Gretzky’s Imitators

The other night, during the awfully boring Phoenix Coyotes/San Jose Sharks game, my wife turned to me and said, “You know, these Coyotes games just aren’t as fun without Wayne Gretzky.” Of course, she wasn’t referring to the forechecking system that Gretzky used as opposed to Dave Tippett’s snore-inducing neutral zone trap. No, she meant that we wouldn’t get to see Gretzky blowing his lid behind the bench, making all sorts of amusing faces of fury. With that in mind, I started looking to the rest of the NHL’s coaching fraternity to see if they could maintain the same level of entertainment with their “expressiveness.” Let’s take a look.