No, basketball is the biggest sport. Then you're like, Well, football is pretty big. But in Canada, there's no definition. It's won. -it's won. -it's ice hockey. -it's hockey. -that's it.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of why we never... Yeah, I think, up there, if everything's frozen, you would...

Yeah, well, we got a big advantage because-You.

Got free ice, too.

Yeah, you got free ice. Right. It's a big thing.

Oh, yeah. I think $18 a bag where I'm from.

Yeah, ice is expensive. A lot of parents, it's hard for them to afford hockey equipment, ice skates, paying for ice time. But in Canada, most of the places you can play. I grew up in southern Ontario, which is basically between Niagara Falls, New York, and Detroit.

Oh, yeah. That's a third self of the freezer section, buddy. It gets pretty chilly here.

Yeah. We had a nice rink in my backyard from the time I.

Was three years old. Yeah, I saw some lore about that.

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 head 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. His ice was always about this thick and it would last till probably the end of March.

Did he lay a good rink?

Oh, he had the best. Really? Yeah. And it 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 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 don't know if I was... Mom signed me up a couple of seasons, man, and it wasn't great for me. But our field was uneven. We had an uneven field. 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. We had at least two right fielders always, at least.

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 Lynes.

Always, yeah. There's always that kid out there who ends up doing being.

A gardener or something. Yeah. Then I took them to we went to watch and play ice hockey the next day, and they're out there sweating and skating for an hour, loving it. 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.

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. And I do it if.

Somebody's like-Well, and the history of the game, the history of baseball, from Babe Ruth, what he did to what Jackie Robinson did for everyone. Right, there's so much history. There's so much history. 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.

You have to set that up in certain parts, right? And then in other parts, it's the other way around. It would be tougher to heat a basketball court in the winter in Canada so that people have the opportunity to be there and play as much.

Although the Raptors have really found a niche in our country. They're huge.

Yeah, people love them. I was in your country when they won the championship, and I was in Vancouver, but people were beating each other and hugging each other at the same time.

In our country, you're in Vancouver, you're a Knux fan, and you're in Alberta, you're either Flames, Oilers, and all the way across, 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. It's something pretty special about it. I always see when guys get traded up there more basketball than baseball and guys say, 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 are always so nice in Canada. Even if somebody was angry, I bet they'd come across the street and they'd just say, Hey, I'm angry, but I'm sorry.

Yeah, there's a lot of stories up there.

Yeah, they're just too kind. Well, I noticed even like 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 more racial disparity down there because there's a lot of history of black and white racism down there. When I was in Canada, I don't feel.

That energy. I don't-.

Everybody seems the same.

It feels the same. I often say that to people that we don't seem to have racism in our country. People all seem to get along. That's why people always come up to you and say, You're from Canada, right? I'd say, Yeah. They're like, Canadians are also nice. I'd go, Yeah, I think they are. I said, But 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.

I think if you're coming out of that gretsky lineage, I think you guys have to see, you guys, I mean, they seem pretty just nice folks.

Well, they had a good mother. Listen, when you're working and playing hockey, the schedule is tough. Oh, yeah, you can't be like that. Especially playing on the West Coast in L. A. In Edmonton, we're always either playing or in an airplane, right? Listen, I love my kids dearly, but it was the mother who was around them. The mothers are so vital. It was like my relationship with my mom and dad was very close. My dad was this hockey father of the country. People loved my dad.

Oh, yeah, Walter.

Gretsky, man. But I would always say, But it was my mom behind the scenes that kept our family. She was a wonderful lady, and she always stayed out of the limelight. When I was a kid and I play, all the parents used to sit together and my mom would sit in the corner by herself.

What did she like to do, your mom? When she had time for herself, what were some hobbies that she liked? Because from what it sounds like your dad probably got pretty involved with you once you started playing hockey as much.

A lot of people don't know this, but I had a down syndrome aunt, and she was born in the 50s. Back in those days, they would take these kids and basically they put them in asylums and medicate them.

Oh, yeah, juice.

Them up. Yeah, people didn't know what to do. My grandmother said, I'm not sending her to school. She never went to school day in her life. By the end, was a little bit blind. She lived till she was 63. My grandfather was from Russia, Belarus, Minsk, Russia. My grandmother was from Ukraine. The kids were born in Canada. My grandfather would speak to her in Russian. My grandmother would speak to her in Ukrainian, and we all communicated with her in English.

That'll do to anybody down.

Syndrome, I feel like. 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-So she was trilingual then?

She could understand, but she spoke only English. If you didn't know her, you'd have a hard time understanding her. But we grew up with her, so we were fine. When my grandmother was passing, she said, Do me one favor, don't put her in her home. Of course, my mother said I'll take care of her. She lived with my parents for at least twelve years, I guess. Then-wow. Yeah. When you.

Were a child too, it was when you were a kid?

No. My grandmother would have passed in '88, and that's when she moved in with my mom and dad. She had her hands full with her own kids, grandkids, my aunt. Her enjoyment really was Friday nights, going with her mom, who was my grandmother, they love bingo. That was a big thing in our hometown. My dad said she could play bingo every night. She loved it that much. I used to go, How did you do today? I want $7. I'm like, Okay, at least you're winning. Her life was around our kids and the grandkids, but her enjoyment was going to bingo.

Wow! She just found a lot of joy in her family and then some simple... It sounds like just simple pleasures.

She was very simple. I'll tell you, when I turned pro, I said to my parents, I'm going to buy you a house. My mom and dad said, We don't need a house. We're fine right here. There was a little piece of property, was an acre just down the street from where I grew up and where they were living. I went and bought it secretly. 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. Something really special. She goes, No, my house is fine. She goes, But if you want to do something, you can put a pool in her backyard. I put a pool in the backyard and sold my piece of property because they didn't want to move into it. They lived there to the very end. When my dad passed recently, I bought the house. Now I own my house.

Oh, yeah. I was going to ask, actually, what that was like. Your mom was like, Now that all that skating is done, I want to pool.

Back here. Yeah. She said, Your father's not building the hockey rink anymore. I want a swimming pool. She loves having the swimming pool in.

