Wayne Gretzky is hockey. The best to ever play the game, as synonymous with the sport as Babe Ruth is with baseball. But lately, Gretzky has been getting questions about soccer—more specifically, Lionel Messi, whose blockbuster signing with Inter Miami of Major League Soccer has evoked memories of the kid from Ontario’s own star-spangled arrival more than 30 years ago. “Yeah, I’ve had people ask me about that,” Gretzky said with a laugh when we spoke recently.

You can’t fault people (e.g., me) for making the comparison. Gretzky’s trade from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings before the 1988–89 season remains the most seismic shift in the NHL’s history, casting ripples still felt decades later. Like Messi, Gretzky arrived stateside with the résumé of a GOAT, having won four Stanley Cups and a whopping eight consecutive Hart Trophies (the league’s equivalent of most valuable player) for Edmonton. And like Messi, Gretzky shouldered the hopes of a league desperate to expand its footprint on the American sports landscape.

But Gretzky, who now serves as lead studio analyst for TNT’s coverage of the NHL, which kicks off a new season this week, points to some key differences. “I would say the biggest difference is that there’s a big ethnic population in the South Beach area in Miami,” Gretzky said. “There’s a lot of people who have moved into the country that are soccer fans, and so obviously the signing of Messi brought all those people out because they love the game.”

When he landed in Los Angeles, Gretzky said, “People really didn’t know or understand or watch hockey.”

“We really started on the ground floor,” he said. “We had to teach kids about the game. We had to show people the game. We spent endless hours doing hockey clinics.”

Gretzky’s arrival in the United States generated a buzz that was reminiscent of this summer’s Messi mania. He hosted Saturday Night Live at the end of his first season with the Kings, which suddenly became a hot ticket in Los Angeles. The team’s home attendance spiked nearly 30% in Gretzky’s first year there, as celebrities began mixing up their courtside cameos at Lakers games with appearances at Kings games. Gretzky also had a profound impact at the grassroots level in the US. Participation in youth hockey skyrocketed after the trade, with the Gretzky effect felt most acutely in California. When he arrived in Los Angeles, Gretzky says there were four high school teams; within a few years, the number had grown past 100.

Gretzky was a similar catalyst for the league’s growth in the American Sun Belt. Los Angeles was the only “warm weather” NHL market at the time of the trade, but expansion teams sprouted in Anaheim, San Jose, and Florida in the years that followed. The league has swelled from 21 teams in 1988 to 32 today, including several that dot the southern US.

“We’re still seeing the residual effect from what he did by going to Los Angeles,” said Paul Bissonnette, a former player for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Arizona Coyotes who is now a studio analyst on TNT alongside Gretzky. “I don’t think expansion exists to the degree it exists if it wasn’t for Wayne coming to the United States. You have to look at the landscape and growth of the NHL and say that he might have had like 25 to 50% to do with where the game is now.”

It’s been 24 years since Gretzky last played in the NHL, but as the puck drops on another season this week, reminders of his impact are evident across the league. The US talent pipeline is as robust as ever, with six American players selected in June’s NHL first round draft, and a player from the USA Hockey development program selected in the top five for the fifth consecutive year. The Tampa Bay Lightning, born in the Sun Belt expansion of the early 1990s, have been among the league’s most successful teams in the last 20 years. The reigning Stanley Cup champions reside in Las Vegas, where Gretzky and the Kings played in the NHL’s first official outdoor game, a preseason exhibition at the Caesars Palace parking lot against the New York Rangers, in 1991. Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin, meanwhile, enters the season in pursuit of Gretzky’s career-goal-scoring record.

Even off the ice, Gretzky still serves as an evangelist spreading the gospel of hockey. “Everybody has to be an ambassador to help grow the game, whether it’s us on TNT or the guys on ESPN or the players themselves,” Gretzky said. “We all have a responsibility because we all want the game to get bigger and better.”

