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He was a most unlikely one. If the players did not wear names, it would be hard to pick out who was the greatest player of all time. Even in his prime, Gretzky wasn't very fast; his shot was oddly weak, and he was last on the team in strength training. As he said in Ottawa on Thursday, "Maybe it wasn't talent the Lord gave me. Maybe it was the passion." He would operate from his "office," the small space in back of the opponent's goal, anticipating where his teammates would be well before they got there and feeding them passes so unexpected he would often surprise them. For a cover story in 1985, he told TIME, "People talk about skating, puck handling and shooting, but the whole sport is angles and caroms, forgetting the straight direction the puck is going, calculating where it will be diverted, factoring in all the interruptions." Don't worry. That sounded just as confusing to most NHL players.
Before Gretzky, back in 1979, America only knew hockey as boxing on ice, a sport that could never take hold south of Route 80. He helped free the game from the goons and clear a path for the more skilled, European game that dominates the NHL today. He overcame his shyness to become the perfect ambassador: humble, accessible, nice and somehow impeccably earnest without being creepy. The biggest off-ice controversy he ever faced was whether being on the cover of Cigar Aficionado sent a bad message to children.
The league won't have to retire 99. No one has had the hubris to wear Gretzky's number in the NHL, the AHL, the juniors or college hockey. It has represented not winning, not intensity, but how awesomely subtle greatness can be. And that's not something most people can wear on their backs.