by Gordie Howe
Our line finished one-three-four in team scoring that year. Ted led the way with 33 goals and 19 assists. Jim McFadden came in second with 24 goals and 24 assists. Sid and I were next in line with 44 points each, me with 16 goals and him with 14. Earlier in that season I also switched to wearing the number 9. When I joined the Red Wings, it had been Roy Conacher’s sweater, but he was dealt away near the beginning of the 1947–48 season. I didn’t mind wearing number 17, except for one thing. We traveled to away games by train. On overnight trips, the sleeper cars had twenty-four berths, a dozen spots on top and twelve down below. Bunks were assigned by sweater number, with lower digits getting the bottom beds. A trainer pointed out to me that by switching numbers I could get a lower berth and sleep more comfortably. I snatched up Conacher’s number straightaway. After spending most of my career as number 9, it feels strange to try to picture myself wearing a different number. It’s funny to think that, at the time, it was purely a practical decision.
Our early season predictions of success ended up coming true by the end of the year. We jumped up to second place, just 5 points behind the Maple Leafs. Come playoff time, we took care of New York in six games to reach the Stanley Cup finals. Once there we met the Leafs, who were the defending champions. They still had a good team, anchored by Syl Apps, Teeder Kennedy, and Turk Broda in net. As usual, they were a tight-checking, disciplined bunch. The experienced players in blue ended up trumping the young talent in red, beating us in four straight. But that’s the way hockey works. First you learn to play, then you learn to win.
The next year we put another good team on the ice. It was my third year in the league and the Production Line was starting to get rolling. Sid won the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player and was named to the first All-Star team, along with defenseman Jack Stewart, while Ted and I were both named as Second Team All-Stars. I was fortunate to be selected despite fighting through a knee injury that season. In December, I had surgery to repair some torn cartilage, which cost me twenty games. Being on the shelf is always depressing, but in retrospect I can’t complain too much. It turned out to be the most games I ever missed in any one stretch in my career. I certainly had my share of injuries over the years, but I was lucky enough to play through most of them. After returning to the ice, I was eager to make up for lost time. I went on a bit of a tear to end the season, finishing with 12 goals and 25 assists in 40 games. The Red Wings topped the league in points for the first time since I’d joined the team in what would turn out to be seven straight seasons. As we headed into the playoffs, we felt as if momentum was on our side. For a while, it looked like it was. We beat Montreal in a tough seven-game series, which once again put us in the finals against the Maple Leafs. They’d had a rockier season that year, finishing fourth overall. Still, those damn Leafs managed to turn it on in the playoffs. They swept us in four games straight again. It was their third Stanley Cup in a row and we were sick of it. Getting swept once was bad enough, but having it happen in back-to-back years was like a punch to the gut. We were a proud group, and as we sat in the dressing room after our final loss of the season, we promised each other the next year would be different.
In 1949–50 we were on a mission. The taste of what it was like to play in the Stanley Cup finals was still fresh, and we knew we were good enough to finish the job. That season we again won the league championship, finishing 11 points clear of Montreal. I was twenty-one years old. It was my fourth year in the league and I felt like I’d turned the corner from being a raw kid with some ability into a more complete hockey player. That year, the NHL also expanded the schedule to seventy games from sixty, which was fine by us. The members of the Production Line, who finished one-two-three in scoring, were happy to play as many games as we could. Ted led the way with 23 goals and 55 assists for 78 points. He also had 141 penalty minutes, more than twice as many as I was whistled at for that year. Sid was next, with 34 goals and 35 assists for 69 points, and I was one point behind him, notching 35 goals and 33 assists. My total that season was three points ahead of the Rocket, who finished fourth. Ted and Sid were picked as First Team All-Stars, while I was named to the second team along with teammates Red Kelly and Leo Reise Jr. Out of ten spots on the All-Star Team, five were filled by Red Wings. By the time the playoffs came around, we were certain that our talent was now steeped in enough experience to go all the way.
