Fake shot. Hesitation shot. Deadly accurate short slapper.
Watching Gretzky highlights I realize how much the fake or hesitation shot he used more than anyone else was so key to his success.
Posted Feb 20, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC
Gretzky saw the game as a chess board, seeing 10 moves ahead of the other players. He went to where the puck would be, not where it was.
My neighbour and former tough guy, Tim Coulis, said the same thing. His vision was equal to the fans sitting in the stands. Nobody stood a chance.
It's almost uncanny. Think about, during a given game, a star player getting 4 or 5 scoring chances. 90% of the time, hell only convert on 1, or 2 of those per games. And still, that's a fantastic player.
Now imagine a player who was able to get 6+ scoring chances per game, who also had the uncanny ability to convert most if not all of them.
IMO, that's what Gretzky was like and why he was so great.
Watching more highlights I love the hesitation. Gretzky used his short accurate slapper so much! His wrister was amazing too. Most goal scorers would use the wrister in the situations Gretzky would resort to his short slapper.
The whole short slapper thing was deception. No one did the hesitation like Gretzky. Gretzky could do it 3 times in half a second, never shoot and slap a pass.
So much hesitation. He could do a 1.5 second hesitation or twice in .1 seconds.
I think the craziest thing I just watched is a backwards pass through his own legs back across the ice that looked like a shot on goal. How do you fake a slapper but go backwards through your legs and make it look like you are putting everything into your shot?
What made him great was his awareness and intuition. He knew where everyone on the ice was and instead of trying to guess how the opponent's would react to him, he would force them to react to him. He would like to draw everyone in to chase him which would leave someone wide open infront of the net. It's like everyone else was playing hockey and he was playing something else.
He was also protected by Semenko. No one took a run at him and he was able to play to his ability because he had a lot of open ice.
The hesitation could be for a mere fraction of a second to 2 or 3 of them over 2 seconds. Every time he seemed to do the least likely option.
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Everything about him. His IQ really stands out, just another level of hockey sense. A true combination of a playmaker and a sniper.
I think it was being better than everyone at almost every aspect of the game. Though I think that's been the consensus the other 10,000 times this has been talked about
His leadership, his eye hand coordination, his vision and his accurate shot.
He made everyone on his team a potential goal scorer when they played with him.
Played alot of 4D chest.
I remember hearing his peripheral vision was insane. Dude literally had eyes on the back of his head. I remember doing a test where you look straight ahead and put your arms straight out and move them towards your back, stopping once you can no longer see your hands. Gretzky apparently could go stupidly far back
Hockey Sense. He may not have been the most physically gifted but his awareness was on another level.
Many have said Gretzky was about 9 plays ahead of everyone and knew not only where his teammates would be, but where the defenders would be as well
His endurance was pretty bonkers as well. He was could get double-shifted, sit for a shift, and then get double-shifted again before he was gasping for air.
Even in his final 2 seasons, at ages 37 and 38, he had an average TOI of over 21 minutes (unfortunately, they didn't start tracking TOI until his final 2 seasons, so those are the only numbers to go off of).