Mr. Hockey My Story

by Gordie Howe

  As the 1960s were coming to a close, the Red Wings were struggling through a series of tough seasons. After losing to the Canadiens in the Stanley Cup finals in 1966, we hit a drought that would have been unthinkable during the glory years of the 1950s. In the five seasons between 1966 and 1971, we only made the playoffs once, in 1970. Even that was a short trip, with Chicago sweeping us in the quarterfinals. The next season we were back in the gutter, managing a paltry 22 wins and 11 ties. Our seventh-place finish once again put us out of the playoffs.

  At forty-three years old, I was starting to feel my age on the ice for the first time in my life. My injuries were taking longer to heal and my legs didn’t have their usual jump. In twenty-five years with the Red Wings, hardly a day had gone by that I hadn’t looked forward to coming to the arena. That season, the fire that I had always taken for granted started to burn lower. By then, my time in the league had been a long haul any way you wanted to slice it. In the 1950s, I’d missed a total of twelve games due to injury, six in 1954–55 and another six in 1957–58. I’d missed even fewer games in the 1960s. My body had seen a lot of hockey over two decades in the NHL and it was starting to talk to me pretty loudly. Even carrying my stick was becoming tough, due to the chronic arthritis in my wrists. I had surgery to clean up some bone fragments, but it only helped so much. The 1970–71 season counts among the worst of my career. I lost ten games to a rib injury and was hampered by one injury or another for the rest of the year. I just couldn’t seem to get on track. I ended up with 23 goals and 29 assists for 52 points, my lowest total since my injury-shortened season in 1948–49.

  By the time the off-season came around, retirement had become a serious consideration. When Guy Lafleur hung up his skates in the 1980s, I remember talking to him about a comeback. I advised him not to quit as long as he had some music left in him. If he knew he was done, then fine, but if he had any doubts he owed it to himself to get back on the ice. Well, in 1971, I was having a hard time hearing the music. The organization was in shambles, the team was losing, and our prospects for the next season weren’t looking any better. A few years earlier I would have had a lot to say about that, but injuries and age had me wondering how much I could still help the club. According to Colleen, if my performance was up to my own standards and I thought I was still doing right by the fans, then I should keep playing. She just didn’t want to see me suffer through another year of being disappointed in myself. Hockey was all I’d ever wanted to do and all I’d ever known, but when I looked at myself in the mirror that summer, I realized it might be time for a change. After several long months of deliberation, I announced my retirement in early September. It was a difficult moment. For the first time in a quarter-century, when the puck dropped to start the next season, I wouldn’t be a part of it.

  Eleven

  HEADING TO HOUSTON

  Nobody teaches an athlete how to retire. I wish I could say that adjusting to civilian life was easy, but it wasn’t. Every job comes with its own rhythms—when you wake up, what you eat, where you go to work, who you see there—and the NHL is no different. For twenty-five years, my life was regulated by the changing seasons. Training camp in the fall became the regular season during the winter, which melted into springtime and the playoffs. A summer of family and rest followed (with a lake nearby if we were lucky). As the 1971–72 NHL season began, all sorts of changes were coming my way, but at the very least I still had hockey in my life. The Red Wings had assured me I’d always have a job with the club and they made good on those promises, announcing after my retirement that I’d joined the front office. There was also talk of learning the insurance game and stepping into an executive role at one of the Norris family’s companies. It was a new world, but it seemed promising. At forty-three, I was old for a hockey player, but I figured I was just entering my prime by most other standards. I planned to treat my new job the same as I had my old one. I might have traded skates and shoulder pads for a shirt and tie, but when I stepped into the Olympia I was still ready to put in a hard day’s work. Unfortunately, not everyone got the memo.

