Wayne Gretzky entered the Los Angeles Kings’ March 23, 1994 game against the Vancouver Canucks tied with Gordie Howe at 801 NHL career goals. Howe had scored 801 regular-season goals over a long career that made him the league’s standard for sustained scoring. Gretzky, already the NHL’s leading playmaker and points scorer, had spent years building toward the mark set by his boyhood idol.
The record-breaking moment came in the second period at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California. At 14:47, defenseman Marty McSorley sent Gretzky a cross-ice pass on a give-and-go. Gretzky put the puck past Vancouver goaltender Kirk McLean for goal No. 802. The Kings lost the game 6-3, but the result became secondary as teammates and the home crowd recognized the milestone.
Passing Howe was more than a numerical achievement. Howe’s record had stood as a measure of longevity and scoring skill across different eras of hockey. Gretzky had reached 802 in his 15th NHL season, demonstrating a combination of vision, positioning and finishing that reshaped expectations for offensive production. He continued scoring after that night and retired in 1999 with 894 regular-season goals, extending the mark he had just claimed.
The record’s later pursuit by Alex Ovechkin has kept Gretzky’s name central to discussions of goal scoring, while the 1994 moment remains one of the defining milestones in his career. It joined an already extraordinary collection of records, including his 1,963 assists and 2,857 points. For the Kings, the goal was a franchise landmark; for hockey, it marked the passing of one era’s defining scorer by another and gave a new generation a record to chase.