Parenting & Family Quote by Wayne Gretzky

Gretzky turns what could sound like pure superstition into a small, revealing philosophy of work. The details are almost comically precise: no sticks touching, no crossing, hidden in a corner, baby powder on the ends. It reads like a private ritual, the kind athletes get mocked for until you realize rituals are often just discipline wearing a more mystical costume. The point isn’t that powder is magic; it’s that attention is.

The subtext is control. Hockey is chaos at speed: bad ice, broken plays, weird bounces, bodies everywhere. A player can’t dictate the game’s randomness, but he can dictate the condition and handling of the one tool that makes his talent actionable. Keeping sticks separated and “hidden” isn’t merely protection from damage; it’s a boundary against disorder, a way of saying: this is my craft, and I’m not leaving it to chance or to someone else’s carelessness.

“I think it’s essentially a matter of taking care of what takes care of you” lands because it’s modest and transactional, not inspirational. He’s not romanticizing the stick; he’s acknowledging a relationship with equipment that borders on partnership. Coming from the sport’s most mythologized mind, it’s also a quiet demystification of greatness: the legend is built from mundane, repeatable choices. The ritual becomes a metonym for professionalism itself - reverence without sentimentality, control without illusion.