Mr. Hockey My Story

by Gordie Howe

  • • •

  Younger sports fans won’t remember the days of the player–coach, but for many years it wasn’t that unusual to see a coach also suit up as a player. Nowadays, the demands of professional sports wouldn’t leave enough time in the day to handle both jobs. The game planning and play calling, not to mention dealing with the media, has become more complex and time consuming. In the old days, though, paying one salary for two jobs was a way for a cash-strapped team to save money. Some of the more notable player–coaches include Bill Russell, who did both jobs for the Boston Celtics after Red Auerbach retired; Pete Rose in the 1980s with the Cincinnati Reds; and Frank Robinson at the end of his playing career with the Cleveland Indians. In 1952, Sid Abel joined that list, but it wasn’t with the Red Wings. In the off-season after our Stanley Cup victory, Sid agreed to become the player–coach of the Chicago Black Hawks. They were perennially scuffling around near the bottom of the standings and the league wanted to see weaker teams become more competitive. With that in mind, Mr. Adams arranged a trade that made Sid a Black Hawk. It was a deal that marked the end of the original Production Line.

  With Sid in Chicago, Alex Delvecchio took over as the first-line center. Much like Sid, he had a sixth sense that allowed him to deliver the puck to where you were going, not where you had just been. Like Ted, he grew up in northern Ontario. He was from Fort William, a town at the tip of Lake Superior that eventually became Thunder Bay. Like me, his time in the junior ranks didn’t last long. He was in Oshawa for a year playing for the Generals and then spent only six games in Indianapolis before being called up to the big club. Most Detroit fans probably remember Alex as a grizzled veteran of dozens of NHL campaigns. By the time he retired, he’d racked up enough seasons to count among the club’s all-time leaders in games played. That’s not how I remember him, though. I can still see him as a baby-faced rookie. Young or not, he was good enough to convince Mr. Adams that Sid was expendable. It was no small feat. Sid wasn’t that far removed from winning the Hart Trophy and he remained a large piece of the team’s heart and soul. He taught a lot of young players, including me, how to handle ourselves both on and off the ice. For Trader Jack, though, such softer considerations didn’t often register in his way of thinking. All he saw was a young player on the way up and one who might be past his best days. It didn’t matter to him that we had just won the Cup a few months earlier. He was already looking ahead to the next season.

  When it came to the Red Wings, the roster wasn’t the only thing Mr. Adams wanted to micromanage. No matter how big or small the matter, he had an opinion. Oftentimes he’d even venture into areas that any reasonable person would consider off-limits. On the road, he wanted us to behave like gentlemen. Shirts and ties were mandatory and he even wanted to be sure that we tipped properly. That was fine. His objections to drinking and smoking were also understandable. Less appropriate were his opinions on the opposite sex. If he’d had his way, players would have remained celibate for the entire hockey season. This extended even to married couples. Fooling around at home, he reasoned, diminished a player’s drive on the ice. I can’t say we paid him much heed on that one. As young as we were, we could still recognize what was in bounds and what was a bridge too far. That being said, many of us did respect his dictum about getting married in-season. He considered it a distraction and wanted wedding dates scheduled for the off-season. Even Ted, who wasn’t one to abide by other people’s rules, adhered to that one and waited until the season ended to marry Pat.

  It’s hard to imagine a club’s general manager these days having anywhere near the power that Mr. Adams wielded back then. For someone who wanted to rule with an iron fist, though, the circumstances were nearly ideal. In the postwar years, the competition for jobs was fierce. Players who might otherwise never have risen out of the junior ranks were promoted to the big leagues to fill the spots vacated by players who left to serve in the military. When they returned, those veterans found that their replacements had developed into bona fide NHL players. A glut of quality talent chasing a finite number of jobs gave teams a lot of power. For someone who wasn’t afraid to use it, like Mr. Adams, it was a perfect storm. With jobs at such a premium, you really had to watch your step when he was around. If you got on the wrong side of the boss, Lord only knows where you might have ended up. And he had a lot of bad sides.

