Nestled in a gated California community, the 18,000-square-foot Gretzky house is coming to life on a crisp, overcast morning. Soft techno music drifts from the second-floor bedroom of 18-year-old Paulina Gretzky, down a grand staircase into the foyer, where six-year-old Tristan Gretzky barrels around wearing plastic Viking horns and waving a doughnut. Jean Jones, the children's small, scrappy grandmother, putters around chatting up a couple of household employees in the czarist splendour of the living room. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Janet Gretzky appears.

Lanky and blonde, the 46-year-old American wife of Canada's most celebrated athlete is dressed in a frayed white sweatshirt, fresh from an eight-kilometre walk. At first, this mother of five is all-business formidable. She organizes flowers for the house, chases after Emma, her four-year-old, for sneaking too many chocolates. She goes after Tristan, too, for dashing outside without shoes. She needs a shower, she says, and vanishes; within minutes she returns all in white, hair still wet. This is a woman who doesn't take her pretty time.

She probably can't afford to. For almost two seasons, her hockey-legend husband, Wayne, has been coaching the Phoenix Coyotes, an all-consuming job that keeps him ensconced in Scottsdale, Arizona, during the week. Though the couple is seldom apart for more than 10 days at a time, it's still a long-distance relationship that leaves Janet a weekday parent to Paulina, Tristan, Emma and 14-year-old Trevor.(Sixteen-year-old Ty Gretzky goes to prep school in Minnesota.)"We've done this for a couple of years now, but I don't think we're going to be able to do it next year," says Janet. "This travelling back and forth is kind of getting to us."

Moments later, however, Janet sounds resigned. Moving to Phoenix would cause too much upheaval for her older kids, who enjoy life in L.A. Besides, she adds, Phoenix is only 50 minutes away by plane and it's never hard when she has her children with her. "It's when I have to leave my children that I don't like."

The family's complex logistics have turned Janet into the family's other major playmaker. "I'm the quarterback," she says. "I'm the catalyst." Much of the year, Janet is mother, father, manager, cheerleader and task-mistress to the four children at home. She also looks after her mother, Jean, whom the Gretzkys set up in a nearby townhouse.