• • •
The playoffs started on March 28, 1950. It was just three days before I turned twenty-two, but my birthday couldn’t have been further from my mind. We’d drawn the Leafs in the semifinals, which was fine with us. We were hungry for another crack at them after our previous playoff exits. As it happens, though, the best-laid plans often don’t work out the way you’d like. Once the puck dropped, game one was like déjà vu. The Leafs jumped out to a quick lead and were up 3–0 in the second period.
What happened next stirred up a controversy that lasted for years to come. Partway through the second period, Toronto center Teeder Kennedy was carrying the puck up his left wing. As I skated over to back-check, I was looking to anticipate his next move. I was closing in for the hit when I spotted the Leafs’ Sid Smith going down the middle. I figured Kennedy would move the puck to Smitty, so I leaned forward with my stick to intercept the pass. I was coming in hard and the lean brought my face closer to the ice. When Kennedy followed through on his backhand, he caught me with his stick. I tried to close my eyes, but wasn’t quick enough. I went into the boards headfirst at an awkward angle. Some Detroit fans at the Olympia that night swore that Kennedy had sticked me on purpose. Some said it was even a butt-end. As for Teeder, he was adamant that his stick just grazed me, if anything. He maintained that he was simply trying to avoid a check and I lost my balance. As I recollect it, I believe his stick hit me, but I don’t blame him for it. He was just following through on a backhand and trying not to get hit. Hockey’s a fast game and sometimes things happen.
I can’t say I remember too much about what happened after I went into the boards. My teammates told me about it later, though. I’ve also seen the pictures, which aren’t pretty. The trainers rushed out to find me unconscious and bleeding. They wrapped some bandages around my head and loaded me onto a stretcher. By all accounts, Coach Ivan and my teammates weren’t having any of Teeder’s apologies. They took some runs at him to even things up, and apparently the rest of the series was pretty rough. My injuries included a broken nose, a fractured cheekbone, and a badly scraped eyeball. Most worrisome, though, was a serious concussion. Complications that arose from the swelling in my brain meant that staying alive was a bit touch and go for a while.
I was conscious enough to remember the ambulance ride from the Olympia to Harper Hospital. It was horrible. Every time we turned a corner I felt like throwing up. They kept telling me I was okay, but I had a persistent sensation of falling that made me nauseous. When we reached the hospital, they rushed me inside for X-rays. The prognosis wasn’t good. Bleeding in my brain was causing pressure to build up in my skull. If it wasn’t relieved, there was a chance I would end up dead. They called in a good neurosurgeon, Dr. Frederick Schreiber, and he opted to drain the fluid building up in my brain by drilling a hole in my head. I was prepped and on the operating table by about 1 A.M., ready for Dr. Schreiber to perform trephine surgery. A trephine is a medieval-looking surgical instrument that resembles a corkscrew. Believe me, if you can avoid having a hole drilled in your skull by a trephine, I’d recommend it. I remember my head being strapped down to the operating table before they started. The only sensations I experienced during the procedure were the pressure and the noise. It’s not a sound you want to hear. My most vivid memory from the ninety-minute operation is hoping they’d know when to stop. After it was done, they didn’t want me to fall asleep (in case I didn’t wake up, I suppose), so they kept pricking my foot with a needle to keep me awake.
From what I understand, radio stations across Canada kept people updated on my condition throughout
the night. By the next morning, I was still in rough shape, but it looked like I was out of the woods. When they finally allowed me to sleep, I was out for an entire day. By the time I came around, Mr. Adams had arranged for my mother and my sister Gladys to come down from Saskatchewan. It was a surprise to see them in Detroit, but I was happy they were there. The trip was my mother’s first airplane ride, and between that and her worrying about my injury, she was looking a bit the worse for wear. She was so pale that at one point I told her, “Oh hell, Mum. You take the bed.” She laughed, and I think that seeing I was well enough to joke helped to ease her mind. In the days after my surgery, all sorts of cards and packages arrived from all over Canada and the U.S. I was touched that so many people cared about my well-being. I still am, in fact. With Gladys’s help, I tried to respond to every person who took the time to send me something.
