Gretzky’s Playoff Record Tells Us Something About Greatness

Every once in a while, a hockey statistic makes you stop and look twice. Here’s one that got me: Wayne Gretzky, the fellow who seems to own half the NHL record book, finished his career with 208 playoff games. That puts him 17th on the all-time list, behind players like Chris Chelios, Nicklas Lidström and Corey Perry.

Now, 208 playoff games is nothing to sneeze at. But for a player who won four Stanley Cups, scored at will and seemed to spend every spring playing meaningful hockey, I thought he’d be much closer to the top. It turns out there’s a little more to this story than I first imagined.

Greatness Doesn't Always Mean Longevity.

Part of the explanation is pretty straightforward. Gretzky’s Edmonton Oilers were an incredible team, winning five Stanley Cups in seven seasons. But his time with the Oilers didn't last forever. After his move to Los Angeles, the Kings reached the Stanley Cup Final in 1993, but they didn't become regular postseason fixtures. His later stops in St. Louis and New York didn't bring the same kind of sustained playoff success.

Meanwhile, Chelios and Lidström spent years with Detroit teams that kept finding ways to play deep into the spring. Perry has made a career out of hanging around the playoff picture, too. He's played for several organizations and has repeatedly found himself on teams making another run.

There's a lesson here, I think. A player's playoff totals aren't simply a measure of how good that player was. They're also a record of where he played, how long he stayed, and how often his team gave him another opportunity.

Sometimes Circumstances Matter as Much as Talent.

We tend to remember Gretzky's career through the biggest moments. The goals, the Cups, the records. We don't always remember the seasons when his team wasn't good enough to keep playing. That's understandable. Great players become attached to great moments, and Gretzky had more than his share. But even he couldn't make every team a contender.

There's something worth remembering here when we judge today's players, too. We can look at a player's playoff totals and draw conclusions about his career, but those numbers don't tell the whole story. A defenseman who plays 250 postseason games might have been terrific, or he might have been fortunate enough to spend a long career with teams that kept winning. Often, it's a combination of both.

Gretzky's 208 games don't diminish what he accomplished. If anything, they remind us that even the greatest player in hockey history couldn't control everything around him. Talent matters. Longevity matters. Opportunity matters, too. Sometimes, the numbers tell us as much about the teams a player played for as they do about the player himself.