The backyard. There is something nice about it, isn't it?

Yeah, and she loves the barbecue. I was telling the story. Now they have everything so regimented, right? When you win the Stanley Cup, they have these two guys that travel with the trophy because it's so special. They don't want anything to happen to it and they don't want to break. They keep a good.

Eye on it. Right, like a little bit of a gargoyle, like.

Protect or whatever. Yeah, and they just watch it. They travel with it.

Like hitmen or whatever. Yeah. Oh, my mom got pissed if we got by her nice dishes, she.

Would hit. There they are. In those days, when I won the championship, I remember one day it was the summertime. I was at my folks' house. My mom was doing a barbecue. My both-grandmothers were there. I'm sitting there and I said to my dad, Jeez, I should get the Stanley Cup here and get some pictures. 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? They said, 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. It's all organized and the guys travel with the trophy. But back then it was just like, Hey, can I have the cup this afternoon? They said, Yeah, no problem. Oh, that's cool. They bring the cup down. That's cool. Yeah. Some of the best pictures I have are with my grandmother and my mom, my dad, in the backyard just holding a.

Stanley Cup. Yeah, 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? You mastered like a... Or anyway, to me, it seems like. Are you ever at Disney on Ice? You ever take your kids to Disney on Ice and you're just like, Yeah. You're like, Those chipmunks are off-site.

No.

Do you have that much of a... Or when you see an ice maker on a fridge, you just growl at it. I feel like you just.

Have that- No, that doesn't happen.

-you're a frozen.

Water master. I will tell you this, though. I said to somebody the other day, we were on the lake and they said, Do you want to jump in? It was a cold day. I said, 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, Scottie Hamilton, I went to see the show one time.

Scottie Hamilton, he's a dancer?

Yeah, he was an Olympic gold medalist.

Oh, he's an Olympic gold medalist.

Yeah, and then he.

Did- Figure Skater.

Yeah, Figure Skater. He was really phenomenal, figure skater. There he is right there. Yeah, and a wonderful guy. I think it was either Disney on Ice or one of those shows. We went to see it, and we sat down by the ice, and I think the time Katerinovit was in it. Oh, yeah. Some spices. Yeah, it was pretty phenomenal, like what they can do. It's so different than ice skating. 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. It's a whole.

Different thing. They're so athletic. I lived with a guy for probably four months, and he wasI don't know what he was. He was pretty tall, but he was a figure skater. 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. It was just an afternoon. Carl Lewis. Yeah, it was just like it just blew my mind, man.

Well, 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. They probably in the offseason, they probably do a lot of squat training. So that when they do get on the ice, it's much easier for them.

Oh, yeah. But yeah, they get out there. Yeah, those guys really can do it. I think ice skating is pretty incredible. Yeah, I think we just missed, being in the southern part of the US, we missed all of the lacrosse. We miss all of the sports, really the... Whatever it's called. The difference of sports just changes over 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 La Crosse. Actually, La Crosse. La Crosse was invented in Six Nations Reserve, which is just outside of my hometown of Brentford. A couple of things we're very proud of. Alexander Graham Bell made his first phone call from Brentford. It was in my hometown.

Did he? Really? Yes. Who did he call?

He called somebody in Paris, Ontario, which was like 15 minutes away, 15 miles away. Probably a chick, I bet.

If you get your first call, you're going to call probably some woman you are, some lady you might want to say.

They actually have the telephone in Brentford. The other thing is we're very proud of is that lacrosse was invented in Canada. It was a great sport.

Yeah, dude, I didn't even know about Canada. I mean, I didn't even... When I was growing up, we didn't even really believe in Canada.

Listen, 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 grow up, they didn't learn a whole lot about Canada, that there's provinces. A lot of Canadian kids 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 have had 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 it was like a wolf chasing a boy. We're like, What is that? And they're like, That's Canada.

One of the first things I learned was the capital of Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Oh, yeah. I always remembered that. I don't know why I remembered 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 is going to start going back there now. You watched. 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 Brewans, too.

Yeah, they're just good kids. They're hardworking and they're unselfish to their teams, but they're unreal for the league and in their communities. These kids are good kids. Our sport is growing and expanding all the time. And more and more kids are playing hockey in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Florida. So Nevada is a hotbed right now because the hockey team has done so well.

Oh, the Kings. Yeah, people get 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.

Was there a part of the game that you... Did you ever play goalie? Because every time I see clips of you and everything, you're always not playing goalie, right? Never played goalie. Which is fine.

If I was a goalie, I'd be more like playing dodgeball. I get out of the way.

Did you ever do it to learn about what it was like? Did you ever.

Like-the only time I ever did it was when I was a kid. We played ball hockey. What is it? Ball hockey is played with a tennis ball in running shoes, unlike a sport court or gymnasium. The only time I would play goal, where I wasn't to get hit by a buck. It was a tennis ball, every now and then I play goal. But I always listen. People used to ask me, Do you ever block a shot? First of all, do you know how hard that buck is? For the average hockey fan, they don't realize those pucks, every buck is frozen. The pucks that you're using are not only hurt, but they're frozen too. Who froze them? They're in the referee's box. They're frozen. The patriots probably did it. They're frozen so they don't bounce. They usually don't bounce.

Oh, really? Because it's made out of what?

Rubber? Rubber, yeah. Oh, my God. I thought it was cobalt. They used to say to me, Do you ever block a shot? I said, Why would I? That's why they pay the goalie. That's not my job. I don't ask him to score goals. He doesn't need to ask me to block shots. I faked it. You think you're in the lane, but the guy had a lot of room to shoot around you.

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You had so many records, man. Was there something that you felt like you wanted to get that you couldn't get? Or were you even keeping tabs on that stuff?

Yeah, I didn't really keep tabs on it. 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 look back and say, Okay, because people ask me, What is your favorite record? They're all fun. They're all, I'm proud of them all. But my favorite record is the year I scored 50 goals in 39 games. 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. From that point of view, it's my favorite.

You seem like the guy that if somebody broke it, you would applaud the fact that they did.

