Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Morning Line- Wayne Gretzky

06/06/2017 at 8:20am EDT

“Well, listen: I’ve said this before: these kids today are so good. They’re so big, they’re so fast, the equipment’s better. The goaltending, they’re bigger, they’re better athletes. Grant Fuhr and Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy changed goaltending . . . (now) a lot of the best athletes on each team are the goaltenders. So it starts there, and that makes it more and more difficult to score.

“And from a young age now, we’re taught so much about defensive hockey. In the old days of (Jean) Beliveau and Bobby Orr, Guy Lafleur and myself and Messier, we used to throw a puck on the pond and go out there and create, and play three-on-three, four-on-four. The game now is so structured. Two of the better defensive players today are Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews. And they’re 19 years old and 20 years old.”

“So they’re taught so much today in the game on the defensive side of the puck. So the way the game is now, it’s much more defensive. It’s harder to score 40 goals now than it was when we played, and I’m the first guy to acknowledge that. I came along in the right era. I played with the right organization and the right players at the right time.

“But that doesn’t mean the game is different: it just means it’s better today ... We’re in a great place right now.”

Wayne Gretzky. Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star has more.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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