Wayne Gretzky

At age 10, he scored 378 goals in a single season and parents in Brantford started complaining he was ruining the game for their kids. He never went through the NHL draft, came up through the WHA at 17, and his first contract was reportedly sold by his original owner in a backgammon game. By the time the Oilers traded him to the Kings in 1988, he'd already changed what scoring in hockey could look like. The trade just made it America's problem too.

His assists alone, 1,963 of them, outnumber the total career points of every other player who ever played the game. That held true even after Alexander Ovechkin broke his goals record in April 2025. He still holds 55 of his original 61 NHL records. Post-retirement, he's been a TNT studio analyst, a winery owner in Niagara, and a BetMGM spokesperson. In February 2025, he gave a thumbs-up to the American team at the 4 Nations Face-Off and not the Canadian one. Edmontonians launched a petition to rename Wayne Gretzky Drive. He hasn't apologized.

The tucked-in jersey on his right side started because the sweaters were too big for him as a kid. He kept doing it for 20 years in the pros, and nobody made him stop. His 1988 wedding to actress Janet Jones drew 10,000 people to the streets of Edmonton before the ceremony even started. His 1979 O-Pee-Chee rookie card sold for $1.29 million in 2021. And in 1980s fantasy hockey leagues, his goals and assists were split into two separate players because pooling them in one slot was unfair to everyone else.