'Proud' Canadian Gretzky plays down political leanings
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Wayne Gretzky attempted to play down his links to U.S. President Donald Trump and his political leanings on Monday during an appearance on Corus Entertainment's The Ben Mulroney Show, and insisted the recent criticism of his patriotism was unfounded.
"I always say to my kids – you know, I’ve got five American kids, seven American grandchildren, an American wife, a 103-year-old American mother-in-law – and I always tell them every day, ‘You be as proud of the United States of America as I am to be a Canadian,'" Gretzky said.. "That’s what your grandfather would have wanted. You know what? I don’t worry about those kind of things because you can’t make everybody happy."
A 64-year-old native of Brantford, Ont., Gretzky has been pictured in the company of Trump several times over the past few years and was invited to his January inauguration.
He attended Friday's Washington Capitals game against the Chicago Blackhawks, in which Alexander Ovechkin scored his 894th goal to tie Gretzky as the NHL's all-time leader, alongside Trump's FBI director, Kash Patel. Gretzky was also in attendance for Sunday's game on Long Island when Ovechkin broke the record with his 895th goal.
The NHL's all-time points leader said that he holds no political influence despite the close ties.
"I have no political power with the prime minister or the president," Gretzky told Mulroney, the son of late Canadian prime minster Brian Mulroney, who was in office from 1984 to 1993. "That’s between those two guys and that’s why you hold elections and that’s why people get to do what they want to do or say what they want to say, but trust me, I have no pull or power with either of them, the prime minster or the president. Can you imagine me telling your dad what to do when he was the prime minister? Your dad would have laughed at me, you know that."
Gretzky, who was awarded Canada's highest civilian honour, a companion of the Order of Canada, in 2009, but has yet to pick up the award, said that hockey players aren't political by nature.
“When I went into the locker room [on Sunday] with Alex, I didn’t look at him as a Russian," Gretzky said. "I looked at him as an NHL hockey player and a guy that’s been tremendous in the city of Washington and great for the NHL. We always, believe it or not, really never talk politics in the locker room…we watch basketball, we watch baseball, we talk about the [Toronto] Blue Jays, we talk about the New York Yankees. [For] hockey players, that’s never on the docket. It’s just something that we stay in our lane. The prime minister and the president don’t tell us how to play hockey. We don’t tell them how to do politics, right?"
Gretzky currently serves as an in-studio analyst for Turner Sports' NHL broadcasts.