Genteel and soft-spoken, Gretzky might not seem like the most natural fit for the often rambunctious world of studio commentary. He wasn’t so sure himself when he was approached by Turner Sports—the owner of TNT—now known as Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, which, along with ESPN, secured broadcasting rights of the NHL in 2021. Gretzky said he was eventually persuaded by his wife, the actor Janet Jones, and fellow TNT commentator Charles Barkley.

“He talked about how great of an organization TNT was and how much they want to make basketball bigger and better, and they’re going to do the same for hockey,” Gretzky said of Barkley. “So, yeah, it was a pretty easy decision after I chatted with him.”

It’s been a fairly cushy gig for Gretzky. He spends his winters in Florida, which makes it easy to jet to TNT’s studios in Atlanta for the network’s NHL broadcasts every Wednesday. “It’s not overbearing,” Gretzky said. “We go up, we work Wednesday, and I’m home Thursday. I can’t say enough good things about it. I love it. I love talking about hockey.”

“He’s a hockey encyclopedia,” said Bissonnette. “He was not only the greatest to ever play, I think he’s the greatest absorber of everything that’s happened around the game.”

Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports announced that it had signed Gretzky, Bissonnette, and its other two NHL studio analysts, retired 11-year NHL player Anson Carter and legendary former goaltender Henrik Lundqvist, to multi-year extensions.

WBDS now boasts a portfolio of live sports that includes the NHL, MLB, and NBA—and a roster of hall of farmers for each corresponding studio show. Gretzky and his cohosts have been well received by fans and critics, as have Boston Red Sox icon Pedro Martinez and the hosts of MLB on TBS, which is also produced by WBDS. But both shows (and maybe all studio programs) will forever invite comparisons to Inside the NBA, the beloved TNT institution hosted by Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson. Gretzky embraces the parallels, calling Liam McHugh, the host of NHL on TNT, “as close to Ernie Johnson as you can get in sports.” Bissonnette is “our Charles,” Gretzky told me.

As a commentator, Gretzky is certainly no Barkley, whose studio career has been filled with sharp-elbowed critiques of modern players. “Yeah, we got to sometimes be critical but all in all, we got to be positive about the game and about the players because the game is bigger than any individual,” Gretzky said. “It’s a great sport and the more positive we are, the more the players are going to watch the show and want to be on the show. We don’t need to be negative. We don’t need to talk about players’ mistakes or what they’ve done wrong.”

Commentary can’t be all kumbaya, of course, but Gretzky said he leaves it to Bissonnette to “be a little tough on the guys.”

The two have been the standouts of TNT’s studio show, displaying a natural chemistry and repartee fueled by their contrasts: Gretzky, 62, the legend with statesmanlike presence; Bissonnette, 38, the self-described “fourth-line scrub” who’s always wired and a little rowdy. “I don’t have the credibility as a player that most of the guys on the panel do,” Bissonnette said.

In the media arena, however, Bissonnette’s star shines as bright as any. Spittin‘ Chiclets, the Barstool Sports podcast Bissonnette cohosts with Ryan Whitney and Brian McGonagle, is one of the most popular in the sports genre with an avid listenership in both US and Canada. “I don’t know if there’s a bigger celebrity in hockey for kids between the ages of 16 and 30,” Gretzky said of Bissonnette.

Gretzky is bullish on the future of the NHL, which boasts a deep pool of veteran and emerging talent. Ovechkin and Penguins star Sidney Crosby, the two signature players of the 21st century, are now giving way to a glut of young phenoms like Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, the New Jersey Devils’ Jack Hughes, and the Colorado Avalanche’s Cale Makar.

For Gretzky, it harkens back to the days of Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull, and Mark Messier—contemporaries who he says created a “perfect storm” for the NHL when he arrived in Los Angeles. “I rode the wave with them and we all pushed and promoted the game as good as we could,” he said. “They were great players and they had charisma. They understood what it meant to sell the game.”

He gets the same vibe from the league’s current crop of players, which he said is as “good or better” than any that came before. “I don’t think hockey’s ever been in a stronger position than it is right now,” he said.