As close as I came to shuffling off into the sunset at the tender age of twenty-one, I bounced back relatively quickly from the surgery. To this day, I’m still surprised by the speed of my recovery. As serious as my injury was, the timing also meant that I didn’t miss any regular season games. I was back on the ice and ready to go by the next training camp. The doctors did make me wear a leather helmet for a while, but I was so happy to be skating again that I agreed to it without much fuss. As for the Red Wings, they took care of business while I was in the hospital. It took seven games, but we finally beat the Leafs. In the Stanley Cup finals we were up against the Rangers, who had eliminated Montreal in five games in the other semifinals. It was a hard-fought series that went the distance. Pete Babando finally got the monkey off our backs when he scored in the second overtime of game seven. I was at the Olympia for the game and joined the celebration on the ice in my street clothes. I was happy we won, but I also remember feeling removed from the jubilation around me. I like to earn things, and I didn’t feel like I’d contributed that much to the victory. That said, after years of knocking on the door, the Red Wings had finally broken through. It was our first Stanley Cup together. It wouldn’t be our last.
Five
COLLEEN JOFFA
To be a good hockey team, you need talented players. I know that’s not exactly a profound insight, but it’s true. Plucky teams without much skill can steal a few games here and there, but they rarely win anything that matters. Having said that, though, you can have all the talent in the world and still not get anywhere if players aren’t willing to put the team ahead of themselves. A good team is just that: a good team. Great teams, without exception, are full of players who care more about the name on the front of their jersey than the one on its back. They come together less often than you might think.
Most professional hockey players have healthy egos. To be fair, they come by them honestly. As kids, they were always the best player on their teams. That all changes when they reach the big leagues and the talent around them catches up. At that point, some guys just can’t bring themselves to accept a lesser role, and they’re the ones who can turn a winning team into an also-ran. It doesn’t matter if it’s the NHL or your local beer league, some guys won’t ever understand that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. They might hog the puck or refuse to back-check. Maybe they chase their own statistics. The really frustrating ones do all of the above and more. The ways in which an otherwise skilled player can choose to play losing hockey are endless. The same holds true across all team sports. It could be hockey, basketball, football, or soccer; the modus operandi of a selfish teammate is the same. For a professional, the motivation to look out for number one is easy enough to understand. During contract negotiations, goals and assists speak more loudly than the number of times you gave up your body to block a slap shot. Regardless of the size of your paycheck, though, your teammates always know who’s in it for the right reasons and who’s not.
In the early 1950s, I played with a rare group of guys who put the team ahead of themselves. It began with stars like Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay and carried all the way down the roster. In those years, there’s no question that the Red Wings were stocked with talent, but that wasn’t why we won. The reasons went beyond our skill on the ice. We were a close-knit bunch who played for each other as much as anything else. You never wanted to look down the bench at your buddy and know that you’d let him down. In the third period, when the game is on the line and you’re dog-tired at the end of a shift, that can be why you dig deeper for the last ounce of energy left in your legs. Winning a championship takes a whole team willing to pay the same price on every shift. The opposite is also true. If you don’t care about your teammates, maybe you don’t dig in to get back into position to take away an odd man rush. Maybe you lose focus and that’s the instant your check slips behind you and tips the puck into the net. The NHL game moves so quickly that a single mistake can be the difference between winning and losing.
The only NHL locker room I knew at that time was Detroit’s, but when players were traded to our club they’d always remark on how close we were. Every team I played on wasn’t the same way, but in those days we were like a family. It was a special team and I still feel lucky to have been a part of it. Looking back, I can see that our camaraderie wasn’t an accident. We didn’t just go our separate ways after practice. The younger guys, especially, spent all kinds of time together. We ate meals together, went to church, played cards, went bowling, chased girls, and many of us even lived under the same roofs.