  After our early discussions about the job, I came away assuming I’d have a role in shaping the on-ice product. It only made sense, given my knowledge of the game and my experience with the team, but it didn’t turn out to be the case. The Red Wings, it seemed, didn’t know what to do with me. Instead of involving me in team decisions, they parked me in a tiny office and dusted me off only when it was time to make a public appearance. Officially, I was eventually given the title of vice president of public relations. In practice, I was more like vice president of an empty desk. The team was paying me $50,000 a year to sit around. For someone who’d been working since he was a kid, it was the first time in my life I didn’t feel like I was earning my paycheck. As much as I tried to change things, it felt like the club only wanted me around as a hood ornament. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  My duties were largely limited to representing the Red Wings at banquets and functions. I don’t mind eating a rubber-chicken dinner every now and then, but I knew I had more to offer. However, my attempts to get something going often led to a promise that someone would get back to me in a couple of days. Of course, when the time came, nothing ever materialized. In hindsight, the writing on the wall was pretty clear. The club didn’t have a real place for me and neither did anyone in the insurance business. Regardless of the lip service, no one on either side was interested in taking the time to carve out a space for me. One time, I went to a banquet in suburban Detroit, where I was told I’d be joining other members of the club. I arrived to a packed house but found myself alone at a ten-person table designated for the Red Wings. I waited around for a while, until it became clear that no one else was going to show. I was about to leave when one of the organizers stopped me and said I was getting an award that night. The team hadn’t even bothered to let me know that I was one of the guests of honor. The poor guy had to round up eight other people to sit at the table with me. On the drive home, I thought about how the lack of consideration was pretty typical of my new job. (At one of those banquets, in Brantford, I did get the chance to meet an eleven-year-old Wayne Gretzky. He was just a skinny little guy with a big smile, but he was already a phenom. We bonded right away. Little did I know that a few years later I’d be looking up at him in the record books.)

  It was a frustrating time made all the worse by a tremendous personal loss that my family had just suffered. The summer before, as I was contemplating my retirement, my mother passed away after falling at our cabin in northern Michigan. Colleen and I were at an event in Toronto when it happened. We’d left the kids with Mum and Dad at the cabin for a few days. My mother was a kind, generous, warmhearted person, and I loved her dearly. I still miss her to this day. I announced my retirement a few weeks later.

  As much as I would have liked to throw myself into something as a distraction, my new career didn’t turn out to be the thing. I don’t doubt that the club had good intentions, at least in the beginning. Bruce Norris definitely seemed to want me to be part of the organization, but his people were another matter. If someone doesn’t consider you essential, they’ll find ways to put you on the sidelines. I call it the mushroom treatment. You’re kept in the dark and every now and then they come in and throw a little manure on you. The office they stuck me in told the whole story. It was so shabby that the club moved me to better digs when it needed to take a promotional picture. When I showed up in front-office shots, Colleen and I would always laugh because the pictures in the background were of someone else’s family.

  • • •

  With so much time on my hands, I started thinking about an old dream I had of staying in the game long enough to play with my kids. I’d had a little taste of it during a charity match in my final year with the Red Wings, and I’d loved how good it made me feel. Years earlier, Colleen had become involved with the Junior Red Wings program, a successful junior rep team that played out of the Olympia. In 1971, Marty, at sixteen,
and Mark, at fifteen, were both playing for the squad when Colleen organized a fund-raiser for the March of Dimes that pitted the junior team against the parent club. I suited up for the young guys along with my older brother Vern, who’d played a few games for the Rangers in the 1950s. The Olympia was packed and the fans were having a great time. It was a real Howe family affair. With the score tied 10–10, we even got Murray into the action. He was only about ten years old at the time, but he was already a good little player. We cut a deal with the opposing goalie and, with about five seconds left in the game, Murray walked in and scored. The crowd loved it. My favorite part of the night was hearing the announcer tell the crowd that the goal had been scored by “Howe from Howe and Howe.” I thought it would be the only time I’d get the chance to hear that line uttered. I couldn’t know how wrong I’d turn out to be.

