Brent Gretzky played 13 NHL games for the Tampa Bay Lightning and scored four points. His brother Wayne scored 2,857. Together they hold the NHL record for most combined points by two brothers, and they also hold the record nobody thinks to look up: the largest career gap between two brothers who both played in the league.
What did Brent Gretzky do in the NHL?
Brent Gretzky was drafted 49th overall by Tampa Bay in 1992 and played two short NHL stints.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993-94 | Tampa Bay Lightning | 10 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 1994-95 | Tampa Bay Lightning | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 13 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
He spent the rest of a twenty-year professional career in the minor leagues and one season in Austria — the IHL with the Atlanta Knights, the AHL with St. John’s and Hershey, the UHL with Asheville, Fort Wayne, Port Huron and the notorious Danbury Trashers, and finally senior hockey in Ontario. His last recorded games came in 2007-08, when the Brantford Blast won the Allan Cup.
What record do Wayne and Brent Gretzky hold?
Two, in fact. Most combined points by two brothers: 2,861. The Sedins are second at 2,111 and Maurice and Henri Richard third at 2,012, so it is not a close record.
And the mirror image of it — the largest gap between two brothers who both reached the NHL, at 2,853 points.
Which brothers have the biggest gap in NHL history?
| Brothers | Higher | Lower | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wayne / Brent Gretzky | 2,857 | 4 | 2,853 |
| Mark / Paul Messier | 1,887 | 0 | 1,887 |
| Gordie / Vic Howe | 1,850 | 7 | 1,843 |
| Mario / Alain Lemieux | 1,723 | 72 | 1,651 |
| Marcel / Gilbert Dionne | 1,771 | 140 | 1,631 |
| Bryan / Rocky Trottier | 1,425 | 10 | 1,415 |
| Eric / Jared Staal | 1,063 | 0 | 1,063 |
| Larry / Moe Robinson | 958 | 0 | 958 |
The Gretzky record is not just unbroken, it is unbreakable by arithmetic. Wayne is the all-time points leader, so no pair can ever have a higher-scoring older brother, and Brent’s four points leave almost nothing left to subtract. The nearest challenger, Mark and Paul Messier, is 966 points behind.
One more for scale: the six Sutter brothers — Brian, Darryl, Duane, Brent, Rich and Ron — scored 2,936 points between them across six NHL careers. Wayne and Brent, with two, are 75 points behind that.
Did Brent Gretzky ever play against Wayne?
Once, and he lost the faceoffs.
“We must have faced off 15 times and I won one. I remember chasing him behind the net. I knew what he was going to do and I still found myself looking for my jock,” Brent said. “The hardest part was after the game, going and watching ESPN. It was older Gretzky shows young Gretzky how to play hockey.”
What does Brent Gretzky do now?
He is a police officer in Ontario. As of the most recent reporting, in March 2025, Brent Gretzky serves with the Prince Edward County detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police, having joined at 37 after two decades as a professional hockey player.
“Policing is the only thing I’ve wanted to do since I was six years old. I had pictures of guns, badges, and hats. I had it all,” he told The Sign Off: A Frameworth Podcast. He had been preparing for it the whole time: “When I went to play in Atlanta, I was 20, 21 years old. Even when I flew on the planes there or took bus rides, I had my study guides, my math books, and everything that I needed to be a police officer.”
What transferred, he says, was the talking. “How to talk to strangers. Every situation is going to be different… It’s always the same with policing. You’re going to go into a situation you don’t know what it is. You got to calm everything down and make sure everybody’s okay.”
The name still follows him. “I stopped a guy on the highway, and I went back to the car with his ticket, and he goes, ‘Brent Gretzky! Can I put this on eBay?’ I said, ‘You’re not gonna get enough to pay for that ticket.'”
What happened to the other Gretzky brothers?
There were four Gretzky brothers, not three, plus a sister, Kim. Keith Gretzky was drafted by Buffalo in 1985 but never played an NHL game; he moved into scouting with Phoenix in 2001, ran amateur scouting there and later in Boston, and has been with Edmonton since 2016, now assistant general manager and general manager of the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors. Glen Gretzky did not play professionally. Their father Walter, who built the backyard rink in Brantford and worked 34 years for Bell Canada, died in March 2021.
