John Garrett arrived at the 1983 NHL All-Star Game under strange circumstances even before he touched the ice. He'd been traded to the Vancouver Canucks less than a week earlier, barely enough time to unpack, let alone prepare for a national showcase game. Then things got stranger: Canucks starter Richard Brodeur, the team's actual All-Star representative, took a shot off the ear from Dan Daoust and had to leave the game with a broken eardrum. Garrett, the new guy, was suddenly the man in net.
He was terrific. Garrett stopped shot after shot through the first two-plus periods, playing well enough that he was the clear front-runner for the game's MVP award — which, in that era, came with a brand new car as the prize. His broadcast-partner-to-be, Lanny McDonald, needled him from the bench after every save, only half-joking that the car was already his.
Then, around the six-minute mark of the third period, Wayne Gretzky decided to end the suspense. He scored. Then he scored again on his very next shift. Then again. And again — four goals in roughly thirteen minutes, a complete third-period takeover that buried Garrett's MVP case under a highlight reel. McDonald's needling turned from teasing to mock-eulogy with each one: “There go the tires... there goes the steering wheel,” he told Garrett after another puck found the net.
Gretzky walked away with the MVP award and the car. Garrett, who went on to a long and well-liked broadcasting career covering the sport he'd just been steamrolled in, told the story on himself for decades afterward — a good sport about being the answer to one of Wayne Gretzky's most absurd nights of work. Garrett passed away in 2026 after four decades as a respected NHL broadcaster, and the story of the car he didn't win remained one of the moments fans and colleagues remembered him for most fondly.
It's a perfect encapsulation of what made Gretzky Gretzky: even in an exhibition game with nothing at stake but a car and some bragging rights, he was simply operating on a different level than everyone else on the ice — including, unfortunately for him, the newest goalie in the league.