Mr. Hockey My Story

by Gordie Howe

  Colleen and I gave our kids a lot of leeway in making their own choices. We didn’t believe in punishment as much as in trying to instill discipline through mutual respect, and figured that guidelines were more effective than hard-and-fast rules. That was our philosophy, anyway. For instance, once they were older, we never had a curfew in place. If they were going to be home later than expected, we just asked that they call and let us know. We did the same for them.

  I always hoped our kids would share my love of hockey, but Colleen and I agreed that we’d never push the sport (or anything else, for that matter) on them. They’d have our full support and encouragement regardless of what they chose to do. It would be lying to say I don’t feel lucky about how things turned out. Our three boys took to hockey like fish to water. Showing up at the rink as Gordie Howe’s sons wasn’t always easy for each of them, but they handled it in stride. I would have loved to have seen Cathy with a stick in her hand, too, but women’s hockey wasn’t on the radar like it is now (and, by the way, women today can really play). She preferred running to skating, anyway. I loved seeing her beat the boys in a footrace when she was a kid and then watching her fly around the track as she got older. In high school she ran the anchor leg for the 220- and 440-yard relays (which are now the 200 and the 400). She also ran the 220 on her own and competed in shot put. That lasted only until she dropped a shot and broke all of the bones in her foot. She spent a long year watching the rest of that track season from the sidelines.

  Right from the start, Mark, who could recite stats for all the players in the league, was always the biggest hockey nut. He was constantly running outside with a stick in his hand, either to bang pucks against the garage door or to talk a neighborhood kid into playing goalie for him. He really took after his old man that way. Marty always liked the game, but he didn’t approach it with the same single-minded focus as Mark. He might have loved football just as much, but he was eventually forced to give it up. When he was in high school, Marty’s football coach made him choose between playing in a big hockey game or attending football practice. He picked hockey and the coach dismissed him from the team. I respect commitment, but it seemed clear in that instance that high school football took itself too seriously. The coach should have lightened up. We always wondered what would have happened if Marty hadn’t given it up. He was a heck of a player and I think he would have been good enough to play football in college.

  Born just fifteen months apart, Marty and Mark were close as kids, often sharing a room. Like any pair of brothers, they could also fight like cats and dogs, but their arguments didn’t last long and they were always there for each other when it mattered. One day, when Mark was still only in preschool, I remember him barreling into the house to tell me that a boy was picking on Marty. I was only half paying attention, so I told him that instead of letting some kid beat up his brother, he should clunk him on the head with a hockey stick. I went back to reading the paper, until I saw Mark flash out the door with a stick in his hand. Stupid me: I should have been listening instead of giving him a thoughtless answer. I hightailed it into the street and caught Mark just before he clobbered the kid with his stick. I learned a good parenting lesson that day. But it was comforting to see them stick up for each other when needed. I used to tell them that friends will come and go, but your family would always be there for you. The lesson seems to have stuck, I’m happy to say. Their loyalty also extended beyond their siblings. Mark was still little when he wrote this letter to me while I was on the road.

  Dear Daddy,

  We had practis at 7 in the morning. Mrs. V. drove us to the skating club. Thursday we are going to bramton. If you win the Stanley Cup we will win in bramton. i am glad you beat up the man in Chicago. He could not beat you up if he tried. i hope you have a happy birthday.

  Sincerely,

  Mark Howe

  I was glad that I beat up the man in Chicago, too. He was a jerk and he’d deserved it. I also thought that Mark’s decision to end his letter with “sincerely” was a nice touch for a nine-year-old.

  Our youngest son, Murray, was a good hockey player in his own right, but he never reached quite the same level as his brothers. His mother and I never wanted to discourage him from playing hockey, but we were pretty sure his career path would be away from the ice. When he was little, he just wanted enough space to play with his toy soldiers in a spot where his brothers wouldn’t knock them over. Later on, he was always looking for a place where he could sit quietly and read a book. In school, his report card was filled with As and he was a permanent fixture on the honor roll. Even as a rug rat, he was so crafty and smart we figured he might have a future in law. I remember teasing him one day about sucking his thumb. I told him if he didn’t keep it out of his mouth, it would fall off. He was a sensitive kid and didn’t like being teased by his dad. He was so upset that he went directly upstairs and asked Colleen for my address at the Olympia. She thought it was for a friend who wanted to write a fan letter, so she gave it to him. Little did she know the address was for Murray, and at that moment he wasn’t much of a fan. When I picked up my mail at the arena a few days later, the handwriting on one of the envelopes looked suspiciously like my five-year-old’s. The letter inside simply said:

  Dear Dad,

  I do not like you.

  Love,

  Murray

  By the time I confronted him about the letter, he’d forgotten all about it. He didn’t even remember why he’d been mad. Thinking he was in trouble, he became pretty nervous. Credit to my son, though: He kept his composure. He took the letter from me and stared at it like he was cracking a code. His face finally brightened and then he handed it back. “Don’t you get it, Dad?” he asked. “I don’t like you—I love you!” After that bit of fancy footwork, we figured maybe politics was in his future. Turns out we were wrong. He went on to become Dr. Murray Howe, MD.

