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 himself 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 up over a professional career that ran from 1946 into the 1980s, had stood as hockey's most imposing counting record, the kind considered close to permanent. Wayne Gretzky, having already rewritten the assist and points records years earlier, arrived at the 1993-94 season needing only a handful of goals 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 goaltender Kirk McLean for career goal number 802. The game was stopped for a fifteen-minute on-ice ceremony in which Gretzky's family, Kings owner Bruce McNall, and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman all took part.
Gretzky went on to finish his career with 894 goals, a mark that itself stood for over three decades before Alex Ovechkin surpassed it. The 1994 record-breaking night remains one of the sport's most emotionally charged individual milestones, not least for the presence of the man whose record was being broken.
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