  Training camp was a time when Mr. Adams always seemed to be around. You had to keep your guard up, because you didn’t know when he might appear. After practice, a few of us would sometimes unwind by playing golf. When we’d finished, we might stop in at the clubhouse for a few beers. Sharing a post-round drink on the deck with your friends seems innocent enough, but when you played for Jack Adams, innocence was always in the eye of the beholder. On those days, I’d always be nervous about running into him with beer on my breath. We all were. It was a surefire way to get into his bad books. We were grown men, but sometimes it felt like we were kids sneaking around our parents. Wherever we stayed, I spent a lot of extra time taking the scenic route home to make sure I didn’t run into him.

  One year, around 1954 or so, Colleen and I threw a party for the team at our house. Just to be proper, Colleen thought it would be best to invite the club’s brass. When we asked Tommy Ivan to attend, he said thanks but no thanks. In his mind, a team party wasn’t the right place for a coach. He did suggest that we invite Jack and Helen Adams, though. They definitely wouldn’t attend, he said, but it would be a nice gesture. Wouldn’t you know it: Not only did the old bugger show up, but he was the first person through the door. He also acted like the life of the party. He posed for pictures with all of the wives and generally had himself a pretty big time. As for the rest of us, having our teetotaler boss around kind of put a damper on things. I’d picked up a bunch of beer for the guys, but we had to keep it under wraps. Just imagine how strange it would feel to hide booze at your own party in your own house. I stashed it in the basement in some laundry tubs filled with ice. When guys arrived, I’d quietly tell them that what they were looking for was in the basement. All night long, guys were slipping off downstairs to have a beer, because none of us dared to drink in front of the boss.

  In Detroit, you could never be too sure how much Mr. Adams knew about what you were up to. He maintained a network of informants—which probably included Ma Shaw—to keep an eye on his players. I was pretty lucky in that regard. When it comes to booze, I’m not much of a drinker. A couple of beers in an evening are pretty much my maximum. Some of my teammates, on the other hand, would spill more in a night than I drank. They always tried to be smart about it, though. When they were out on the town, they didn’t often linger in one spot for more than a drink or two before moving to another location. They never wanted it reported to Mr. Adams that his players were out drinking all night long. Moving around allowed them to maintain some plausible deniability.

  Despite the strategies we used to thwart his meddling, somehow the old coot was still able to keep an eye on darn near everything. He even knew what I was up to in the off-season. After hockey and fishing, my next great sporting love was baseball. Ever since I was a kid, every spring when hockey season ended I’d put away my skates and get out my ball glove. Even after I made the NHL, I’d still go back to Saskatoon in the summers to play baseball. At the time, there were several good semi-pro leagues throughout western Canada. I played for Saskatoon in the Northern Saskatchewan Baseball League. We went up against teams from towns like North Battleford, Prince Albert, and Delisle. Sometimes I’d also travel with other teams to play in cash tournaments. In my early days in the NHL, I could make almost as much money playing baseball as I earned from hockey.

  One year, I remember playing in a tournament in Indian Head, which is just east of Regina. The caliber of baseball was pretty good, especially for a small town in the middle of the Prairies. The tournament even attracted an All-Star team from the Negro leagues that made the trip up to Canada to play. A scout for the New York Yankees—I think hi
s name was Roy Taylor—was also there watching. I was seeing the ball well that weekend and in one game I even hit for the cycle, which means a single, a double, a triple, and a home run. Overall, I went 8 for 11, and I think the Yankees were looking at me as a potential prospect. Their interest quickly faded once they found out I was already playing professional hockey, but I was still flattered for the look. I don’t know if I would have had the goods to make it to the big leagues, but it’s not like I spent much time over the years thinking about what-ifs. Hockey was so good to me I don’t have much room to harbor regrets about another sport. Suffice to say that baseball’s a wonderful game. I loved playing it right up until the day Mr. Adams put a stop to it.

