Wayne Gretzky only became “Wayne Gretzky” in the tenth year of his NHL career.

At that point, he was past the most incredible feats he had accomplished on the ice—more than 200 points in three straight seasons and eight straight league MVP honors. He would never win the Stanley Cup again.

But in the tenth year, Gretzky became a TV star.

The trick was to move to Los Angeles. Once there, statistical compilation became just part of his work. His main task was to attract other, bigger stars to his show. He was great at that too.

For a minute there in the early 1990s, ice hockey was the coolest thing there was. Gretzky was the human embodiment of that cool.

When famous people mention his name today, they don’t mean Gretzky, who was the greatest offensive force in NHL history. They’re talking about the man who hosted Saturday Night Live.

Hockey has spent the last three decades remaking that celebrity magic. You need a combination of things – the right man, the right moment, the right environment and, most importantly, the right vehicle.

LA was Gretzky’s vehicle. Can Amazon be Connor McDavids?

This year will be – wait for it – McDavid’s 10th season in the NHL. As with Gretzky, his individual quality is not just the unanimously recognized best in class. It’s so far ahead of the rest that sometimes it seems like everyone else has brakes on their skates.

Like Gretzky, McDavid has mastered the art of attractive restraint. Actually, neither man is shy. Shy people hate talking. It’s more that they don’t want to give the impression that they are arrogant about themselves and they also don’t want to lie, which is a problem when you’re the best. This struggle to talk without tooting your own horn is what makes people fall in love with you.

Until recently, McDavid’s NHL story was the star of the generation who was stuck in the boards and couldn’t shoot straight. When (if ever) would Edmonton find a solution?

Last season, around the new year, the Oilers did that. Then, with McDavid and a hint of confidence, they rode into the Stanley Cup Final.

The Oilers could have had the doors blown out in a heartbeat, but they fought their way back to respectability and lost a squeaker. McDavid won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP but refused to accept it.

When he finally spoke to the media in a back room, McDavid was a picture of devastation. He had played so hard that his toes had burst through two pairs of thermal socks.

If we’re talking about star building, none of it could have gone better. It wouldn’t make any sense Rocky II if Sylvester Stallone had won the first time.

Gretzky did that in LA. He was great. The team, not so much. But they were getting closer and closer. After Gretzky had wonderfully managed to live up to expectations, it was only then that he truly failed for the first time. He couldn’t deliver the finish everyone wanted.

Gretzky played four more years, but his career ended when he left California without a title. McDavid is now in the same star-making rut. All he has to do is point his feet downward and give in to gravity.

The most important part of this process is Amazon’s new Faceoff: In the NHL Series. It debuts alongside the NHL season on Friday.

The docudrama focuses on more than a dozen players, but it’s McDavid’s show. You know this because he’s the one screaming in the trailer like a man who’s gone completely unhinged. Criers have priority.

The six-part series builds through the smaller lights. It is only in the fifth of six episodes that McDavid takes center stage. Once there, it shows someone different than the cyborgian master craftsman we know from interviews in the first intermission.

The story progresses, from the seabed pressure McDavid struggles with in Edmonton to the failed comeback in the final. As it turns out, McDavid is the unpredictable wild man the NHL needs, even if it doesn’t know it.

In a perfect world, the show could also end up convincing a global audience that Edmonton has the scruffy glamor of Green Bay or Manchester.

It all depends a lot Faceoff an immediate success. In that sense, leaving McDavid to the last is a risk.

But let’s assume it works – that means the show is watched and discussed by someone other than Canadians and a few American sports obsessives. That would give McDavid the most important part of the Gretzky in LA profile – fame as a TV star.

Then all he has to do is win.

The next 16 months are so perfectly poised to transform McDavid from a hockey conglomerate into an entertainment conglomerate that you’d think Amazon Prime Video and the NHL had planned it that way.

First, the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. After a decade of scandal and creeping international insignificance, McDavid manages to save Canadian ice hockey from itself.

He has the NHL playoffs from April to June. McDavid and the Oilers don’t have to win. You just have to get closer again. Victory will not be inevitable for two or three seasons.

Especially if what everyone expects in February 2026 works out right – McDavid leads Canada to its first gold medal in Olympic men’s hockey since Sochi in 2014.

This is the hockey part of the recipe. Then there’s the celebrity part. Is he ready to do US talk shows? How about TikToks? Dog content? Movie cameos?

Would like McDavid to be out there calling himself a product because that’s how it works. Tom Brady only became “Tom Brady” when he married a supermodel and became a fixture on Page Six. This celebrity thing is about more than winning championships. It looks tiring.

But for the first time since Gretzky, a hockey player is able to do something bigger than hockey. To maybe grow up to be LeBron James or Lionel Messi.

Becoming much more famous may not be McDavid’s primary goal in life, but it is the not-so-secret hope of everyone he does business with. If he wants to get on board, the rocket will take off soon.