Gretzky’s road to hockey immortality started on backyard rink

The NHL and conservation non-profit Ducks Unlimited Canada are teaming up to tell stories of current and former NHL players and how access to community ponds and the outdoors helped shape their love for the sport. Today, a look at how the legendary Wayne Gretzky got his start skating on a river at his grandmother's farm and then on what might be the most famous outdoor rink in Canadian history -- a Brantford, Ontario backyard sheet built by the Great One's late father, Walter.

You could make a strong argument that the long-ago 20-by-36-foot rink painstakingly crafted in the Brantford, Ontario yard of Walter and Phyllis Gretzky is the most famous outdoor ice sheet in Canadian history.

And you'd not be wrong if you suggested that the late Walter Gretzky might be Canada's most famous hockey father, a man who helped steer his son to immortality in the sport while earning himself profound adoration and respect for his folksy manner, modesty and tireless charitable work.

It was at "Wally's Coliseum," as the Gretzky family nicknamed the backyard rink, that the Great One began his journey to NHL superstardom -- skating countless miles and playing hundreds of games from dawn until well after dark, with siblings and friends weaving in and out of bleach bottles placed as a stickhandling obstacle course.

Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers studies the game from his team’s bench during a 1980s game.

Gretzky's list of achievements is as long as the sticks, first wooden, then composite, that he handled like magic wands, his combined feats a preposterous encyclopedia.

The most prolific goal-and point-scorer in NHL history retired in 1999 following a 20-season, 1,487-game career with the Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings, St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers.

He took with him 2,857 points, 894 goals and 1,963 assists -- each an NHL record, though his goal record is being threatened by Washington Capitals forward Alex Ovechkin, who is currently 20 away from breaking the mark. He has a handful of other records that are truly staggering: single-season marks of 92 goals, 163 assists and 215 points; a point streak of 51 games; 15 seasons of 100 or more points, 13 of them consecutively.

And in 1981-82, at age 20, he scored 50 goals in an unthinkable 39 games, obliterating the record of 50 in 50 set by Montreal Canadiens legend Maurice "Rocket" Richard in 1944-45 and equaled by Mike Bossy of the New York Islanders in 1980-81. On his historic run, Gretzky scored four goals in Game 38 and five in Game 39.

Wayne Gretzky in a childhood portrait and from his early minor-hockey days in Brantford, Ontario.

Then there's his absurd haul of silverware:

Four Stanley Cup championships with the Oilers during the 1980s; winner of the Hart Trophy nine times as the NHL's most valuable player; 10-time winner of the Art Ross Trophy as the League's leading point-scorer, including seven consecutive; twice the winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy as the postseason MVP; and five times the winner of the Lady Byng Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award, respectively voted annually to the NHL's most gentlemanly player and to the MVP as chosen by the players.

To see Gretzky, who appeared in 18 All-Star Games, play -- to see him control a game, to anticipate everything on the ice, to watch foes in futile pursuit, the very best left chasing his shadow, even his ghost -- was to see an artist creating a masterpiece on a canvas measuring 200 by 85 feet.

But his first rink was in fact not a rink at all. As a toddler, he took his first bladed strides on the Nith River in Canning, Ontario, before he laced up at Wally's Coliseum in Brantford, about 15 miles to the southeast in Walter and Phyllis' yard on a property bought when Wayne was seven months old.

Wayne Gretzky provides analysis for TNT Sports during the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley Field in Chicago on Dec. 31, 2024.

More than four decades ago, in the pages of his late father's book, "Gretzky: From Back Yard Rink To The Stanley Cup," the Great One turned back the years to remember the rink that froze his fingers and toes yet set his heart afire with a love of hockey that he has to this day.

"In 1979, I told a reporter that my dad and I would be on the rink four hours a day," Gretzky said in reflection. "And I was quoted, accurately, this way: 'Honest to God, it was so cold that I'd come in the house crying.' Now I can just see a bunch of kids coming in crying and hearing their dads say: 'Get back out there! Wayne Gretzky froze. He's sitting in a penthouse in Edmonton. Where the heck are you?'

"But they missed the point. They say to me, 'You practiced four hours a night,' and I say, 'Yeah, I guess I did.' But looking back at it, I wasn't practicing. If I'd thought I was practicing, I'd probably never have done it.

“I did it because that was what I had fun doing. I never thought, 'Well, I'll practice four hours a day today because if I do that, I'll have a chance to make the NHL. It never entered my head. We did it because we enjoyed it.

Wayne Gretzky (center) and his brother, Keith, with their father, Walter, following an Edmonton Oilers game against the New Jersey Devils on Jan. 15, 1984 at Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

"Other kids were out there skating a lot longer than I did and they didn't make it," Gretzky said. "You can't say, 'If you do this, you'll make the NHL.' It just isn't true. I'd skate for three or four hours and come in and my dad would say, 'Had enough, eh?' and I'd say, 'Yeah,' and the next day I'd be out doing it again."

Walter Gretzky, who died at age 82 in March 2021, his wife having predeceased him in 2005, had no idea that the talent of his son would not merely be generational, but something for the ages.

"Once we got Wayne on skates, the tough part was getting him off them," he wrote in his book with co-author Jim Taylor.