That well. Listen, I learned from two of the best people in the world, my dad, who is a wonderful man, and Gordie Howe. Gordie Howe was my idol. When 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 I had a bad day or whatever. You go, Well, I met Gordie Howe when I was 10. My dad said to me, I was meeting Gordie Howe. I said, I can't believe in it. He goes, What? I said, He was bigger, better, and nicer than I ever imagined in my little brain at 10 years old. When I was breaking records, Gordie Howe was always there. He was the first guy to shake my hand and give me a hug. Ovetkin is going to break my record, which is going to be great for our game. 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 because it's a special record and it's good for our game if he does break it. Yeah.

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. It was a big day.

Oh, yeah. You know who you look like a little bit?

Who's that?

You know who I'm going to say or not?

No, I have no idea.

Princess Diana a little.

I don't know. Just the fact that she's a female, I don't know if that's compliment.

Or not. I just mean, look, man, I think it's very much common. She was a tough lady too.

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 think that you got Rod Stewart hair.

I bet a couple of men played on your team just because they wanted to be.

Near you, Bob. But no, Gordie was so nice. It was a dinner. It was a charity dinner. This is an incredible story. Seven hundred people were at the dinner. That was the year I scored 400 goals. The city wanted me to be part of it. When you're 10 years old, you can't even stand up and do a speech in front of your classmates, right? They had.

Told the guy-You're only ten at this time?

Yeah. They had told the emcee, Wayne just introduced him. He's not going to talk. Joe Theisman was there. What? Yeah, Gordie Howe. When you were 10? Yeah, Sandy Haulay, a famous jockey. They all get up and they try to talk for seven or eight minutes and people laugh and giggle. The guy announced his name. I'm like, Oh, no. I'm already frozen. Gordie says to me, Now listen, when you go up there, just tell them you're lost without your skates and your hockey stick. I got, Okay. I get up there and I was shaking. I remember I said, Thank you. I started balling. I got a standing ovation. I went and sat down. Years later, a friend of mine called me and he said, Gordie's hometown of Saskatoon, they're doing this charity dinner, like a lions club, whichsounds very similar to the one I did in my hometown.

Yeah, we had the lions club in our town, too.

Yeah. I called Gordie and his son, Mark, and I said, Listen, Gordie came to my hometown when I was 10. I'd really like Gordie to come with me to Saskatoon. I want to surprise everybody. We were in Saskatoon this dinner, and they had sold, I think there was about 3,000 people there. The Prime Minister of Canada happened to be in town. He called me and he says, Okay, if I come over there and emcee this and ask you a few questions for the people? I said, Absolutely, no problem at all. I said, Oh, by the way, nobody knows this, but I flew Gordy, and he's at the hotel and Gordy is 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. 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. 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 longest, nicest, standing ovation that I've ever seen somebody get.

He was so genuinely loved. People don't realize that Gordie Howe was a dirty player. First time I play against him, I took the buck from him. 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 buck from me again. I said, Okay, never going to happen again. Anyway, so he got such an evasion. After the event, we went back to the hotel and Gordy had brought back a couple of his buddies that he knew they hadn't seen in a while, a couple of older gentlemen. We just sat around and he had a member, he sat there and he had a cold beer and he said, This is one of the greatest nights of my life. It was very cool.

When you were a kid, was most of your relationship with your dad hockey? Was it tough to... Because 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 a common ground sometimes to connect on things. Parents are always putting their kids in a different things, and dads are always trying to connect with their children. Was there other ways that you could... Was that most of you all's relationship? I'm just like, I guess I'm curious what it was like.

We had a normal relationship, normal father-son. He was both parents, tremendously supportive. By the time I was 10, 11, 12 years old, I was playing in arenas that were selling out.

That's crazy. You were like a circuses in town.

A little bit.

I mean, not like that, but like you're.

Not-i know what you mean. But in those days, too, it was such a big world because there was no internet, there was no cell phones. A kid might be three hours away and you would hear about them. 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. I'd say, Okay. 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, Oh, he 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. Oh, really? I said, Dad, I don't miss class because if I miss class, the team... I was playing junior hockey, and it was hard because we practiced every day and we travel a lot. The team was always on you. You better be in class.

He was more concerned that I was in class. I remember I was 17 and I had this school teacher and I was taking a physics class and I hated physics and chemistry. I kept thinking, Now, where am I going to use this in the world? That's all I kept thinking. Anyway, and he said, If you just put the work in, I'll pass you it. I did. I went to an extra class every day with him, and he worked an extra half hour every day. He passed me. That was the year that month I got offered the term pro, and I signed a pro contract. I remember I came back and I bought him a gift. It wasn't a big thing. It was like a briefcase or something, thanking him for being so patient with me and being so nice to me. He was so grateful. It was always... When I signed, my dad said, You're going to stay pro hockey. You're going to stay in high school till you're 18. I don't care what you do, but you're going to school till 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 Ives Ves Presley.

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. I'm like, Well. He said, I should just kick you out. I said, Listen. It was early January. I said, Listen, do me a favor. He goes, What? I said, Get me until January 26. 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 were always traveling and playing. I was playing pro hockey, playing in Quebec City and going to Cincinnati. Did you have an ego?

Were you in class? Were you the fons at this point in class?

I sat in the back corner. I just mind my own business. 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. I quit school. 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.

Unless your father.

Would sign it. Because I wasn't 18 yet. He said, I'll sign it, but you got to stay in.

High school. Did you ever finish high school technically?

No, but I'm a doctor. Does that mean anything? I'm an honorary doctor.

That does.

They count to me, bro.

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. You know what? I'm an honorary doctor. It's funny. I did the commencement speech for I said, Okay, I'm going to pick one. People have been kind enough to offer me. I said, You know what? I'm going to do one. I picked the University of Alberta, which is in Edmonton, which I thought was fitting. It's so funny because I have different nicknames. In the hockey world, they call.

Me Grets. Gretski. Great one.

