Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Want to make the Winter Classic alumni game great? Get Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky watches the Los Angeles Kings play the Tampa Bay Lightning during an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

AP

While the Alumni Game during Winter Classic weekend is just one of the other events, the announcement that Eric Lindros is trying to get the Legion Of Doom line back together with old pals John LeClair and Mikael Renberg has everyone feeling nostalgic all over again.

Adding that on top of the revelation from Pierre LeBrun that the LCB line from the Broad Street Bullies days with Bobby Clarke, Reggie Leach, and Bill Barber will suit up too, Philly fans will have plenty to go wild for.

It would be tremendous fun to see those lines back together after so long, but there is one former Ranger that would help make this event to be as much of a must-watch, or even more so than the Winter Classic itself.

Wayne Gretzky.

The Great One hasn’t seen the lights of the NHL ever since he got out of the mess with the Phoenix Coyotes and while he’s told outlets in Canada recently that he hopes to someday make his return to business in the NHL, it’d make for one hell of a show to see 99 back on the ice with some of his old Rangers (and Oilers) teammates to take on the Flyers with the Legion Of Doom line that beat Gretzky in the 1997 Eastern Conference finals.

While the Rangers could have a host of other big name former players suiting up for them in Mark Messier, Brian Leetch, and Mike Richter to help make the alumni game a fun nostalgic romp, Gretzky’s presence would help it over the top.

Gretzky retired as a Ranger in 1999 and while he’s better known as an Oiler or a King, seeing him buzzing the ice once again in Ranger blue would be enough to make the Alumni Game must-see TV.

How about it 99? Give us one more time for fun’s sake and to show that the league you helped make great can properly welcome back its biggest star of all time.