No doubt Gretzky was great, but part of his greatness was the way hockey was played at the time - his greatness was as much a product of the rules as it was his passion for hockey.

He was a hockey “hacker”, he exploited (intentionally or not) all sorts of rules that forced the NHL to update them. Today’s game seems to be fairly well guarded against this, though it does still happen (they had to rule against the 1-3-1 defense recently, for example). And teams are now very well aware of superstar players and will shut them down very quickly (eg. Sydney Crosby basically getting beat up any time his skates touch the rink).

It’s a better game now, but a shame that we probably won’t see hockey superstars for a while.