what gretzky was able to do was consistently take advantage of the fact that you had to double team him, which meant there was always somebody else open. if you didn't double team him, he'd skate circles around everybody else, and nobody could catch him; if you did double team him, he'd just find the guy that was open. he'd get more assists in a year than anybody else got points. i don't care about hockey any more, but there was a time where my father basically forced me to care, so i ended up spending a lot of time with the numbers. he'd get like 150 assists a year, because you had to double team him.
what that means is he needed to be on a good team to be effective, and he always was on a good team. the canadian political system doesn't have an elected king like the american system does, it is more of a collective process.