No, just Grets. In the golf world, they call me Doc. Because I was telling the guys one day I was playing with, I think it was Dustin and Jordan Speeth, and I said, You know, I'm a doctor. Something to that effect. The golf world calls me Doc and the hockey world calls me Grets.

Do you ever get to play with Sheldon? Sorry, you know Sheldon?

I play a lot with him. We're next door neighbors.

Oh, that's awesome. Sheldon's a friend of mine.

He's just going to have a baby right now.

Yeah, it's so exciting.

No, he's an unreal guy.

He's a beautiful guy. I'm not saying he's beautiful, but somebody.

Said it.

He's beautiful too.

He's got a big heart. He's got a huge heart. He's so mellow. Sheldon's not going to have a heart attack. He's always mellow. He's always happy. He's never upset. A very calm person. Him and his wife are great people.

Yeah, he's handsome, dude. I think that's a weird thing about someone like-He's big. Oh, 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're getting so... 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. I'm glad I played when I played. I'm glad I'm gone now.

Yeah, sometimes it's like you fit in time in a certain space.

Yeah, time means everything.

I know. Yeah, you would.

Know, man. I got lucky. Listen, I came in at the right time. When I came in, they had a WHA, which was similar to the 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. I may never have made it. My timing was really fortunate.

Really lucky. Do you like to read any books? Are you reading anything?

I'm reading one right now, Kenny Albert. Everything I do is sports related.

Oh, yeah. You love it that much, huh?

I'll give you an example. When I was 15 years old, I was playing on a junior hockey team. It was so exciting because one of my teammates was Murray Howe, who was Gordie Howe's youngest son. Oh, wow! He's just a wonderful kid. I had wore number nine that year because I always loved Gordie. When he came in, I said, Look, you should wear number nine, your dad's Gordie Howe. Switch my number? He was, No, no, no, no. This is my last year of hockey. I'm going to enjoy it. I go, Okay. He goes, I'm going to be a doctor. He was a really intelligent guy, and he did go on to become a doctor. We get on the team bus and we travel to the city. He get on there and he have all these books, right? I get on no books. He goes, Wayne, you got to get your education. I'm going to a hockey game. I can't think about reading right now and doing homework. About two weeks later, I got on the bus and I had 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. He goes, What do you got? Geography, history? I go, Well, I got Gordio, Hockey my way. Gordie, How Hockey tips. I said, Do you want to be a doctor? Gordie Howe is Christmas. You want to be a doctor? I want to be a hockey player. But he went on to be a tremendous doctor. He actually gave the eulogy for his dad's funeral when Gordie passed away, which was pretty remarkable.

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.

Sorry about your.

Fault, man. Yeah, you know what? It was funny because there's something that just takes over inside you that you get through it, right? I remember my mom passed, my dad called me and said, Will you speak? I said, Of course. When my dad was passing, my brothers and my sisters said, Will you speak? I said, Yeah. The ironic thing was when my dad passed, we were still in the midst of the pandemic. It was actually, in a lot of ways, it was nice for our family because there was only 22 of us there. Because 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. I found both times sitting there going, Oh, this is going to be hard. Then when I got up there, it just flowed because my dad, when I spoke at his, he was so religious, my dad. He never missed church on a Sunday, went every Sunday. He used to tease the kids because he tried out for the church choir and they wouldn't let him in it. Good boy, bro. There was a boy across the street- Don't let anybody in there. -who was disabled and blind, and my dad picked them up every Sunday morning at 10:00 AM and took him to church every Sunday and then brought them back home. We were taking McDonalds and then back home. He did it every Sunday. So when my dad was passing, he's so religious. But I remember he was still fighting to stay down here, so to speak. He was 22 days basically on a deathbed, right? The minister would come every night at our house, and he would give him his last rights.

He'd write them out again. Yeah, I say to the minister, My dad's got the biggest hurt. I'll see you tomorrow. Anyway, what I did give the ULG, 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. I don't know. It's wild seeing something like that happen. Do you think it helped that your father had such a faith that he gave you so...

Oh, yeah. He knew there was life after death. He was going to see his mother, he was going to see his father.

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. He was just really special in that sense. Not too often you can say that people don't have enemies, but I don't think my dad had an enemy. He was beloved by everyone. I remember one time I came home, when I would go home and visit him every now and then, my dad would tell the whole city, right?

That you.

Were coming? Yeah. I got smart on that. I call my mom and I'd say, I'll be home tomorrow. Don't tell dad. I get there in the morning. This is hilarious. I walk in and there's a guy lying on the couch. I get over to my mom, and I know everybody that goes in and out of our house. My mom was in the kitchen. I said, Who's lying on the couch? Who is that? She goes, I don't know, but he's hitchhiking across the country from Newfoundland. Want to see the house, so your dad told him to spend the night and have a good meal. That's the guy my dad was. The guy spent the night and got up in the morning and him and I had coffee at the dining room table. No way. He got to get a picture with my jersey on. I happened to be home that day and he was hitchhiking the rest of Canada. That was the dad my dad was.

They should put him in a jersey and let's let him hitchhike the country forever and just make it like a thing.

Well.

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 would 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 is 102. No way. Which is amazing.

You got that long blood in you, homie.

She's 102. She's a great lady. She lived with us to help raise our kids for 30 years. But she lives in our house in St. Louis. 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. What's amazing is that unfortunately, her dad passed away at 56, which is awful cancer, and two sisters who had breast cancer both passed away. The mom is 102 and still going strong.

That's incredible. I got some longevity then in your jeans.

My dad always said it's the hours you get before midnight.

For.

Sleeping? For sleeping. That gives you longevity. My mother-in-law is asleep by 8:30 and gets up at 4:00. I think there's something to that.

I think there's something to it. There's something nice when you're up in the morning and you feel like you just got up with the sun. You just feel like.

You're dialing. Yeah. 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?

My dad used to always say, I remember he had a famous quote to me. He goes, You spend your whole life as a kid trying to figure out how to stay out of bed. 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, I think sometimes when people are like... Sometimes if I even think about leaving this earth and passing away from here, I think about just getting some good rest. It's the way I think about it in my head. -yeah. That's all right. It's like some of that will be relieving. Did you guys ever go on any vacations and stuff when you were a kid? Because if you were always doing hockey, it seemed like you were probably always on the run. Did you all ever go to Florida or somewhere or the North Pole?