  • • •

  Before Murray was even a twinkle, let alone a radiologist, I was lucky enough to share a very special night with the members of my family I didn’t get to see nearly often enough. I’d spent thirteen years in the NHL, but my parents hadn’t had a chance to watch me play professional hockey. My dad worked so much when I was a kid, I’m not sure he ever even saw me play a game in Saskatoon. Parents didn’t have time to cart their children around to games and practices. Kids took care of themselves without nearly as much involvement from parents as there is now. It would have been nice if my dad could have turned up to watch me, but it just wasn’t in the cards. That changed for the better in March 1959, when the Red Wings decided to hold a night of appreciation in my honor. I was flattered, to say the least. The on-ice presentation happened between periods, and as team officials called me to center ice. I remember thinking how much I would have liked my parents to be there. Even then, I still wasn’t making enough money to bring them to Detroit easily, and they couldn’t afford to come on their own. My mom hadn’t been there since she’d come to take care of me in the hospital nearly ten years earlier. As for my dad, he wasn’t too interested in venturing out of Saskatchewan. Whenever I brought it up, he’d just joke that it would be tough to get away because they didn’t have anyone to feed the dog.

  The club didn’t spare any expenses for Gordie Howe Night, going so far as to line up about $10,000 worth of gifts, including clothes, a paid vacation, and toys for the kids. The capper was a new Oldsmobile. They’d wrapped the station wagon in cellophane and stuck a bow on it, and then driven it onto the ice. When I went to unwrap it, who do you think was sitting in the car? My parents. The team had flown them in secretly and put them up in a hotel. There I was at center ice, supposedly some big tough hockey player, and I was overwhelmed with emotion. I felt so proud that my parents could be there for that moment. I was still pretty choked up when they handed me the microphone to say a few words. Standing there with my mother and father, I was having trouble fighting back the tears. Even thinking about it now can bring a tear to my eye. I took the microphone an
d said the only thing that came to mind: “It’s a long way from Saskatoon.” Standing in front of thousands of fans at the Olympia, I felt a million miles away from the little guy who’d grown up sliding around the potato patch. At the same time, looking at my parents brought me right back home again. Taking stock of my life that night, I didn’t have any complaints. At home, we had two beautiful, healthy kids and Colleen was about to give birth to our third. At the arena, things had gone almost as well. The team had won four Stanley Cups in my time and we had hopes for some more. By that time, I’d spent thirteen years in the NHL, which was already considered a long career. Although I already felt like the old man in the dressing room next to my younger teammates, I couldn’t have dreamed how much more hockey I still had left to play.

  Nine

  THE RECORD BOOK

  When the NHL expanded to twelve teams in 1967, I remember thinking how much it changed the feel of the league. Doubling the number of teams gave a whole generation of players a chance to crack into the NHL on rosters that hadn’t existed when fellas of my vintage were coming up. Playing in a league of thirty teams, as they do today, would be something else entirely. In the six-team era, you got to know everyone on the ice pretty quickly, for better and worse. A seventy-game schedule meant that teams faced each other fourteen times a year. Add to that a seven-game playoff series or two and you ended up playing a lot of hockey against the same faces. Not too many nights went by that you didn’t have a history with at least a few guys on the other bench. The league was hungry back then. With only six teams, not only was it hard for a player to make it to the NHL but, once you broke in, you also had to fight like hell to stay there. Every season brought a new crop of young players looking to make their mark. They didn’t want to go back down to the minors and the veterans weren’t about to let anyone take food off their tables. No one gave an inch.

  The circumstances are different today. I’m not saying players aren’t tough, because they are. One look at their size tells you that much. Their understanding of diet and conditioning is also miles ahead of where we were. In my era, I was one of the bigger guys at six feet tall. Nowadays, I’d be average at best. It’s easy to see why things have changed. Instead of just bird-dogging in small-town Canada, scouts now go around the world hunting for talent. Drawing from a global pool means that the size, speed, and skills of the players in the NHL just keep going up. The league is no longer composed of just the best Canadians and Americans, but also the top Russians, Swedes, Finns, Czechs, Germans, Slovenians, Slovakians, Latvians, and others. It makes for good hockey, but it’s also a different game than the one we played. To be honest, I don’t think it’s as tough. That’s not the same as saying that today’s players aren’t tough, just that the game itself has changed. When there were only six teams, every player in the league came prepared to claw over his best friend the second the puck dropped. With every NHL job being so precious, the play itself had an intensity that hasn’t been seen since. Facing each other so often only ratcheted up the potential for animosity.

