Mr. Hockey My Story

by Gordie Howe

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

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  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Copyright © 2014 by Power Play International, Inc.

  Foreword copyright © 2014 by Bobby Orr

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  Photo credits:

  2011 Hall of Fame Inductee Mark Howe with Gordie: Matthew Manor/Hockey Hall of Fame; Gordie Howe playing for Whalers: Lewis Portnoy/Hockey Hall of Fame; Gordie Howe injured on ice: Hockey Hall of Fame; Gordie Howe delivers elbow: CP PHOTO/Doug Ball; Gordie Howe shooting for Detroit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Gordie and the Stanley Cup–winning Red Wings: Courtesy of the Detroit Red Wings. All other images courtesy of the Howe family.

  ISBN 978-0-698-18359-9

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_1

  For Colleen, the love of my life, and for my children, Marty, Mark, Cathy and Murray

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  FOREWORD BY BOBBY ORR

  INTRODUCTION

  One EARLY DAYS

  Two GROWING UP IN SASKATOON

  Three JUNIOR HOCKEY

  Four ARRIVING IN DETROIT

  Five COLLEEN JOFFA

  Six THE GLORY YEARS

  Seven MY MOST IMPORTANT TEAM

  Eight LIFE IN THE NHL

  Nine THE RECORD BOOK

  Ten TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

  Eleven HEADING TO HOUSTON

  Twelve OVERTIME

  AFTERWORD

  Photos

  Career Statistics and Records

  Awards

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  FOREWORD BY BOBBY ORR

  Many times over the years, I have been asked who I consider to be the greatest hockey player of all time. My answer has never changed—it is Gordie Howe. And so, being asked to write a foreword for Gordie Howe’s memoir is a great honor for me.

  I’m not sure that younger generations of sports fans realize just how good Gordie Howe was as a hockey player. Certainly, people know he is one of the legends. I observed that firsthand when he attended a Canucks–Sharks game in 2013. When the TV cameras spotted him and put his face on the Jumbotron, the place erupted in a spontaneous standing ovation. Players from both teams stood at their respective benches, everyone reluctant to line up for the face-off. So, yes, there is a healthy respect for Number 9.

  But I’m not just talking about being one of the greatest hockey players ever. I am talking about being the greatest player ever. Period.

  Think of it this way: Today, if a player cracks the top five in scoring in the NHL, he’s considered a star. Do it a couple of years in a row and you’re a superstar. Alex Ovechkin did it once. Sidney Crosby has done it back-to-back twice. Steve Stamkos managed it four years in a row. You get the idea. You have to be a pretty good hockey player to make that list even once. Well, Gordie Howe did it twenty years in a row. That’s right—twenty. How do you begin to do justice to a legacy like that? Maybe we should compare him to the greats in other sports. When you look at golf and the way in which that game celebrates legends such as Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, you get a sense of what Gordie Howe means to hockey.

  Gordie is a quiet and humble man. But I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with a more determined will to win. If you ever watched him in action during his career, you know that it’s hard to describe how he could dominate. We’re all taught to play with both hands on our stick. Gordie must have missed that day in hockey school, because he was happy playing with just one. When I came into the league, one thing I noticed after making the jump from junior was just how strong the guys were. And there was Gordie: stickhandling and passing with one hand and pushing the best players in the world off with the other hand. If Gordie wanted to hold on to the puck, there was pretty much no way you were going to get it.

  Hockey fans often wonder what would have happened if Gordie had been in the lineup for the 1972 Summit Series against the Russians. The series came during his first retirement, but I would have liked to see what he did on the ice. Would the Russians have found a way to defend against him? No one in the NHL ever did. And when I say “ever,” I’m talking about more than twenty-five years. No doubt about it, Gordie would have made Canada a better team.

  Coaches usually come up with a game plan to contain the stars on the other team, but there was really no way to contain Number 9 completely. That kind of coaching requires you to identify a weakness, and Gordie didn’t have one. What was there to exploit? He could play along the boards with the very best. He could dangle in open ice as well. Try to stand him up and he’d knock you down. Outmuscling him was never going to work. You could try to pressure him, but there was hardly a cooler passer in the game. How do you defend against all of that? One thing you didn’t want to do, though, was try to get under his skin. That approach can work against a lot of star-quality players. If you’re “the man,” guys are going to take liberties with you. Gordie was definitely the man, but after a while even the toughest guys in the league knew not to stir up the hornet’s nest. If you got under Gordie’s skin, you would soon wish you hadn’t. I say this as someone who once got his stick up a little too high on Mr. Hockey. Not long after what he considered to be a cheap shot, I found myself on my rear end with Gordie looking down at me, a very unfriendly expression on his face. When I asked him about it later, he showed another side of his personality—his sense of humor. “I’m a very religious player,” he said. “I think it’s much better to give than to receive.” Not too many guys made that mistake twice with Number 9.