  By 1972–73, Marty and Mark had both moved on from the Junior Red Wings to play for the Toronto Marlboros of the Ontario Hockey League. Marty had arrived there a year earlier and was excited for his brother to join him. At that point, both of my sons were considered solid prospects. Mark was even picked to play on the U.S. Olympic team that won a silver medal in the 1972 Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan. At sixteen, I think he’s still the youngest player to ever win an Olympic medal in hockey. The following year, he was named MVP of the Memorial Cup when he and Marty helped lead the Marlies to Canada’s junior hockey national championship. I felt proud that both of my sons appeared to have a legitimate future in professional hockey. The rules at the time, though, meant they’d have to wait. The NHL didn’t allow junior players to be drafted until after they turned twenty. That meant Marty would have to spend one more year in Toronto before he could be drafted and Mark would have to wait another two. At that point, fate intervened in a way we hadn’t expected.

  Colleen and I, dressed to the nines, were on our way out the door to an art auction to benefit the Arthritis Foundation when the phone rang. When I picked it up, Doug Harvey, of all people, was on the other end of the line. My old adversary from the Montreal Canadiens was now an assistant coach with the Houston Aeros, a new team in the World Hockey Association, an upstart league that was becoming a big thorn in the side of the NHL. Doug told me the Aeros were getting ready to walk into the WHA meetings and draft Mark with their first-round pick. He wanted to give me a heads-up, because when it happened he knew all hell would break loose and the press was sure to be calling. Not long after that, Bill Dineen, the head coach of the Aeros and a former teammate in Detroit, stood up and said, “Houston drafts Mark Howe,” a sentence that sent a shock wave through the entire hockey world.

  Mark was still only eighteen, and the other teams in the WHA had assumed that their league would abide by the same rules as the NHL. Houston was ready to gamble that an age restriction was illegal and wouldn’t hold up against a court challenge. I suspect the other teams were upset only because they hadn’t thought of it first. It was a bold stroke by the Aeros, and perfectly in line with the spirit of the league. When the WHA started in 1972–73, it was the first direct competitor the NHL had seen in decades. It was born out of the idea that North America’s appetite for hockey had room for more than just the NHL. The twelve-team WHA included cities without an NHL franchise, such as Winnipeg, Ottawa, and Cleveland, as well as bigger centers with populations that could support multiple teams, such as New York and Los Angeles.

  For the most part, the new league was populated with career minor-leaguers, NHL journeymen, college players, and eventually even Europeans, who were rare in the NHL at the time. To gain credibility, the WHA also pushed to lure big-name NHL stars away from their current clubs. Looking to make a splash, the new owners dangled higher salaries in front of players who had been underpaid for years. To the consternation of their NHL masters, Derek Sanderson, Mike Walton, Pat Stapleton, Dave Keon, and Bernie Parent were among those to make the switch. The new league even took a run at Bobby Orr, arguably the biggest star in the NHL. By far the biggest get, though, was a pretty big star himself: Bobby Hull. The Golden Jet became a real-life Jet, leaving Chicago to take over as player–coach in Winnipeg. The competition from the WHA did more than annoy the NHL; it also caused salaries to start escalating across the board. The players were happy, but it actually backfired on the fledgling league, which was financially unsteady from the start. Team finances aside, the WHA offered another opportunity for hockey players to make a living. Still only teenagers, Mark and Marty couldn’t believe they might not have to put their professional dreams on hold any longer.

  Colleen and I would have loved to be at the draft in Winnipeg when the Aeros called Mark’s name. When we finally made it to the auction that night, it’s safe to say our minds weren’t on the art. As it turned out, Houston wasn’t done dropping bombs on the league and our family. With their twelfth-round pick, they selected Marty. Both picks were a big gamble for the club at the time. If they were wrong about the legality of drafting underage players, the team would have squandered a pair of valuable picks. If it hadn’t before, the new league had now definitely captured the NHL’s attention. By snatching up the best young players from the junior ranks, the WHA threatened to upset the balance of power in the hockey world. The NHL was worried enough that, the next day, I got a call from no less than Clarence Campbell himself. The NHL’s president spoke to me at length about the ramifications of our boys playing for the Aeros. It would be a heavy blow to the league, he said, as well as something that would potentially jeopardize the entire system of junior hockey. He ended by imploring me to forbid my boys from signing with Houston.