  The most famous run-in I ever had was born out of those conditions. I was no stranger to fighting, particularly when I played in Omaha, but Detroit’s management had long made it clear that if I had a choice, they’d rather keep me on the ice than see me in the penalty box. During a game in early 1959, New York’s tough guy, Lou Fontinato, made sure I didn’t have much of a choice. He consistently ranked among the NHL’s leaders in penalty minutes and made it a point to tangle with anyone in the league who was considered tough. I guess you’d call him an enforcer. His coach figured that Louie irritated the hell out of me, so whenever I hit the ice he wanted him out there to try to take my head out of the game. At least one time, I remember, it worked just as they’d planned. I was so eager to get a piece of Louie that I forgot a valuable piece of Ted Lindsay’s hockey wisdom: Always let the other guy drop his stick first. After banging on each other all night, Louie finally squared off with me and asked if I wanted to go. I was happy to oblige, so I threw my stick on the ice and dropped my gloves. Bad move. Louie still had his stick and he used it to split open my head for a few stitches. I knew that somewhere Ted was shaking his head at me. It’s not a mistake I’d make again. Fool me once, as they say. As much as Louie and I went at each other, it took years before we actually settled things once and for all.

  We were in New York playing the Rangers when Red Kelly got mixed up with Eddie Shack behind the net. I was watching them tussle when it dawned on me that I had better get a fix on Louie in case he was getting any ideas. When I turned around, sure enough his gloves and stick were at the blue line. He was about ten feet away and charging hard, obviously looking to do more than just say hello. I slipped my hands out of my gloves, just holding them with my fingertips, and waited for what was coming. He didn’t know I had spotted him, so he figured he was swinging at a sitting duck. I moved just in time to miss the haymaker he threw at my head. I’m sure he was licking his chops at the thought of knocking me out with one big punch. Bill Gadsby, who was playing for the Rangers at the time, later told me that my career would have been over if Louie had connected. To his surprise, I ducked the punch, dropped my gloves, and was ready to get it on.

  Whenever I fought on the ice, I’d try to grab the other guy’s sweater at the armpit of his power arm with my left hand. That would leave my right hand free to go to work and force him to throw with his weaker arm. It’s the reason why fighting southpaws is so tricky. You instinctively go for the wrong arm. After ducking Louie’s first punch, I tied up his right arm and started unloading on him with everything I had. I hit him as hard and as often as I could. The first few punches stunned him, but he managed to shake them off and land a few good lefts of his own. I didn’t enjoy getting hit in the side of the head, so I switched hands and tied up the arm that was doing the damage. I was putting in some good work with my left hand, until one of my punches landed wrong and I dislocated a finger. It hurt like a son of a gun. When the officials separated us, I began to realize the kind of number I’d done on Louie. His face was covered with blood and his nose wasn’t where it should have been. The whole thing was over in less than a minute, but the impression it left lasted much longer. Some of the reporters on hand described it as the worst beating they’d ever seen anyone take on the ice. I don’t know if that’s true, but the pictures afterward certainly didn’t do Louie any favors. It didn’t make me happy to see Louie in such bad shape, but I can’t say I felt sorry for him. That might make me sound cold-hearted, but to my way of thinking he was just doing his job and I was doing mine. One of us was going to take the worst of it and it turned out to be him.

  I’d say I probably get asked about that fight more than any of the goals I ever scored. I’d rather talk about the Stanley Cups and some of the great teammates I was lucky enough to play with, but I guess that scrap does have its place in the scheme of my career. No one was in much of a hurry to drop the gloves with me afterward, which was fine by me. I was grateful for anything that helped to keep me on the ice and out of the penalty box. Years later, I also learned a lesson from that night that didn’t have anything to do with the fight itself. Back when we played together, Jack Stewart, a Wings defenseman, and Milt Schmidt of the Bruins used to have quite a hate on for each other. Every time we played the Bruins, they’d spend the whole night whacking at each other whenever they got a chance. I think neither one felt like he’d played a good game unless he’d drawn blood. It was pure meanness between those two. One night, I figured I’d give Jack a hand. I’d noticed that Milt would sometimes go up on one leg, like a dancer, to try to get by a defenseman on the outside. Jack wasn’t too agile, so this often worked on him. For Milt, it was a gamble that left him off balance and vulnerable. I waited for my moment and when I saw Milt go up on one leg, I charged over and caught him perfectly. I figured that Jack would enjoy seeing his adversary take a good lick, but, boy, was I wrong. Between periods, he stormed into the dressing room, picked me right up off my seat,
and said, “Young man, that’s between that man and me. You stay the hell out of it.” Then he dropped me back down. It took me years to understand what I’d done to make him so angry.

  Later, after both men had retired, I was playing one night when I heard a commotion start to build in the crowd. I looked up and saw Jack and Milt in the stands. They’d spotted each other and walked through the rows of seats to shake hands. The whole audience rose in a standing ovation when they met. At that moment, I finally understood why Jack had been so stern with me in the dressing room that day. Whatever happened between those two was personal, and he didn’t want anyone else muddying the waters. He didn’t necessarily have to like Milt, but they respected each other. They were two professionals and playing hockey was their job. Win or lose, there’s an honor that exists between combatants that he didn’t want diminished.