Greatness Confirmed

"He doesn't try to be a one-man show," says Kasper , "and he doesn't have to carry the puck to be effective. It only takes him an instant to do what he wants with it. The main thing I try to do is keep him on the outside of the ice and nudge him early to get him off his stride, like a bump and run in football. It's no good trying to line him up for a hard check; he's too mobile. If you start lunging at him, he'll make you look ridiculous. One thing I'll never call him is a floater. He wants the puck and he'll check to get it. Gretzky 's a complete player."

" Gretzky 's very underrated defensively," says Esposito during a break. "These people who say he can't play defense don't know what they're talking about. He knows when he has to be back deep in his zone and when he doesn't. He knows when his defenseman's going to be beat before his defenseman knows it."

Late in the third period Edmonton leads the Rangers 6-2. The New York fans, as coarse a lot as has ever graced an arena, are bored with booing their team and have begun to cheer Gretzky , who, shadowless, has been putting on a dazzling show. Suddenly he and Pouzar break down the ice two-on-two, Gretzky carrying the puck. He cuts to his left, in front of Pouzar and tantalizingly close to the Ranger defensemen, who both pick him up. Gretzky then flips the puck back to Pouzar, who has darted into the hole vacated by Gretzky 's defender. "Look at him," says Esposito . "Oh my." Pouzar skates in alone and scores the game's final goal. The Ranger fans cheer.

Artistry sells. Even on Broadway.

Without much doubt, Gretzky 's most shocking feat last season was his 92 goals. Even though he had scored 51 and 55 goals, respectively, in his first two years in the NHL , Gretzky was known primarily as a playmaker. He liked to set up behind the net and pass to teammates as they broke toward the goal, a tactic that opposing teams began to go to great lengths to prevent. "It got to the point where defensemen would go behind the net and wait for me," says Gretzky . "So last season I started moving out to the slot more, and in the first 20 games I started shooting all the time."

And with uncanny accuracy. While Esposito needed 550 shots to score 76 goals, Gretzky got his 76th on his 287th shot. He scored his 92 goals on just 369 shots for an accuracy percentage of 24.9%. Broken down, 22 of Gretzky 's goals were scored in the first period, 30 in the second and 40 in the third—a testament to his remarkable stamina. In the playoffs the Oilers , who had finished second in the overall standings (48-17-15), were upset by the 17th-place Los Angeles Kings (24-41-15) in five games. Edmonton lost one game 10-8 and another 6-5 after leading 5-0. The defense caved in. Gretzky had five goals and seven assists in the series, or 2.4 points per game, only slightly below his regular-season average of 2.65. The next morning he flew to the World Championships in Helsinki , where he was the leading scorer with 14 points in 10 games.

"People said I was tired at the end of the year, and they thought that was one reason we lost to the Kings ," says Gretzky , who last season averaged a whopping 38 minutes of ice time a game, killing penalties and working the power play in addition to his regular shifts, which frequently run three minutes apiece, compared with perhaps a minute for mere mortals. "But in that last game of the year, maybe the 100th I'd played that season, I had three goals and two assists against Sweden . How could I have been tired?"

Two nights after the Ranger game, on Nov. 16, Ken Dryden is in the stands at the Nassau Coliseum to see the Oilers play the New York Islanders . Dryden was the premier goaltender of the '70s. During his eight seasons with Montreal , the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup six times. His 2.24 career goals-against average is the lowest in the league since 1941. He retired in 1979, four months before Gretzky broke into the NHL . Dryden , 35, a non-practicing lawyer, now lives in Toronto and is completing a book on hockey. This will be the third time he has watched Gretzky play in person.

"The thing about Gretzky ," says Dryden , "is that unlike most other great goal scorers, he's a real sniper—Bossy's another one—much like the Europeans. He doesn't miss much. The other great ones—Hull, Esposito , Richard , Howe—were volume shooters. They were quite stoppable, but they created so many scoring chances that they ended up with a lot of goals.

"The other thing I've noticed is that Gretzky has discovered the top of the net. An awful lot of his goals are top corner goals. Traditionally players were told to shoot low because of rebounds and because hands move better than feet. That's true, except hands have farther to move. When I played I was operating on a 3-foot-high net."