Ranger Recessional: Wayne Gretzky played his last NHL game 25 years ago today, bowing out as his New York Rangers fell 2-1 to the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins on this date in 1999. The 38-year-old centre played 22 minutes and 30 seconds that Sunday afternoon, leaving the ice on a shift-change at the at 5:55 p.m. EST, just before Pittsburgh’s Jaromir Jagr put a definitive end to Gretzky’s career with an overtime goal. The Rangers had failed, for the second consecutive season, to make the playoffs, so that’s all he wrote. Gretzky registered two shots on that final afternoon, and assisted on Brian Leetch’s second-period goal. The Madison Square Garden crowd of 18,200 gave number 99 a 15-minute ovation before he skated into retirement. “This is a great game, but it’s a hard game,” he told reporters. “Time does something to you, and it’s time.”