One of the greatest hockey talents to ever skate on ice, Wayne Gretzky joined the Rangers in the summer of 1996 as he chose to sign a two-year contract worth $8 million with New York, featuring additional performance-based incentives. This choice reunited him with his longtime friend and former Edmonton Oilers teammate, Mark Messier for just one season.
Gretzky concluded his illustrious playing career with the New York Rangers, spending his final three seasons and contributing to the team’s trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1997, where they were ultimately defeated by the Philadelphia Flyers in five games.
Despite the loss, Gretzky led the Rangers in the playoffs with 10 goals and 10 assists. Notably, this marked the first time in his NHL career that Gretzky was not named captain, aside from a brief stint as acting captain in 1998 during captain Brian Leetch’s injury absence.
After the 1996–97 season, Mark Messier left for the Vancouver Canucks, ending the short-lived reunion of Messier and Gretzky. The 1997 playoff run marked Gretzky’s last as a player, and the Rangers did not return to the playoffs until 2006, well after Gretzky’s retirement. In the 1997–98 season, Gretzky, alongside Jaromir Jagr, led the NHL with 67 assists, marking the 16th time in 19 seasons that Gretzky earned at least a share of the league lead in this statistic.
In 1997, before his retirement, The Hockey News named Gretzky the greatest player in NHL history based on the votes of a committee of 50 hockey experts. Gretzky, however, stated that he would have voted Bobby Orr or Gordie Howe as the best of all time.
Gretzky’s final professional season was 1998–99, during which he broke Gordie Howe’s professional total goal-scoring record of 1,071. Despite a challenging season with only nine goals, Gretzky’s last goal brought his combined NHL/WHA career total to 1,072. Media speculation arose about Gretzky’s retirement as the season concluded, and although he initially refused to announce it, he eventually revealed his decision to retire after the Rangers’ last game of the season.
The final game of Gretzky’s career was a 2–1 overtime loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on April 18, 1999, at Madison Square Garden. Both national anthems were played, with adjusted lyrics to bid farewell to Gretzky. He ended his career with a final point, assisting on the lone New York goal scored by Brian Leetch. At the time of his retirement, Gretzky was the second-to-last WHA player still active in professional hockey, with Mark Messier being the last.
Let’s go down memory lane and look at most of Gretzky’s highlights as a Ranger as a whole. The video above features his introductory press conference, goals from all three seasons as a Ranger, his final point in his final game, as well as the festivities after and a Sportsnet feature about The Great One’s final game years later.
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