When Wayne Gretzky's wife Janet Jones was severely injured during a hockey game

The prominent ice hockey player Wayne Douglas Gretzky is popularly known as Wayne Gretzky. In the history of the NHL, Wayne has been deemed the greatest player of all time. Wayne is married to his gorgeous wife, Janet Jones.

On October 22, 1997, Janet Jones was knocked out by a shattered Plexiglas pane during a game between the New York Rangers and the Chicago Blackhawks. The game started with Wayne Gretzky on the verge of making history. His wife was taken away in an ambulance from Madison Square Garden.

A heavy pane of Plexiglas flew into the stands after New York's Ulf Samuelsson checked Chicago's Sergei Krivokrasov into the boards opposite the benches in the neutral zone. Normally, the glass that surrounds hockey rinks shatters into innocuous pieces, but this time the pane came off in one piece.

Glass' targets that night were two unidentified women and Gretzky's wife Janet Jones, to whom he was married for nine years at the time. When the pane collided with Jones's head, she was knocked unconscious and her lower lip was cut. She was knocked out cold for four or five minutes while emergency personnel worked to stabilize the situation. Medical personnel surrounded the unconscious Jones as blood flowed from her mouth, according to images on the live television broadcast.

Wayne Gretzky’s reaction after the incident

Wayne Gretzky, who was not on the ice when the glass popped out of its partitions, hopped over the boards from the bench and skated across to check on his wife. He returned to his teammates after receiving word from Rangers trainer Jim Ramsay that she was receiving proper care. Gretzky returned to the bench with an "anguished look," according to The New York Times's Joe Lapointe.

Jones was carried away from the stands on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan 10 minutes after the glass fell. Jones and the unidentified woman, according to Krivokrasov, were both unconscious when they left the rink. Another Plexigas victim reportedly complained of neck pain but did not go to the hospital. Jones' presence by the boards was apparently a misfortune: she hadn't even been near the ice until the third period when her friend invited Jones to join her.

Wayne Gretzky chose to remain with his team and complete one full shift before the final buzzer. Despite Gretzky's best efforts—reports say he spent the entire night dumping unused scoring chances in front of linemates—the Rangers couldn't muster a late rally, and the Blackhawks won 1-0.