It happened in hockey

Gretzky robbed of rookie award

By Brian McFarlane

When Wayne Gretzky joined the Edmonton Oilers as an 18-year-old rookie in 1979-80, nobody expected him to perform miracles on ice. During the previous season, performing in the World Hockey Association, he accumulated 46 goals and 64 assists for 110 points to finish behind Real Cloutier and Robbie Ftorek in the scoring race. On the eve of his NHL debut, the skeptics shrugged and said, "That was in the WHA. The kid will soon find out how much tougher it is to score in the NHL. With that skinny body of his, and the pounding he’ll take, he’ll be lucky to survive the first month."

It’s true that teenage players seldom become overnight stars in the NHL. Most of them play a year or two in the minors before making the big step up.

But Gretzky wasn’t a typical teenage player. He grabbed stardom from the opening game with the Oilers and never let go. He scored 51 goals (his mother had predicted he’d score 42) and added 86 assists for a whopping total of 137 points - the same number of points as Marcel Dionne. They’d share the Art Ross Trophy, right? And Wayne would capture the Calder Trophy, right?

Wrong. The NHL ruled that the Art Ross would go to the player with the most goals over the season. No sharing. Most goals would win it. Dionne won it by two goals. Walter Gretzky, Wayne’s father, thought the trophy should have been shared. "Why not? How do I tell a kid in minor hockey that an assist is as good as a goal when the NHL indicates it’s not?" he said, making sense as usual.

By then, Wayne knew his name would not appear on the Calder Trophy either. The NHL denied him that honor because he had played one season in the World Hockey Association and, therefore, was not, in the league’s opinion, a bona fide NHL rookie.

"Excuse me," said Walter. "The NHL wouldn’t count records and stats compiled in the WHA because it ‘wasn’t a major league.’ At the same time, they wouldn’t consider Wayne for the Calder Trophy because "he had already played a full season in ‘a major professional league.’"

Is there something wrong with this story? To add to the insult and disappointment, the rookie award that season went to Quebec’s Peter Stastny, a Czech player who had defected to Canada and the Quebec Nordiques after several seasons of international hockey. Stastny finished with 109 points, 28 points fewer than Gretzky. The 25-year-old was hardly an amateur.

Walter Gretzky says, "It was a sad ending to Wayne’s first season. Even though he won the Lady Byng Trophy and the Hart Trophy as MVP, he was denied a share of the Art Ross Trophy (Dionne) and he missed the Calder Trophy (Stastny). That’s how he came close to winning every major award in his first season in the NHL."

Incidentally, in a different era, Stastny might have been hailed as the greatest scoring centerman in the NHL. During the 1980s, he topped 100 points seven times and played in six All Star Games. But it was an era dominated by Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, Stastny never earned a single all-star selection.

Here’s another fascinating fact. Stastny played in Quebec with his brothers Anton and Marian. But three Stastnys were no match for two Gretzkys on the NHL scoresheets. Or even one. The Stastnys retired with a collective total of 823 goals. Wayne accounted for 894 himself. Add one more for brother Brent and it’s another Gretzky record--most goals by two brothers in the NHL.

The Sutter boys—I hear you—scored 1,320 goals—but there were six of them.

Brian McFarlane is a former All American hockey player at St. Lawrence University. He was a commentator on CBS, NBC and the Hockey Night in Canada team for 25 years. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1995.

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