  We talk about the role of the “enforcer” in the game, but Gordie didn’t need one. He wasn’t just an elite talent, but was something of an enforcer himself. He would stick up for himself and his teammates. Gordie eventually had some teammates he took special care to protect. Playing with his sons Mark and Marty meant that a whole new generation of opponents had to learn to be careful around anyone with “Howe” on the back of his jersey. A father and two of his boys playing professional hockey at the same time on the same team . . . I wonder if that will ever happen again!

  After I retired from the game, Gordie was still playing and doing it well enough to be voted onto All-Star teams. Here’s a little history for you: He played in his first All-Star Game in the year I was born. He retired and had been inducted into the Hall of Fame but then returned to the game, still producing nearly a point a game while playing in the NHL. In 1980, the All-Star Game was held in Detroit. Naturally, Gordie was chosen to represent Hartford that year. In many ways, he was a sentimental favorite. Incredibly, that was his twenty-third All-Star Game while playing in his fifth decade as a pro, an unheard of statistic. The average NHL career lasts about five years. And keep in mind that the average NHL player is a very good hockey player. That means that Gordie had greater than four times more All-Star seasons than most very good players have season
s, period.

  Now, there he was, back in Detroit where he had started playing in the 1940s. The fans went crazy. One by one, players were introduced as they came onto the ice. As future Hall of Famers like Larry Robinson, Darryl Sittler, and Guy Lafleur came skating out, the announcer called out their names and the teams they were representing.

  Then it was Gordie’s turn.

  “From the Hartford Whalers, representing hockey with great distinction for five decades, number 9 . . . ”

  The announcer never got to say Gordie’s name. Everyone in Detroit knew who wore number 9. The fans at Joe Louis Arena were on their feet before the announcer had finished, and they remained standing while Gordie stood on the blue line. You could tell he wasn’t sure what to do. He would look up and the crowd would roar. Then he would look back down. He wasn’t comfortable being the center of attention. But the cheers went on and on. Then the chant went up: “Gordie! Gordie!” Finally, after several minutes of this deafening roar, the officials were able to have the anthem played in order to start the game. By the way, at the age of fifty-one, Gordie had an assist in the game.

  As I consider his wonderful career today, I realize that Gordie’s accomplishments are so impressive that it is almost impossible to understand them by comparing them to those of other players. You can’t say that he played like this guy or that guy, because there has never been anyone who played the total game in the way Gordie did. No one has ever combined strength, skill, determination, and longevity in the way Gordie did over all those years. No one captured the respect of players and the adoration of fans like Gordie did. And no one handled that level of fame and stardom with such genuine humility and graciousness. Even today, he still greets fans with the kind of warmth you just can’t fake. So you can’t talk about how great Gordie was as a hockey player without also mentioning what a great person he is.

  His longevity as a professional hockey player reflects his absolute passion for the game. I believe it was his passion to play that set him apart from his peers. As a young teenager, meeting Gordie for the first time, I already knew he was special. That feeling has not changed. Gordie Howe will always be one of my heroes. And, in my opinion, he will always be the best that ever played.

  Bobby Orr

  INTRODUCTION

  The puck felt good in my hand.

  I’d have liked it to be on my stick, but I suppose those days are long past. The only time I get on the ice now seems to be when I’m part of an occasion, which is exactly where I found myself last New Year’s Eve. Detroit was hosting the 2014 NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor game between the Red Wings and the Maple Leafs. The next day, more than a hundred thousand people would turn up at Michigan Stadium to watch Toronto beat Detroit in a shootout. But New Year’s Eve was for the old-timers.

  The Wings had asked my old linemate Ted Lindsay and me to drop the ceremonial first puck in an alumni game between the two clubs. Steve Yzerman, retired since 2006, looked like he could still be playing in the NHL as he lined up to take the draw against Leafs captain Darryl Sittler. The weight of the rubber puck was pleasing as I bounced it in my hand and waited for them to come to the circle. I glanced over at Ted, as I had so many times before, and it seemed like it hadn’t been that long ago that we’d lined up to take the draw for real. We’ve both added more wrinkles and our hair is thinner, but he didn’t look that much different to me than when we were on the Production Line together.

  More than thirty-three thousand fans had shown up at Comerica Park, the Tigers’ home field, to watch hockey. I’ve been around Detroit so long that I can remember taking batting practice in old Tiger Stadium, when it was still called Briggs Stadium. As much as things change, though, they also stay the same. Hockey, for one, has remained a constant in my life. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in an NHL arena, at a local rink, or on a sheet of ice in the middle of a baseball stadium, when I’m around the game I feel at home. It’s a good thing, too, since I was such a shy kid. No matter how many people were in the stands, though, nerves were never a problem for me when I played. The ice was the one place I always felt comfortable. Stepping in front of a packed house at Comerica Park, I found that what was true then still held true that day. The faces may have changed, but when I waved to the crowd, it felt as familiar as if I were back at Olympia Stadium. I’m lucky for that. I’m lucky in a lot of ways.

