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“It’s exciting. Back in Edmonton, the city is on fire. The Oilers are playing with a great deal of passion. You can’t help but get caught up in that passion. That’s what it’s all about.

“This whole group has been so great. Everybody has done a great job of getting on the same page. The games are a lot of fun to watch. I’m not good at camouflaging my face. You can tell by my face if we scored a great goal or if something really went wrong and we got scored on. I need to get one of those baseball gloves like a pitcher to hide my face behind.”

When Oilers owner Daryl Katz and vice-chairman Bob Nicholson called a press conference on opening day to announce that Gretzky was coming onboard, The Great One figured it would be like this when the team made the playoffs.

“When I get into something, I’m full bore,” he said. “I’m not on the edges or outside. My emotion and my passion for this team is always front and centre, and I knew it would be like this.

“Over the last six or seven years being out of it and just watching the games, the only comparable, I would guess, would be watching Dustin,” he said of PGA golfer and son-in-law Dustin Johnson who married Gretzky’s eldest, daughter Paulina, the girl Edmonton fans remember best for singing at the 2003 Heritage Classic at Commonwealth Stadium.

“I get really excited when Dustin’s doing well, and it’s tough when it’s not going so great. You live and die with every shot when he’s on TV. We were at the U.S. Open tournament that he won, I left on the Sunday morning because I had to go to Australia.