That's funny, the North Pole. Well, two things. My mom's life, and this is sometimes she would complain about this. In the wintertime, it was hockey tournaments. Summertime was lacrosse and baseball tournaments. That was our vacations. Then every three years, my dad's sister, because my 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. They can make money in Canada then go back. Oh, that's nice. My uncle was from Greensbrook, Carolina, married my dad's sister. 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. 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. My mom was so mad, she said, We spent an extra six hours drying, so you could go to Cooperstown. 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 the lore back in the day, if you heard about a kid playing, you'd have to go and see him. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that was the way it was back then.

There was something so much more magical about lore. They don't have as much of it anymore because everybody... I don't know.

But the funny thing is, if you say to kids today, New York to London, England's not that far. We used to think Bramford to Windsor, Ontario, which was a two-and-a-half hour drive, was like going to the other side of the world, right? Yeah. The world was so much bigger back then.

We thought Florida. If we saw somebody had a shirt on in Louisiana, if they had a shirt on it, 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, I was like, Dang, you've been to Florida?

We never got to Florida. But we got to Carolina, which was really nice. It was great going with our relatives.

Were you guys just all get in the car and just drive down there?

Yeah, we had an old car, a station wagon.

Where would you sit?

I was always in the back seat.

It was.

Like school one. Yeah. We were driving and gosh, we didn't have air conditioning in our car. So every now and then you rolled on the window, so it wasn't as hot. But then you get down to Carolina, it was so humid. You'd be like, Oh, put the windows up and let's sweat. My dad used to always tease me when I was 13, 14, 15. He'd always say, If you do make professional hockey, just remember buying me a Cadillac. I bought him one of those big Brits Cadillacs and I brought it home. The summer goes by, the year goes by, I go back home the next summer. I look at the car and there's like 80 miles on it. I go and I said to my mom, I 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.

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Do you remember the first date you ever went on when you were a kid or something like that?

Hockey was my life.

It was, huh? It was your girlfriend.

I didn't have one, just hockey. I had a Junior A coach when I was 16 years old playing with 19, 20-year-olds. He would say, Playing junior hockey is really hard, but being a professional hockey player is a great life. You said you got hockey, you got schooling, and you got nightlife. You can only do two of the three. Make sure you pick the right two. When you're 16 years old, it was my life. I loved, lived, and died it. Go to school from 8:30 to three o'clock, practice 4:00 to 6:00 every night, play usually Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, back to school, same things.

Same routine. When you see how you were compared to how some other players were, did you think that you almost had a abnormality? How much you liked it or how much you focused on it? Was it that thing? Because I have friends that are good at things and friends that.

Really are- Let's put it this way. I know there's a lot of other really good players and athletes. But for us, for me, especially when I got to be 16, I knew that was my life. 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. Growing up, playing baseball, track and field, lacrosse, and I encourage parents all the time, all those sports helped my hockey. Oh, yeah. 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. That was my focus. The only advice my dad used to say, give me really was, you got a great opportunity here to really have a wonderful life. The good Lord blessed you with a love and a passion like I've never seen before and don't blow it and don't throw it away. I always thought 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.

Yeah. I didn't think I was missing anything else.

Wow!

I never even faced 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 in the Canadian Institute for the Blind was in my hometown of Bradford. There's more than just hockey. One day you're going to be a symbol for good things. I grew up with it, right? That was my education.

What a powerful thing to say to a child, too. Oh, that they have the ability 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 soI guess I became Wayne Gretse 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's a lot of guys who were better than I was. Really? Then there's some guys that I just wanted it more then. But by no means was I the best player ever. There were so many great players.

Did any players ever smoke cigarettes at half-time or whatever?

No, that faded out in the late '70s. '60s and '70s people grew up with it. Unfortunately, that's what happened to my mother. She was a smoker at 16 years old, but that was that era, right? Yeah. Not a lot of hockey players who smoked, but there was a few. But by 1980, it was gone.

Sometimes you like to romanticize seeing somebody spark. Well, I.

Think it was Mickey Mantle or Joe DeMage. Then they do ads for cigarettes in the '50s. Didn't they crazy? They used to get paid to be on pictures. Everybody just accepted it. Now they get mad if you endorse betting. That's the new big thing.

Yeah, a lot of people are doing that now. A lot of the ads now are gambling. I think a lot of people are gambling and stuff.

And all the owners, a lot of them own their own places and golf sports, baseball, basketball, football. I just did a wonderful commercial with Jamie Fox for Bet. Mgm, and I had a ball doing it with them Oh, nice. Yeah, it was fun.

Did you all wear tuxitos or something?

We were suits.

Yeah, their ads always had a.

Polished look. Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was his first working day after his injury, but he was great. He was fine. He worked all night the night before, then he worked all night with me.

That night. Had you ever worked with him before?

No, I hadn't worked with him before, but small world. We lived five minutes apart in a thousand Oaks. I used to see him periodically at different things. But he was beloved in the community. Another guy, he really didn't have any enemies. Everybody loved him.

Well, he's one of the most tell me people forget also that he's a stand-up comedian and how great he was. And Living Color was like the best TV show they ever had when I was growing up.

The Jamie Fox show was unbelievable. He was so talented. Then he won an Oscar for.

I forget- Oh, yeah, Muhammad.

Ali maybe? No, it was Ray- Ray? Yeah, he was unreal.

Sugar Ray Leonard? No, who was it? Ray La Montaine?

No, the singer.

Ray Charles.

Yeah. I was going blank too, but he was phenomenal in that. Anyway, I had fun with him.

He's a wonderful guy. Did he seem healthy?

Yeah, he's fine. He was great. He's happy. I don't even know really what happened. It's not my business, and he didn't.

Talk about it. But if you didn't know something had.

