30 Year-Old Wayne Gretzky Had 718 Goals at Time of Gary Suter Crosscheck

Published on April 7th, 2025 8:58 pm EST
Written By: Dave Manuel


It was the summer of 1991 and a 30 year-old Wayne Gretzky was still in his prime.

The "Great One" was coming off of a phenomenal season with the Los Angeles Kings, as he put up 41 goals and 122 assists in 78 games.

The "Canada Cup" was coming up, and Gretzky was excited to don the "Maple Leaf" for Canada.

Gretzky would suffer an injury during the "Canada Cup" that would impact him for the rest of his career.

During a game against the United States, defenseman Gary Suter cross-checked Wayne Gretzky into the boards. It was a cheap shot, and Gretzky was never the same. Gretzky would suffer from herniated discs and numbness throughout the rest of his career.

Heading into the 1991 Canada Cup, Wayne Gretzky had 718 goals and was still just 30 years of age. You can argue that Gretzky had at least 4-5 years of "prime" hockey left.

The Suter cheap shot would change everything, and Gretzky would never top 40 goals for the remainder of his career.

In fact, in the eight years following his injury, Gretzky would manage "only" 176 more goals, leaving him with a total of 894.

In his last eight years in the league, Gretzky would average 22 goals per game. Gretzky would miss a good deal of games due to injury, though even when he played, he was never quite the same as he was before the Suter hit. Gretzky was constantly favouring his back, and never played with the same level of aggression. In addition, Gretzky quite often played with pain, as people with nagging back injuries know all about.

Could Gretzky have hit 1,000 goals in his career? It seems very likely.

In order to do so, Gretzky would have needed to have scored roughly 13 more goals per season in order to hit the mark. Given the level of production that he was putting up prior to his injury, and given that he scored 25 and 23 goals in his last two full seasons in the league, this seems very likely.

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This is not to take anything away from Alexander Ovechkin, who recently broke Gretzky's all-time goal record, but there is no doubt that Gretzky would have easily reached the 1,000 goal mark in his career had it not been for a defenseman by the name of Gary Suter.