the ice to score one or more goals. Gretzky held a press conference one day after being awarded the Hart Memorial Trophy, criticizing the NHL for punishing teams and players who previously benefited. The rule change became known as "the Gretzky rule." The rule was reversed for the 1992–93 season. Strategy and effect on NHL play Gretzky had a major influence on the style of play of the Edmonton Oilers and in the NHL as a whole, helping to inspire a more team-based strategy. Using this approach, the Oilers, led by Gretzky, became the highest-scoring team in NHL history. "He was, I think, the first Canadian forward to play a true team game", said hockey writer and former NHL goaltender Ken Dryden. The focus of the game prior to Gretzky's arrival, he said, especially among the Canadian teams, was on the player with the puck—in getting the puck to a star player who would make the big play. "Gretzky reversed that. He knew he wasn't big enough, strong enough, or even fast enough to do what he wanted to do if others focused on him. Like a magician, he had to direct attention elsewhere, to his four teammates on the ice with him, to create the momentary distraction in order to move unnoticed into the open ice where size and strength didn't matter. ... Gretzky made his opponents compete with five players, not one, and he made his teammates full partners to the game. He made them skate to his level and pass and finish up to his level or they would be embarrassed." Between 1982 and 1985, the Edmonton Oilers averaged 423 goals a season, when no previous team had scored 400, and Gretzky on his own had averaged 207 points, when no player before had scored more than 152 in one year. Dryden wrote in his book The Game, "In the past, defenders and teams had learned to devise strategies to stop opponents with the puck. To stop them without it, that was interference. But now, if players without the puck skated just as hard as those with it, but faster, and dodged and darted to open ice just as determinedly, but more effectively, how did you shut them down?" In this, Gretzky added his considerable influence as the preeminent NHL star of his day to that of the Soviets, who had also developed a more team-style of