  In the summer of 1952, I was playing in a tournament in Regina when I received a telegram from Mr. Adams that read, “Who’s going to pay your bills if you get hurt? I suggest you quit playing.” It was a tough note to get. I didn’t want to entertain the thought of hanging up my cleats. At the same time, hockey was my livelihood and Mr. Adams was my boss, so I felt stuck. I had to respond, but I knew that once I did, my days on the diamond would be numbered. There was a tournament coming up in Kamsack, which is east of Saskatoon, that I wanted to play in, so I waited before getting back to Mr. Adams. I figured that, at the very least, some stalling could buy me a few more games. When I finally replied, my telegram said, “Dear Jack Adams, are you serious?” I figured it would take him a while to track me down, but unfortunately that’s not how it played out. When his return telegram found me in Kamsack, it read simply, “I am serious.” Those three little words pretty much ended my semi-pro baseball career.

  I might have played longer if not for an injury that drew some attention earlier in the summer. I was playing third base when I fielded a double-play ball, stepped on the bag, and fired it over to first for the out. As I made the play, the other team’s first baseman was charging in from second. Trying to break up the throw, he came in cleats up and spiked me. He probably learned it from watching Ty Cobb. His cleats broke through my skin and I ended up with blood poisoning. When the news reached Mr. Adams, that was all it took for him to snap into action. The really annoying part of the whole thing was how far the guy had to run off the base path to get me. By the time I finished my throw to first, I was about six feet off the bag. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m vindictive, but it was a dirty slide and I felt like there was a score that needed to be settled. In my next three at-bats I drag bunted each time until I flipped the script on him. It took three tries, but I finally put one squarely down the first base line. He charged in to field the ball and I ran straight up his leg with my cleats. Later, he told me that he should have just stood there and let me hit him the first time, because I was going to get him sooner or later. He was right about that. Tit for tat, I say.

  I still shake my head when I think about how Jack Adams was able to take baseball away from me with nothing more than a simple telegram. But that’s how much control he had over his team. It chafed us, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. Whether he was the coach or general manager, he maintained something of a love–hate relationship with his players. It would be hard to find a more frustrating boss. One minute he’d praise a guy for his effort, and the next he’d bench him for unknown reasons. He could be moody and unpredictable, and when he was angry he’d lash out at whoever was closest. Worst of all, he tried to exercise an unacceptable measure of control over the lives of his players. That’s what bothered me the most. On a professional level, some of his moves still baffle me to this day. Sometimes he would cut bait on a player he thought was past his prime, only to see that same guy return to torture us for years to come. That’s certainly what happened with Red Kelly, to name just one example. It didn’t matter to Mr. Adams, though. If he found even a hint of something he didn’t like, you were out the door.

  To be fair, Mr. Adams did have his redeeming qualities, particularly when he was away from the arena. He had a strong work ethic and he tried to pass that along to his players. I credit him with instilling in me some of the discipline that helped me to succeed as a professional athlete. He was also the person who gave me a shot at the big leagues, which is something I’ll always appreciate. The press would occasionally speculate about how much I grew to dislike Mr. Adams over the years. We weren’t best friends, but then again that’s not really the relationship you need to have with your boss. If I were to try to encapsulate my feelings in a nutshell, I guess I’d say that I might have hated some of his actions, but I never hated him as a person.

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  Longtime Red Wings fans have their own opinions on Jack Adams. On the plus side of the ledger, he gets a lot of credit for being the architect of our championship teams in the early 1950s. To be fair, it should be noted that he didn’t do it alone. Detroit’s chief scout, Carson Cooper, for one, could pick a needle out of a haystack when it came to evaluating hockey talent. The criticisms of Trader Jack can be traced back to his propensity to make big roster moves at the expense of chemistry. They say it’s one of the reasons his teams didn’t often win back-to-back Stanley Cups. Personally, I don’t know if it’s that straightforward. Winning a championship in any sport isn’t exactly a cakewalk. It’s not like the other good teams in the league are ever going to just roll over. Toss in a few unlucky injuries and a bad bounce here or there and nothing is ever guaranteed. For the Red Wings, 1953 was one of those years.

