Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament started Gretzky's journey to becoming 'The Great One'

Editor's note: The Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament has been the premier youth hockey event in Canada since 1960, a steppingstone for many future NHL players, including Wayne Gretzky and Connor Bedard. NHL.com senior director of editorial Shawn P. Roarke went to Quebec earlier this month to check out the tournament and all that goes with it.

In the second of a four-part series, Roarke looks at the 50th anniversary of the 1974 tournament, which included Gretzky's memorable visit. (Part 1)

QUEBEC CITY -- Fifty years on, the memories of a tornado visiting this iconic city remain vivid for those who experienced it and is well-documented for those who didn't.

"The Tornado" was not a destructive weather phenomenon, but rather a creative 13-year phenom by the name of Wayne Gretzky, who was just beginning his journey toward becoming "The Great One."

Locals who packed The Colisee past 10,000 spectators each time he played in the Quebec International Pee-Wee Hockey Tournament called Gretzky the tornado because of his dominating playing style.

"It was unbelievable to see Gretzky play," said Ghislain Berube, who was 25 and in attendance when Gretzky showed up with his team from Brantford, Ontario. "You could tell right away that he was different."

Berube, now 75, has seen every Quebec pee wee tournament except the first one and says watching Gretzky was among the highlights of its rich history. He runs a museum dedicated to the competition's history inside the state-of-the-art Videotron Centre, the new home of the tournament, and a copy of the player registration form Gretzky signed before each of his four games remains among his prize possessions.

Everyone it seemed wanted to see the soft-spoken prodigy playing for the Brantford Turkstra Lumber team during that 1974 tournament. He was hounded throughout for autographs and pictures, and TV cameras, a rarity in those days, visited the Brantford dressing room to interview the boy who would become The Great One.

Andy Brickley was among the legion of curious onlookers. Brickley played in the tournament that year with a team from Melrose, Massachusetts. He would go on to play 385 NHL games from 1982 to 1994 and has spent the past 28 years as an analyst for the Boston Bruins on the radio and television.

He remembers sitting in the Colisee for part of a game Brantford played against a team from Richardson. Texas, which featured the son of NFL tight end Mike Ditka. Brantford won 25-0. It was so lopsided that Gretzky was playing defense and still scored seven goals and assisted on seven others.

"All the aura that Gretzky had was in full bloom," Brickley said. "It just blossomed in that tournament.

"He just looked different, the way he skated. He got places quicker than anyone else could. I was so impressed with how much better he was than everyone else. It was leaps and bounds."

It didn't matter what position he played. Gretzky was the most dominant player on the ice.

Jean Beliveau, who retired from the Montreal Canadiens three season earlier, noticed. He visited the 1974 tournament and stopped by the Brantford dressing room after it defeated Beaconsfield (Quebec) 9-1 in a preliminary round game.

"Two things impress me the most about him," Believeau said in a Montreal Star article published Feb. 14, the day after the win. "He's a team player, and he not only plays offensively but defensively. He shows a great deal of promise."

The competition Gretzky did all of this against was elite. Among the players in the tournament, 38 went on to play in the NHL or the World Hockey Association. The field was so strong that three future Hockey Hall of Fame members participated: Gretzky, Paul Coffey and Larry Murphy. Gretzky was inducted in 1999. Coffey and Murphy went in together five years later.

Coffey played with Gretzky for the Edmonton Oilers from 1980-81 to 1986-87 and they won the Stanley Cup together three times, but they were strangers at the Quebec tournament, their paths first coming together during bantam tryouts the following season.

"It was crazy," Coffey said of the start of a friendship that has lasted the better part of 50 years.

In the quarterfinal, Brantford won 7-3 against Verdun, and Gretzky figured in five of the goals, scoring three times and assisting on two others, each by Len Hachborn, who would play 102 NHL games for the Philadelphia Flyers and Los Angeles Kings from 1983 to 1986.

Greg Stefan, a childhood friend in Brantford, was its goalie and he played 299 NHL games with the Detroit Red Wings from 1982-90. He remembers going down the legendary toboggan run at Winter Carnivale with Gretzky and driving to the rink with Wayne and Wayne's father, Walter.

"I remember playing our first game with the Great Gretzky coming into town," said Stefan, currently the goalie coach for Flint of the Ontario Hockey League. "I think we played at 8 in the morning and the building was sold out. Coming out for the game that early in the morning and having the building full, that was pretty exciting. I remember that vividly."

But, even with all that talent, Brantford did not win the tournament. Oshawa defeated it 9-4 in the Class A semifinal. Gretzky factored in each goal for his team, scoring once and assisting on the other goals.

Gretzky survived the disappointment of coming up short here. He went on to hold virtually every offensive record in the NHL, finishing with 2,857 points (894 goals, 1,963 assists) in 1,487 regular-season games and winning the Hart Trophy voted as most valuable player of the League nine times. He won the Stanley Cup four times in a five-season span with the Oilers.