I can’t imagine that young Detroit players would go for a similar arrangement these days, but back then most of the Red Wing bachelors lived together in rooming houses organized by the team. In my first few years in Detroit I lived at Ma Shaw’s place. It was an old brick house only a few blocks from Olympia Stadium. When I first arrived, my roommates were Ted Lindsay, Jack Stewart, and Harry Lumley. The rooms would turn over periodically, usually when someone got hitched or, more likely, was dealt away by Trader Jack, as deal-happy a general manager as you’ll find. My spot in Ma Shaw’s house opened up when Bill Quackenbush left. Other guys stayed at rooming houses run by Ma Tannahill and the Michaud brothers. I was happy at Ma Shaw’s.
Nowadays, rookies can afford to live wherever they choose with the money they make on their first contract. Not us. We made okay money, particularly if there was no family to support, but every dollar counted. The sports world was still decades away from athletes becoming instant millionaires when they turned professional. It was certainly a different time, but in many ways it suited me just fine. I was still just a teenager when I moved to downtown Detroit. My stops in Galt and Omaha had given me a taste of living away from home, but I still wasn’t that far removed from the Saskatchewan prairie. When I wasn’t at the rink, big city living still felt foreign to me.
From a practical perspective, living so close to the arena was great. I was always just a hop, skip, and a jump from being on the ice. In the years since, I’ve often wished I still had that same commute to work. I’m sure Mr. Adams also liked having so many of his players living in the shadow of the arena. He preached about the need to stay focused on the game, so he probably figured that the Olympia served as a great visual aid. Personally, I liked having my teammates around for company. When I was eighteen, especially, going home to an empty apartment every day after practice would have been depressing. Most teenagers would rather spend time with friends than be alone, and I was no different. Living at Ma Shaw’s meant that someone who was also at loose ends was always around. It was probably similar to living in a college dormitory. For a long time my roommates at Ma Shaw’s were Ted Lindsay, Red Kelly, and Marty Pavelich. When Metro Prystai was traded to the Wings, the five us lived together for quite a while.
For entertainment we’d often just sit around and play cards. Nothing too fancy, just low-stakes games of cribbage, hearts, or pinochle for a penny a point. It wasn’t until later in life that I became hooked on bridge. I even played a few hands with Charles Goren, once. (For a bridge player, it was a big deal sitting down with Goren, who wrote b
ooks on the game and had a column in Sports Illustrated.) The life of a professional hockey player, when you’re not at practice or on the road, is chock-full of free time. We spent a lot of time eating, going to the movies, or bowling. Some guys even went ballroom dancing. I didn’t join in, but I’d occasionally tag along to watch. Dancing the tango and fox-trot may not seem like a fitting outing for a bunch of hockey players, but it was an entertaining pastime. It also helps to be athletic when dancing, which appealed to some of the guys. Some of them improved to the point where they weren’t half bad. As well, dance halls and pretty girls usually went hand in hand, which, to be honest, provided most of the appeal in the first place. When it came to chatting up girls I was quite shy, but many of my teammates sure weren’t. They collected a lot of numbers and took all sorts of girls out on the town. I went on my share of dates, but it was nothing compared to some of the guys.
When I roomed with Metro Prystai, I used to get him in trouble every once in a while just for a laugh. He had this deep growl of a voice, and for some reason I could do a fairly spot-on imitation. At that age, nothing’s better than playing a good practical joke on your buddy and my Metro impression came in handy. When a girl would call him up, sometimes one of the guys would pass the phone to me. Instead of getting some sweet nothings from Metro, she would hear me deliver a gravelly, “Whaddya want?” After talking to her for a while, my capper would be along the lines of, “Listen, you broads gotta stop calling here.” The girl, of course, would slam the phone down right away. When (or if) Metro saw her again, he’d have to do some fast talking to patch things up. It probably wasn’t the nicest joke to play on the girl or my friend. Then again, Metro could always find himself a date, so I didn’t feel like he ever went lonely because of me. Metro joined us in 1950 after Mr. Adams pulled off a big trade with the Black Hawks. We missed the guys who left, but we appreciated having Metro on our side. He could really put the puck in the net.