Wayne Gretzky’s career stats against every NHL team

Wayne Gretzky scored more points against the Vancouver Canucks than against any other team: 239 in 117 games. Across a career that ran from 1979-80 to 1998-99 with four different clubs, Gretzky faced 27 of the NHL’s current 32 franchises, and the complete record is below.

Gretzky finished with 1,487 NHL games, 894 goals, 1,963 assists and 2,857 points. Every one of those numbers is accounted for in the table.

Which team did Wayne Gretzky score the most points against?

The Vancouver Canucks, with 239 points in 117 games. Vancouver and Calgary were the two teams Gretzky faced most often — 117 games each — and both came out of his nine seasons as an Edmonton Oiler, when all three shared the Smythe Division.

Behind Vancouver there is an exact tie. Gretzky scored 230 points against Calgary and 230 against the franchise that is now the Utah Mammoth, the club he knew as the original Winnipeg Jets. He took 12 more games to do it against Calgary.

Wayne Gretzky’s career stats against every NHL team

Ranked by points. Teams are listed under their current franchise names, with the names Gretzky actually faced shown in brackets where they differ.

TeamGPGAPP/GP
Vancouver Canucks117761632392.04
Calgary Flames (Atlanta Flames)117691612301.97
Utah Mammoth (Winnipeg Jets, Phoenix Coyotes)105791512302.19
Los Angeles Kings69601191792.59
Toronto Maple Leafs6355951502.38
Detroit Red Wings62371081452.34
Colorado Avalanche (Quebec Nordiques)5138941322.59
Pittsburgh Penguins5744801242.18
New Jersey Devils (Colorado Rockies)6732911231.84
Dallas Stars (Minnesota North Stars)5844721162.00
Carolina Hurricanes (Hartford Whalers)5736731091.91
St. Louis Blues5739681071.88
Washington Capitals5730751051.84
Chicago Blackhawks6025771021.70
Philadelphia Flyers5834661001.72
New York Islanders553365981.78
Montreal Canadiens552365881.60
Edmonton Oilers542362851.57
Buffalo Sabres552756831.51
New York Rangers463447811.76
Boston Bruins532548731.38
San Jose Sharks321239511.59
Anaheim Ducks (Mighty Ducks of Anaheim)23525301.30
Ottawa Senators17325281.65
Tampa Bay Lightning20519241.20
Florida Panthers20512170.85
Nashville Predators21784.00
Career1,4878941,9632,8571.92

Compiled from Hockey-Reference’s career splits and cross-checked against StatMuse, with career totals confirmed against the NHL’s own records and QuantHockey. Points per game calculated. The 27 rows sum exactly to Gretzky’s career totals in all four columns.

Which team did Wayne Gretzky score the most goals against?

The original Winnipeg Jets franchise, now the Utah Mammoth, with 79 goals in 105 games. Vancouver is next on 76, then Calgary on 69 and Los Angeles on 60.

There is a detail inside that row worth separating out. All 79 of those goals came against the Winnipeg Jets. Gretzky faced the same franchise five times after it relocated and became the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996, and scored none.

What did Wayne Gretzky do against Edmonton after the trade?

Less than against almost anyone. Gretzky played 54 regular-season games against the Oilers after the August 1988 trade to Los Angeles, and scored 85 points — a rate of 1.57 per game, well below his career rate of 1.92.

Only six franchises held Gretzky to a lower rate, and four of those were expansion teams he met late in his career. Among the teams he faced more than 40 times, only Buffalo (1.51) and Boston (1.38) kept him quieter than Edmonton did.

The Edmonton row is also his smallest against any long-standing opponent, at 54 games, for the obvious reason: Gretzky spent his first nine NHL seasons wearing the sweater. The same applies to the other three clubs he played for. His Los Angeles row (69 games) is almost entirely the Oilers years, his New York Rangers row (46 games) stops when he signed there in 1996, and his St. Louis row (57 games) covers everything except his 18 games as a Blue.

Which NHL teams did Wayne Gretzky never play against?

Five of today’s 32 franchises:

  • Winnipeg Jets — the current club entered the league in 1999-2000 as the Atlanta Thrashers, months after Gretzky retired, and relocated in 2011
  • Columbus Blue Jackets — entered 2000-01
  • Minnesota Wild — entered 2000-01
  • Vegas Golden Knights — entered 2017-18
  • Seattle Kraken — entered 2021-22

The Winnipeg answer trips people up, and it is genuinely two-sided. Gretzky never faced the team now called the Winnipeg Jets, because that franchise didn’t exist in his era. He faced the original Winnipeg Jets 100 times and scored 225 points against them—and that franchise moved to Phoenix, then Arizona, and is now the Utah Mammoth.

Gretzky did face Nashville. The Predators entered the league in 1998-99, his final season, and he met them twice.

How are relocated and renamed teams counted here?

Gretzky’s career spans six relocations, more than any comparable player, so the table lists each franchise under its current name and folds in the historical results. The breakdown:

Franchise todayAs he faced itThen
Calgary FlamesAtlanta Flames — 4 GP, 6 PCalgary — 113 GP, 224 P
New Jersey DevilsColorado Rockies — 16 GP, 28 PNew Jersey — 51 GP, 95 P
Dallas StarsMinnesota North Stars — 41 GP, 100 PDallas — 17 GP, 16 P
Colorado AvalancheQuebec Nordiques — 41 GP, 120 PColorado — 10 GP, 12 P
Utah MammothWinnipeg Jets — 100 GP, 225 PPhoenix — 5 GP, 5 P
Carolina HurricanesHartford Whalers — 48 GP, 103 PCarolina — 9 GP, 6 P

Each pair sums exactly to its row in the main table. The splits also track Gretzky’s decline: he scored 2.93 points per game against the Quebec Nordiques and 1.20 against the Colorado Avalanche that replaced them, because the Nordiques met him in his twenties and the Avalanche met him at 35.

Did Gretzky score more against his own division?

Considerably more, and it is the opposite of what the same exercise shows for Mario Lemieux. Against the four Smythe Division rivals he faced most as an Oiler — Vancouver, Calgary, the Winnipeg Jets and Los Angeles, 408 games in total — Gretzky scored 878 points, a rate of 2.15 per game against a career rate of 1.92.

Those four clubs account for 27% of every game Gretzky played and 31% of every point he scored. Familiarity did not blunt him: the teams that saw Gretzky most often are the ones he punished hardest, largely because those meetings clustered in the Edmonton years, when he scored 200 points a season.

Does this table include his WHA season?

No. Gretzky played 1978-79 in the World Hockey Association, splitting 80 games between the Indianapolis Racers and the Edmonton Oilers for 46 goals, 64 assists and 110 points. Those numbers are excluded here, as they are from his official NHL totals.

Combined NHL and WHA figures of 1,567 games and 2,967 points appear on some databases. The NHL record, which this table reconciles to, is 1,487 games and 2,857 points.

 

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