  After I hung up the phone, I spent the rest of the day full of mixed emotions. The NHL had been a fixture in my life for more than a quarter-century. I owed the league so much that I didn’t even want to think about the possibility of turning my back on it. Added to which, I never thought it was good business to bite the hand that feeds you. That said, I thought back to my dad telling us kids that if you didn’t look out for yourself, no one else would. In the end, our decision came down to doing what we thought was best for our boys. I called Mr. Campbell back the next day and told him that I couldn’t ask Mark and Marty to deny themselves an opportunity they’d worked so hard to earn. I wouldn’t have wanted my father to ask it of me, and I wasn’t going to ask it of them. The decision, I told him, would be theirs to make.

  For Houston, the move to draft underage players wasn’t a gimmick. They’d scouted Mark and Marty all year and figured our boys had enough talent to make a difference on the ice. To succeed as a league, the WHA clubs knew they needed to build teams around good young players. Our kids were just the first. As far as Bill Dineen and Doug Harvey were concerned, the hockey side of the business mattered more than having a famous last name. As for me, I’d harbored the dream of our boys playing professional hockey for as long as I could remember.

  The thought was even on my mind on the night the Red Wings retired my jersey. The club held a big ceremony between periods of a game against the Black Hawks in the spring of 1972. A carpet emblazoned with a big number 9 was rolled out and I was joined on the ice by Colleen and all of our kids except Marty, who had a junior game in Toronto that night. It was an elaborate deal. U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew even showed up at the behest of President Nixon. When I accepted the honor from Bruce Norris, my only request was that the sweater would be made available if one of my boys ever played with the club. Mark, who’s now a scout with the Red Wings, eventually did just that at the end of his career, but he chose to wear number 4 instead. Of course, he’s best remembered for the number 2 he wore in Philadelphia. The Flyers put that sweater in the rafters a few years ago, making Mark only the fifth player in franchise history to receive that honor.

  • • •

  Shortly after the WHA draft, we called the boys and brought them home to Detroit. The rest of the hockey world might have had a tough time dealing with the idea of them turning professional, but they didn’t share those concerns. The thought of getting pa
id for something they’d been doing for free for so long was all the convincing they needed. Colleen and I figured we could do more than just give them our blessing. Once their decision was made, we turned our attention to cutting the best deal possible for our boys. I’d spent nearly my whole career earning less than market value and we were determined the same thing wouldn’t happen to them.

  As the flap about the underage rule continued, I was logging a lot of time on the phone with Bill Dineen, who was keeping us updated on how things were unfolding on the legal end. The Aeros looked to have a good case, but once lawyers get involved everything becomes a much longer slog. During one of our conversations I finally dropped an idea on Bill that had been spinning in my head since the whole thing had started. I asked him what he thought of three Howes playing in Houston. There was a long pause before he asked me if I was serious. I told him I was. In that case, he told us, Colleen and I should start making plans to visit Texas.

  While only a few weeks earlier I had been grinding away unhappily behind a desk at the Olympia, the idea of a comeback suddenly became real in a hurry. When I’d hung up my skates, I’d assumed I was done for good. Two years on, though, the wrist problems that had played such a big role in my decision to retire seemed to be less of an issue. Over time, the surgeries to remove the bone fragments had started to bring more feeling back to my hands. My wrists weren’t exactly healed—they were still sore and my arthritis hadn’t gone away—but my time away from the game had given the joints time to recover.

  The idea of my returning to the ice made Colleen apprehensive from the start. At forty-five, I’d be playing against kids half my age. I also had a list of injuries as long as my arm and I hadn’t played a serious game of hockey in two years. I won’t say I didn’t share her concerns, but I told her I always knew what I was capable of when it came to hockey. I’d have to get back into game shape, but I rarely struggled with conditioning. All of the miles I’d skated on choppy outdoor ice in Saskatoon had built a lifetime of strength into my legs. I knew they’d be there for me if I asked. The bigger issue would come from deeper inside. When I retired in 1971, my heart wasn’t in the game the way it needed to be. After two unhappy years away from the ice, though, I’d come to realize something crucial about myself. I was a hockey player, first, last, and always. The thought of lacing them up in Houston to play alongside my boys made me feel like I was twenty-two again. I couldn’t wait to get back on the ice.