Ice Hockey · 1994 · Los Angeles, USA
Gretzky Passes Gordie Howe
Playing for the Los Angeles Kings, Wayne Gretzky scores his 802nd career goal to pass Gordie Howe as the NHL's all-time leading goal-scorer, with Howe watching from the stands.
802nd (new NHL record)
Goal number
23 March 1994
Date
894 goals
Career total (final)
Gordie Howe's total of 801 career goals, built across a professional career running from 1946 into the 1980s, was hockey's most imposing counting record and had been filed by most people as permanent. Wayne Gretzky, who had rewritten the assist and points records years earlier, came into the 1993-94 season needing only a handful to pass it.
On 23 March 1994, in a game against the Vancouver Canucks at the Great Western Forum, Gretzky took a pass from Marty McSorley on the power play and beat the goaltender Kirk McLean for career goal number 802. The game stopped for a fifteen-minute on-ice ceremony involving Gretzky's family, the Kings owner Bruce McNall and the NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
Gretzky finished his career on 894 goals, a mark that itself stood for over three decades before Alex Ovechkin surpassed it. Howe was in the building that night, which is the detail that gives the footage its weight.
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