Happened, you wouldn't even know. No, you wouldn't know. Wow! He was doing fine. Good for him. Like I said, he was working late. He'd worked the night before nine o'clock to five because they got to shut everything down so they can film it in actual place, right? The next night was eight o'clock to five again. It was unreal. He was fine.

Did you guys go see a show or anything while you were out there or no?

No, I'm not big on going to shows. Although my friend who I work with, Henrick Lundquist, went to the opening of The Sphere in Vegas. 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. Oh, man. It's unbelievable.

Reminds me of this girl I've dated for.

A while. We're going to have a hockey coach. That'll be the first one, a hockey coach, AI. He's our hockey coach.

I always fantasized 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 as a group vote really fast on what the next play should be? And that it would almost be a completely controlled team by the fans.

You probably would struggle in hockey because it's so quick. Yeah. But you could probably do it at football for sure, set up to play.

Yeah, football was, I think, the sport that I thought about it.

The most. Yeah, hockey would be hard. Maybe even baseball because you could pick the pitch that the pitcher throws and who's pitching.

It'd be pretty interesting.

Two of them you could do probably.

Did you ever get to meet Michael Jackson or not?

No, but I used to do Hot Yoga in 1,000 Oaks with his brother. Tito. Yeah, it was fun. Nice guy. But I never met Michael Jackson, though.

I remember I got to talk to Hulk Hogan and he met Michael Jackson one time. It was just interesting.

I got a great Hulk and story. Yeah. People don't know this, but Hulk used to live in 1,000 Oaks too. It was December 24th. We go to this thousand Oaks Mall. I'm getting last minute Christmas gifts from my kids who were at the time 10, 12, and 14. I put them all in the car and they had a valet parking at the mall. I get up, come out, and I put all my bags in the car, and I drive home. I get a call around seven o'clock, and he goes, Wayne? I go, Yeah. He says, Terry. I think his real.

Name was Terry. Yeah, Terry Bowley.

He goes, Terry. He goes, Hulk. He goes, We got a problem. I go, What's the problem? He goes, We got the exact same car. I got your car and your presence. You got my car and my presence. I go outside and I'm like, Oh, my God. He goes, Yeah, my kids are older. It's probably not going to work. I said, I'll meet you halfway. 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 exactly the same cars. We weren't really paying attention because the same.

Colors and cars. But then your kids wake up in Chris' morning and they all get bandanas. They get bandanas and body oil.

Isn't that funny, though?

Your 12-year-old daughter is getting a jar of body oil. You're like, This seems a little weird now.

I do remember saying, I don't think your kids are going to like what I got my kids. They're older.

It's all coal. They got his kids. When you met your wife, how did you know that she was the wife for you?

My dad told me. Really?

Gosh.

He was a real leader then.

The first week I said, What do you think? He goes, Oh, she's a lifer. I go, You just met her. You know what? We had the same similarities. We both want to have a family. We want to have kids. We both love sports. It's wonderful that I actually her and I watch hockey together, baseball, football, basketball. She loves going to games. She loves growing up with our kids, going to all their sporting events and going to the girls' ballet and dancing. We just think the same way, I guess. We were born 16 days apart. She's January 10 and I'm January 26. Yeah, so we had a lot in common.

Is it different being a dad to a girl and a boy? Oh, yeah. I don't have any children. I would like to have some one day, but I just don't have any yet.

Some ways it's different. In other ways, it's not. It's just a little bit different, but not really.

Did it come easy to you being a dad? Some of my friends have a tough time and some.

Of them- Oh, yeah, I loved being a dad. I always told my friends, You do all your parenting till about 13 or 14. If they haven't learned by then, you haven't done the job right. Our biggest thing in our house was everybody can say, Please, thank you, and excuse me. That was our biggest fight. Not fight, but that was the biggest thing we drilled in all the time. Then when your kids get to be 16, 17, 18, then you become best friends. I don't really look at my kids as kids anywhere. I look at them as my closer friends.

Simple as that. Oh, it's interesting. They evolved then.

I'd rather hang out with my kids at this age now than travel somewhere to go visit somebody for two days. It's just fun.

Did you ever have to take your kids? Did you ever take them trick or treating or something like that?

This is a funny story, too. When I played for the New York Rangers, we had an apartment in a high-rise.

Did Patrick Wawa play there or no?

No. Mark Messiae was on that team, and Brian Leach. We lived in this high-rise, 16th floor, right? It was our first year in Manhattan.

Your whole family was living in a high-rise in Manhattan?

We had a three-bedroom. At the time, we only had three kids. We had a bedroom for my wife and I, one for the two boys and one for Paulina. I remember I said to the doormat the day before Halloween, I said, Where do we trick or treat here? He goes, Everybody just walks through the building. I'm thinking, No, no, no, no, no. We lived on just off the- Can you.

Take them out in the streets of Brooklyn?

No, listen. I'm like, We're right on Madison Avenue, 63rd Madison. I go out there. I said, Okay. I walked into every one of those stores that I know my wife had ventured into a lot Prada, Gucci on Prada. I said, You guys better have candy tomorrow at six o'clock. We walked the kids down. I said, You got to be outside, right? You can't be walking. We go into Gucci and they give them stuff. We go to Prada, they're getting candy. I still think they do it today, but it made more sense to me than walking through an apartment building. I just want to.

Be outside on Halloween. Oh, you have to. You have to run inside.

Yeah, so it was fun.

Was it fun doing trick-or-treatment when you were a kid? Do you remember what you dressed up as? You just dressed up as a hockey player.

I always wanted to be a hockey player. I'll tell you why. Because every Halloween, it seemed like we had a practice that night. We would be on the ice from five o'clock to 6:00. It gets dark by 6:30 at that time of the year in Canada. My dad would race me home. I'd get a pillowcase and I'd go up and down the street, get a ton of candy. I just left my hockey uniform on, just took my helmet off. Every place I went to, the people, they all knew I was coming as a hockey player. They used to laugh because it's a small community, small street. You knew everybody, right? Wayne is here again, the hockey guy.

Gosh, that's wild, man, that it was that much of your life that it was your Halloween costume. That says a lot, I feel like.