  Once again, we finished on top of the league, 15 points clear of the second-place Canadiens. We were also 21 points better than Boston, whom we were slotted to face in the semifinals of the playoffs. We had owned them in our head-to-head matchups during the regular season and were feeling confident going into the series. Boy, were we in for a surprise. The Bruins beat us in six games and, just like that, our season was over. As the defending Stanley Cup champions, to fall flat against a team we thought we thoroughly outclassed was obviously a big letdown. That season, it wasn’t my only disappointment.

  If I had to choose my favorite thing in hockey, it would be assisting on a goal. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed putting the puck in the net, but making a great pass strikes a different type of chord. It’s like distilling what it means to be part of a team into a single action. When you help a teammate to score, he wins, you win, and so does the club. It’s like hitting the trifecta. As much as I always looked to make the best hockey play, at the end of the 1952–53 season my teammates were less interested in being set up and more concerned with helping me to score. I was having a great year shooting the puck. Every time I got a clean look, it seemed like the puck found its way into the back of the net. In the third to last game of the season, I scored twice against Boston to put my tally at 49. I was 1 goal shy of the record set by the Rocket in 1945, with two games remaining. Everyone in the NHL knew that the Rocket took a lot of pride in that record, as well as in his status as the league’s top goal scorer. For the most part, I didn’t give too much thought to that sort of thing. I figured that if I played well, the team would win and everything else would fall into place. Given the rivalry between the Wings and the Canadiens, though, it would be a lie to say I didn’t want to break the Rocket’s record once I got close. We didn’t like the Habs and they didn’t like us. Taking away the Rocket’s record would have been a satisfying way to poke a stick in their eye. For his part, Jack Adams badly wanted to see it happen, as did Tommy Ivan and my teammates. In our penultimate game of the season, against the Black Hawks, Tommy gave me some extra shifts, but I came up empty. With one game left in the regular season, I remained stuck at 49 goals.

  Our final game, at home against the Canadiens, had all of the elements needed to be fairly poetic. The press went into overdrive talking about the possibility of me breaking the record while skating against the Rocket himself. It was a nice thought, but when the puck dropped the game didn’t work out that way. Once again, Tommy had me on the ice for some extra shifts, but every time I jumped over the boards I found Montreal left winger Bert Olm
stead attached to my hip like some sort of pesky shadow. I found out later that Dick Irvin told him to stick to me like glue. I think Irvin cared more about stopping me that night than he did about winning the game. At one point, I was at our net talking to Sawchuk during a break in the action, and Olmstead was right there with us. I asked him what he was doing, but he didn’t say a word. I almost have to admire him for following his coach’s instructions to the letter. Even with Olmstead stalking me, I had a few chances on Gerry McNeil that night, but didn’t manage to put one by him. Irvin was overjoyed and, true to form, pretty obnoxious about his boys shutting me down that night. He slid across the ice and raised the Rocket’s arm as if he were still the heavyweight champion of the world. As it turned out, 49 goals ended up being the high-water mark in my career. Along with my 46 assists, I finished the season with 95 points, which was the highest total anyone had ever put up at that point. The funny thing is, I think I did get that 50th goal. In February we had a game in Boston. Late in the third period, Red Kelly fired a shot from the blue line that got past goalkeeper Jim Henry. I was pretty sure I tipped that shot in, and a lot of my teammates agreed, but the officials didn’t see it. At the time, I wasn’t as close to the 50 goal mark, so I wasn’t too concerned. But looking back, it would have been nice if that one had counted.