Suck It, Gretzky. 22-Year-Old Czech Rookie Makes History And Does Something 99 Never Did In His NHL Career
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.Wayne Gretzky is the owner of 61 NHL Records. And to be perfectly honest, that number seems sort of low for him. Some of those records will never get touched as long as hockey is still being played on planet Earth.
Now I'll admit that we currently live in a world where we cherry pick stats to make almost every performance seem historic. It seems like anyone nowadays can be the first in league history to have a goal on a Wednesday night where they had chicken parm for dinner, took a tripping minor, and took exactly 37 swigs of water during the game.
But what we witnessed last night with the Colorado Avalanche was no fluke. This wasn't some made up stat to pass off as being a record. This was true history in the making, and something that neither Gretzky nor any other former or current NHLer could ever dream of achieving.
Ivan Ivan became the first player to ever step foot on a sheet of NHL ice with the same first name as his last name. There's no Lemieux Lemieux. There's now Howe Howe or Orr Orr. There is only one Ivan Ivan, the first of his name and also the last of his name. What's even sicker is that his middle name? You guessed it.
It's Ivan.
The NHL is in a great spot right now. There's a legitimate superstar out on the ice every single night. There are so many guys in the league right now that would be certified "generational" talents if they were playing in any other generation than right now. Guys that only come by once every 8-10 years. But when we're talking about Ivan Ivan? He's not just once in a generation. He's not just once in a lifetime. He's once in forever.
Sidenote: Avs lost 8-4. It's already looking too easy for Eichel and the Golden Knights so far.