"He loved it. He bugged us to go to the farm or to take him to the park every night so he could skate. He couldn't get enough of it. There was a park with an outdoor rink not far from the house, so when he was 3, I started taking him there. It was closer to home, and it meant when he finished, I could get him home faster.

Wayne Gretzky talks to his father, Walter, before the 36th NHL All Star Game on Jan. 31, 1984 at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

"It didn't work. Wayne loved it, but I darn near died. I'd take him to the park and sit in the car waiting for him to finish."

Walter Gretzky never earned more than $25,000 a year working various jobs for Bell telephone, so there was no money to waste with a family that would grow to five children. Sitting in his car at the frigid park, waiting for his son to skate a few more miles, he turned the ignition on and off for warmth, gasoline costing a dear 18 cents per gallon.

Wally's Coliseum was born in 1965 out of necessity and its creator's self-preservation, eldest son Wayne turning 4 that winter.

"The other kids would skate, pack up and go home. Wayne would still be out there," Walter Gretzky wrote. "Pretty soon everybody was gone -- everybody but Wayne on the ice and this frozen lump in the car that was me. One night as I was thawing out in the in the kitchen, I gave my wife the word.

Wayne Gretzky and fellow legend Guy Lafleur shake hands after the Oilers faced the Canadiens during the Molson Canadian Heritage Classic Megastars Game on Nov. 22, 2003 at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton.

"'That's it,' I said. 'I'm all through freezing my tail off. I knew he wanted to skate at the park. I didn't know he wanted to live there. Next winter, we flood the backyard and he can stay out there as long as he wants.' See? It wasn't ambition, it was survival. Not Wayne's, mine."

Gretzky was back outdoors four years after retirement, lacing up at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium for a high-profile alumni game. Former Oilers and Montreal Canadiens would meet in front of 57,167 teeth-chattering fans for two bone-chilling 15-minute periods as the curtain-raiser for the 2003 Heritage Classic, the first of 42 regulation NHL outdoor games played to date.

At the time, visitors were still dropping by the Gretzky homestead in Brantford, eager for a look at Wally's Coliseum that by then was only a memory.

"I tell them there isn't a rink, there's a swimming pool there now," Walter Gretzky joked to a Toronto Star reporter. "Plus there's a sunroom on the back of the house. Then they still say, 'Can we see it?'"

Walter and Wayne Gretzky following an Edmonton Oilers game against the New Jersey Devils on Jan. 15, 1984 at Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey; Gretzky skates with the Stanley Cup following his team’s 1984 championship victory.

Had they gone next door, they might have found a souvenir or two.

"The guy who had the yard behind us had about 600 pucks in his yard from the shots that I missed," Wayne Gretzky joked in Al Strachan's 2013 book "99 Gretzky: His Game, His Story."

Walter Gretzky often related stories of how his legendary son would bribe a local kid with a nickel to stand in goal on the rink for target practice; of how he built Wayne's first net out of two-by-fours in the basement, the immobile wood structure proving too large to navigate the stairs, thus needing to be yanked apart and rebuilt on the ground floor; of how he strung floodlights over the rink on a clothesline when it because apparent that Wayne would otherwise play by moonlight.

Wally's Coliseum wasn't a store-bought rink of boards and synthetic material. It truly was a low-tech labor of love for Walter Gretzky, who lost sleep many a night tending to it.

Wayne Gretzky holds his son, Tristan, as he stands with his parents Walter and Phyllis during a pre-game ceremony as the Los Angeles Kings retire Gretzky's jersey on Oct. 9, 2002 at Staples Center in Los Angeles.

With hard-packed snow as the sideboards and ice laid over grass cut to a stubble, scrupulously flooded to make an even, glassy surface, the rink was old-school beautiful, crafted by hand and a lawn sprinkler.

"I remember the one night I fell asleep. I forgot the sprinkler was going," Walter Gretzky told Toronto Star reporter Glen Colbourn in 2003, the day before he and Phyllis flew to Edmonton to watch their son skate in zero-degree (minus-18 Celsius) alumni-game temperatures that felt much colder with the wind.

"I went out and it was covered over in ice. So I took the whole thing and I yanked up on it and broke the sprinkler. Before I went to work that morning, I said to Phyllis, 'Will you go over to the hardware store this morning and buy another sprinkler?'

"I came home at lunchtime (to tend to the ice) and let me tell you, she wasn't too pleased. She went to the hardware store – in December – and asked for a sprinkler and the guy said she was nuts. It was 15 or 20 below zero. They thought she was crazy. She said, 'Don't you ever, ever ask me to do anything that stupid again!'"

Wayne Gretzky of the St. Louis Blues skates during the 2017 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic Alumni Game at Busch Stadium on Dec. 31, 2016.

Four decades ago, Wayne Gretzky almost thawed out from his endless, perfect winter days and nights at Wally's Coliseum. He reflected fondly on a backyard rink whose roof was not one of steel girders and championship banners, but one of starlight and snowflakes.

"Oh, I cried all right. Chilblains," he said. "Every kid who ever stays out in the cold, then comes into a warm house, gets them. When your feet warm up, it hurts and itches like mad.

“But I didn't remember the crying. I remember the hot chocolate, and my dad's big, strong hands holding my toes to make the cold go away."

Top photo: Wayne Gretzky skates at his grandmother’s farm on Nith River in Canning, Ontario, illustrating a 1984 excerpt from his father’s book.