Well, when I was seven, I went to a barber shop and I asked the barber if he could give me a Gordie Howe haircut. I liked Gordie Howe Hockey. It was crazy.

What's something that you admire about each one of your children?

They're all nice. They're polite. They're not egotistical. They're not in the slightest at all. They're just good kids. My youngest two are still in college and they love it. I have a son at NYU and a daughter at SMU. Three kids who have children of their own now. Yeah, they're nice. None of them are jaded. That's the best part.

When you finished hockey as an employee, as a player, did you find like, was it tough to take that energy and all that mode? Because you have such a focus and there's a focal point. Was it interesting to see how that popped up in other places in your life? Or was.

It-that was a big issue. It hasn't and it doesn't. My life was hockey. If I go play tennis, I just play. I don't really even care about the score. If I go play golf, it doesn't matter if I shoot 83 or 93, I don't worry about it. I don't stress about it. I did all that and I loved it. But I don't have that same fight or battle for fun. I just don't have that. People always say, Michael Jordan is so competitive of everything he does. That's not you. That's not me. I'm fine. I'm happy what I accomplished. I'm happy I did it. I'm happy I'm done. But that's all behind me now. I don't worry about it. It's like I get parents that come up to me. Mother's are hardest, right? My mom was worse, too. She chased down Bobby Hall to get an autograft for me. When moms grab me, I go, I get it. I get it. My mom did it for me, too. But the moms will always say to me, Will you tell my son how many hours a day you used to practice? I go, That's not it. She go, What do you mean?

I go, That's not it. I just did it because I loved it. If you have to say you got to be out there two hours or three hours, you're in the wrong thing. I just was there all day long because I loved it.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, moms would be nuts. I remember Michael Landon was coming to our town once, and mom was all excited, but he didn't show up.

He couldn't leave the prairie.

Yeah, every week on that show, one of his kids was getting beaten, kicked by a horse or somebody had dementia. I was like, What do you mean a nine-year-old has dementia? Every week-something different. -there was iron and too much iron in the water or something or somebody was blind. So when you get on one of those early teams, were you guys on a bus just cruising through Canada? Were you guys just heading all over the place? Did you ever have that time or no?

When I played junior hockey in the League, I was in Ontario. I was on a team called Sault Ste Marie, Grayhounds, which was the farthest north in Ontario. Our closest bus trip was three and a half hours to Sudbury. The team got an airplane. It was a DC-3. No. We used to fly to all the games and basically played Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon, or fly back to Sault Ste Marie. We do that twice a month. Then when I turned pro, Edmonton, we flew commercial everywhere. There was a lot of flights that we went to Edmonton through Minnesota or Edmonton through Chicago to get to... There wasn't a whole lot of direct flights from Edmonton to Manhattan. I traveled a lot. We've been around a lot.

I remember I went to Florida. I was in Florida, right? I've been on a cruise ship, and I had to go to Edmonton to perform at the comedy club there. It was one of the first-I've been in there. Yeah, at the Mall of Canada.

Yeah, they built that one before the one in Minnesota.

Well, that one, first of all, you guys has a gun range in it, which is crazy.

We got a lake with waves. We got a hockey rink in there. It's pretty much everything in there.

Yeah, there's four American Eagles in there. There was an actual American Eagle in there last time we were in there. It was hatching. It was doing like, I think it had a couple of chicklings or whatever near Payless.

Yeah. I've never been a hunter. -hunting, duck hunting. -it's big in your country. Yeah, it's big in Alberta, big in Saskatchewan. We went hunting one time. I went one time in my life. I went with three teammates. We were 19 years old. We didn't know what we were doing. We're two hours in, we were duck hunting, and we couldn't figure out where the ducks were. This guy come over, he said, You guys got a goose call. That's how bad our hunting was. We're standing there going, Well, no. We just thought there was no ducks.

Yeah, you look over just Tony Siragousse.

Is there. He goes, Well, you got the wrong horn or whatever. I'm like, Okay, that was my last time. I had to go to the store. It was $5 to get a permit. I never even fired the gun. It was the last time I ever went. Never shot a gun since.

Who's one of the funniest guys that you spend time around in the league? Who's somebody that you love being around that really makes you laugh?

Brett Hall is a genius. Brett Hall is one of the funniest, nicest people you ever, ever meet. He remembers every word and every song. He remembers lines from movies. He's just got a big heart. He's a tremendous guy.

What's a good concert that you went to that you enjoyed over the years?

You know what?

I'm seeing Elton John this weekend.

Elton John is phenomenal. I saw Elton John and Billy Joel together- No way. -at the forum years ago, which was remarkable. But my very first concert I ever went to was Chicago. Remember the band Chicago? I was 16 years old and I was good friends with David Foster who was-.

He's the.

Producer, right? Yeah, producer, writer. He's Canadian boy. Two years later, I was playing the World Cup for Canada, and he calls me and he said, There's a couple of guys from Chicago that want to come to your practice. Can you get them in? I'm like, Yeah, of course. They came in. I think the drummer's name was Johnny Penazzo. He used to play a little bit of gold tender and hockey. They came to practice and I'm sitting there and we went for lunch after. I remember saying, Two years ago, sitting in the last row watching their concert, and two years later, I'm having lunch with them. I always said that was one of my favorite concerts.

Oh, yeah. I remember I got a T-shirt. I don't even know who gave. I think where we got it from. I didn't even know it was a band. I thought it was just for the city. Yeah. Then I wore when I was a kid. It was just a nice shirt. It was like pure cotton. I remember wearing that Chicago shirt. I'm trying to think of the first concert I ever went to. It might have been Smashing Punchions or something.

Well, our big ones up there are Pink Floyd.

And- Oh, yeah, The Hit.

-and Tragically hip.

Tragically hip, yeah.

And Bryan Adams.

Oh, dude, I met Bryan Adams in South Africa at a breakfast buffet.

He's a wonderful guy. And, of course, Celine Dion. Oh, yeah. Burton Cummings was big in Canada.

Burton Cummings?

Yeah. They were in a band called the Guess Who.