  I was fortunate enough to play professional hockey for thirty-two years. If you’d asked me when I broke into the league if I thought I’d still be playing five decades later, I would have said you were crazy. When the Red Wings called me up from their farm club in Omaha in 1946, I just wanted to last the season. From then on, if the team decided to bring me back for another year, I wasn’t going to complain. From the time I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was play hockey. Even at the end of my career, when I was the only guy in the dressing room with grandkids, strapping on my pads every day still felt as normal as ever. The air turning chilly in the fall was like nature’s way of telling me to put on my skates and get back to work.

  I ended up watching a lot of the world go by while on the ice. My NHL career started a year after Harry Truman replaced Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. When I retired, Ronald Reagan was only a year away from taking over from Jimmy Carter. In between, I saw seven American presidents pass through office and even had a chance to meet some of them. It was a good long run by nearly any measure. During my first season with the Red Wings, Jackie Robinson was still a year away from breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier. When I hung up my skates for the first time in 1971, he’d already been in the Hall of Fame for a decade. In Detroit, we had front-row seats for the birth of Motown. I moved there during the city’s boomtown years, when Michigan was the center of the U.S. automotive industry. On the ice, the Red Wings piled up four Stanley Cup victories, and we probably should have won a few more. I managed to put the puck in the net 975 times in my professional career, while setting up scores for teammates on more than 1300 other occasions. Away from the arena, I was lucky enough to meet my beautiful wife, Colleen, and together we raised four wonderful children.

  I like to think that I’m a family man first and a professional athlete second. With that said, though, I also know that I have hockey to thank for so many of the good things that have happened to me over the years. The game has blessed me with a lifetime of memories. I’ve had a chance to share some of them before, but I’ve never taken the time to tell my whole story in one place. It’s humbling to think that a shy kid from Saskatoon could write a book that anyone would want to read. As with so many things in my life, I’m grateful—and still somewhat amazed—to be given the opportunity.

  • • •

  Since retiring, I’ve often thought that some of the happiest years of my career were spent in Houston, where I had the chance to play with my sons Marty and Mark. I wasn’t the player then that I was during the glory years in Detroit, but how many fathers get the chance to play professional hockey with their kids? It’s what brought back the fun and excitement of my youth and kept me going into my fifties. Standing rinkside at the Winter Classic watching Mark—who’s best remembered as a Flyer, but ended his career in Detroit—take the ice for the Red Wings, it was easy for me to recall our years playing together in the World Hockey Association. Now retired for nearly twenty years and nursing a couple of bad disks in his back, I thought Mark still looked as smooth as ever on the ice. The countless laps he put in skating around the rink as a kid were clearly enough to last him a lifetime.

  The alumni game, as exhibition matches often do, started slowly. Time away from the ice combined with a windy day and below-freezing temperatures had everyone more concerned about staying warm and healthy than trying to make a big play. Both squads were filled with players who knew each other well. The Leafs had brought fan favorites such as Doug Gilmour, Wendel Clark, and Borje Salming, while the Red Wings had matched with stalwarts like Brendan Shanahan, Igor Larionov, Sergei Fedorov, and Nick Lidstrom. Eve
ryone was happy to laugh with old teammates and share a smile with former rivals—at least at the start of the game.

  Compared to my era, NHL hockey has evolved in ways that are both good and bad. When I watched the alumni game, it was comforting to see that at least one thing hasn’t changed: The will to win never goes away. The boys on the ice may have lost a few steps, but once they’d warmed up, they couldn’t help themselves. It didn’t matter how long they’d been retired, who they were playing, or where the game was being held—no one wanted to lose. At one point, Tiger Williams even started chirping at Chris Chelios for celebrating a goal with a little too much gusto. He wasn’t kidding, either. I might have some quibbles with the way the game is played today, but at its core, I know that hockey will always be hockey no matter what year the calendar reads.

  Today’s brand of NHL hockey is still exciting, but if I had my way I’d like to see more creativity come back into the game. When I played, there were more opportunities to carry the puck, but you don’t see that as much anymore. As the game has evolved, the schemes have become more sophisticated. My old coach Tommy Ivan used to say there were only two moves you needed to know in order to play defense: either you knock the puck away from the man or you knock the man off the puck. It worked for us in the 1950s, but the game has changed a lot since then and, unfortunately, not all for the better. I don’t need to rehash criticisms of the neutral zone trap and other systems used to slow down talented players, except to say that they’ve choked some of the excitement from the game. These days, offenses are often reduced to dumping the puck into the other team’s zone or chipping it off the boards. There’s not enough room for players to generate speed through the neutral zone and make a play. This isn’t to say that the game isn’t good; far from it.