WHAT A GREAT IDEA

Sometimes it’s not about winning, at least not the way our high-octane world has come to think of winning -- now instead of later.

Sometimes, it’s about teaching, learning and hoping for a better future.

“I have to be patient to make this work,” the coach of the Phoenix Coyotes said the other day. You might have heard of this coach, a former player named Wayne Gretzky. “Patience,” he said, “is part of the process for turning our team around.”

Patience? In today’s world?

Process? From a superstar?

Beautiful. Here is someone -- an icon, no less -- we can learn from.

He is still the same unfailingly polite, uncommonly humble guy we met when he came to the Kings in 1988, turned hockey games into hockey events and ushered in a fresh wave of popularity for the sport.

He has the same thin frame, tight smile, blond tresses and gray eyes.

He looks as if he could simply lace the skates, loosen his joints and take to the ice. Truth is, now that he is 46, he could choose to spend the rest of his days playing golf. But Wayne Gretzky doesn’t want any of that.

In 2005, the Coyotes, a meatloaf team he partly owns, needed a new coach. He decided that he knew just the guy.

Behold, Wayne Gretzky, coach.

Former players do sometimes become coaches and do sometimes succeed. But all-time greats? Players who define their sport? Players with physical genius and multiple championships? That rarely happens.

Bill Russell, Pete Rose and Magic Johnson could tell you that.

With the Coyotes in California this week to play the defending Stanley Cup champion Ducks, I went to Anaheim and caught up with Gretzky near the rink. Last year, he signed a five-year extension to keep on coaching, and I wanted to know what was driving him to submit to such a difficult grind.

For guys like you, I said, coaching is a dead end, right? Why will you be any different?

“Yeah,” he said, “the first thing you think of with a good athlete is that he can’t be a good coach because he was a good athlete.”

Just good?

“OK, well yeah, OK, great athlete.” He grimaced. The humility is genuine. “But the reality is . . . I was not the most naturally gifted player. I wasn’t the swiftest skater. I wasn’t the strongest guy. My success came from preparation and hard work and a passion and love for the game. I missed it when I retired. Now I have the chance to have that passion back, pass on what I know and see where we can go.”

Where they can go is not obvious. The Coyotes were bad before Gretzky took over, and now, going into his third season, they are still bad.

This off-season, he and the other owners stripped the team to its bones. Gone is the high-priced, veteran talent that never delivered. Now the Coyotes are one of the youngest teams in the league. They have a 19-year-old center and a bunch of players in their mid-20s, talented but without much experience. Kids. If this is a journey, it’s going to be long and hard: Marco Polo taking the Silk Road to China, maybe without a payoff.

Gretzky knows this, yet he is happy as can be.

“I’m getting a lot of joy from coaching,” he said.

He ticked off the reasons.

Coaching has gotten his juices flowing again. Once more, he has something that makes him shoot-up out of bed in the morning.

He craves the challenge, the obstacles to overcome. Apart from his son in Little League, he had never coached a team before. There was -- and still is -- a lot to master. Lineups, strategies, dealing with egos and players wanting more ice time. Staying calm during terrible losses and bad calls. Finding a way to translate his self-effacing nature into the kind of steely toughness that makes his players listen.

“Let’s face it,” he told me, “I’m no Scotty Bowman.” Bowman coached teams to nine Stanley Cup championships. “I have a lot to learn. But you know what? I really love that.”

Maybe the most important thing is this: Gretzky has a big, sweaty hockey team around him again. A family. A brotherhood. Guys he leads into battle on game nights. Once again, he can taste the elixir of the chase.

“This is what it’s about,” he said. “Last week we lost a tough game at home. Sunday came, and I usually give them Sundays off, but this time I didn’t. I skated them pretty hard.

“Well, they were screaming and yelling, laughing at me, telling me to skate them harder and harder. I thought that was great for team camaraderie. That’s the part I love. I loved the fact that they were trying to stick it [to me].”

On Thursday against the Ducks, the camaraderie seemed to help. Roving behind his players, Gretzky looked unruffled, something like a hip, nattily attired college professor. He spent much of the night with his arms folded or his hands in pockets, calmly calling out substitutions.

The Ducks outplayed his Coyotes, but the Coyotes played smartly and efficiently. They put up one goal and clung to it.

And they walked off with a win, their third against five losses.

To Coach Gretzky, that’s a step toward turning meatloaf into caviar.

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Kurt Streeter can be reached at kurt.streeter@latimes.com To read more columns by Streeter, go to latimes.com/streeter.