I think maybe I've heard of them. I'm trying to think of something else I've heard of. My mom used to make us clean the house, right? She would put Bryan Adams on repeat. We got on one of those CDs where they mail you seven CDs for 40 cents and then you get sued.

Over the years. The first album was Cuts Like a knife, right? Yeah. I met him when he was 17. You met him? When he was 17 and that album had just come out.

He was 17 when that.

Came out? I was 17. You were 18. He was a year or two older.

Than me. He was that young when he became a star.

Oh, yeah. And he was good because from there he just got bigger and better. It's funny because my friends all laugh at me because every time somebody comes on, whether it's a singer or an actor or whatever, I'll go, You know, he's Canadian. There's so many people that you don't know that are Canadian that I know.

I go.

He's.

Canadian. There's so many greats. Jim Carey, Howie Mandel.

Yeah, there's a lot of really good Canadians.

Are you the most famous Wayne, do you think?

No, Wayne Myers from Wayne's World.

Oh, yeah, Wayne's.

World.

Huh? Wayne. Mike Myers.

Wayne Newton.

Wait, he's not Canadian, though.

Yeah, I don't know, but just Wayne overall.

Oh, Bruce Wayne?

Yeah, I didn't even think of him. Yeah, I think Batman might have you.

Lil Wayne. I met Lil Wayne. Ihad Little Wayne recently at a hockey game. He was very nice.

Did he come up and say, I'm also Wayne? Does that happen when you're a celebrity like that? Like, Hey, I'm Wayne too.

No, it was very cordial. I said, Hey, I actually stopped him. I said, Can I get a picture with you? He was like, Of course. It was at a hockey game. It was the Vegas Nights game.

Oh, there you.

Are right there. I grabbed him. I was like, Gosh, I got to get a picture with him. Because all my kids would always say, Dad, you're in Little Wayne's Song. I'm like, Okay. When I saw him, I said, Gosh, I got to get a picture with him. I fanned it up. I became my mom.

Yeah, you became Princess Diana for a second. There you go. Yeah. Little Wayne looks a little high in that picture, too. I'll say that. I don't blame him. Is there something? Canada doesn't revere, celebrate. It's different, right, than in America? Oh, they do.

Oh, they do. Listen, Canadians are very proud of their country.

Right. Yeah, no doubt. But if there's something, they like the story back. My Canadian friends love stories like, Bissell, my tour manager is Canadian, and he loves stories. There's always like, Yeah, but this guy, they love the...

Well, right now probably, Drake's probably our biggest Canadian right now. Oh, yeah. He's probably the closest thing right now to Taylor Swift, I would imagine.

Drake or Santa.

No, Drake's.

Pretty big. I got to meet Drake last weekend, actually.

Yeah, at a concert?

No, I was hanging out with this guy, David Grutman. He's a restaurant tour. I was hanging out with this restaurant tour guy. I was in Miami. And Drake was having a little get-together in a bar that he'd rented out a small bar. And he knew us, so we went by. And he and I had messaged each other. What city were you in? What's that? What city were you in? In Miami, Florida. Okay. He and I messaged each other on Instagram.

Oh, right. He had a concert there last week. Yeah. Bunch of our friends drove down for the concert.

From where?

From Canada? No, no, we live in Jupiter.

Oh, you do?

Fort.

Lauderdale area. Oh, it's pretty over there.

Yeah. See, I got to Florida once and I just stayed. It's nice, isn't it?

I'm telling you.

I couldn't get there as a kid, but now I live there.

People are onto it, brother. But I got them. Yeah, I said, Hey. Then we started talking for a little bit and it was really nice. I thought I was going to be nervous because sometimes if you meet, I think, celebrities, sometimes you can be really nervous. I'm glad I wasn't real nervous or.

I get like that.

Sometimes still. Is there somebody that you met that over the years and you were like- Oh, yeah. Because you get surprised. Sometimes you're chill as could be. You're like, Oh, I'm doing good.

Yeah, I know. There's people that I've met over the years and you go, Oh, wow, that guy's really cool. Yeah, I don't know. I met President Clinton about a year ago at the golf course, and he was so nice. Most people are pretty nice, right?

Yeah. I guess with golf, you get to probably play games with a lot of neat people, huh?

Yeah, some of them are nice guys. On the golf course. Some of them get- They get competitive? Yeah. Sometimes they don't. But I'm not competitive. People that play with me know I'm.

Having fun. You're just taking it easy. Your dad had a pretty strong religious belief. Did that carry over to your family or what is that like for you?

Oh, yeah, real strong belief. When I was a kid, I got confirmed when I was 14 years old. But we have a belief of you treat people the way you want to be treated. That's our big religion in our house. That there's no reason to be mean to people. That's what we live by.

When you look at anything else in life that you want to do, are there things that you find now that... Or when you look to your future, obviously, like spending time with your family is super important? Yeah. Do you have any big goals still?

No, I really don't. My wife says to me, You got to have... I said, I'm going to be 65 soon. My goal is retirement, really. I've traveled a lot. I've done a lot. I'm loving being on TNT. It's a riot. Great people, wonderful organization. I'm thrilled doing it a few times a month, and I love it because I'm still involved with hockey. We don't have to stress out over it winning or losing. When I go and I'm doing the games, people go, Who do you want to win? I'm like, It doesn't matter to me. Now, my heart is obviously with Edmonton, L. I. St. Louis, and the Rangers. If they're playing, I'm pulling for them. But other than that, I'm like, Whoever's the best team is I hope they have a great game. Oh, yeah.

You scored all your goals, I guess, on the ice.

Maybe, huh? There you go.

Thank you so much, Wayne, for your time and just for, I don't know, just being a fascinating person to talk to and get to spend time on. It's inspiring just to hear that being a human is just as important to you as being a.

Great athlete. I never looked at myself as somebody different. We're all the same, right? Just be nice to people. Listen, I love doing your show. It's fun.

Yeah, thank you so much for your time, brother. Now, I'm just floating on the.

Breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. But when I reach that ground, I'll share.

This piece.

Of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take a little...