by Gordie Howe
However, before any of the Howes pulled on an Aeros jersey, we still had to take care of the business end of the deal. We invited Doug Harvey, Bill and Pat Dineen, and Houston’s team president, Jim Smith, up to our cabin at Bear Lake. The first thing we wanted to sort out was whether the money would be right for both parties. If the dollars didn’t make sense, there wouldn’t be much point in going any further. We also wanted to get a better feel for the organization and the city of Houston. After twenty-seven years with one club, I knew all too well how big of a say the front office had in your overall happiness. The delegation from Houston ended up checking all the boxes. By the end of their visit, we’d worked out a package deal for the three of us. It would be worth nearly $2.5 million over four years. Negotiating the contract made me think back to my first year in Omaha. I’d earned $2700 in 1945 and felt like I was king of the world. After taking less than market value for so many years, the Houston deal finally gave our family the long-term financial security I had wanted during my whole career. I liked the contract as a hockey player, but I loved it as a father and a husband.
Following our retreat to Bear Lake, our due diligence continued with a trip to Houston. Before we uprooted our kids from their home, we wanted to meet the owners of this new hockey club and make sure they could deliver on their promises. When the plane touched down, it marked Colleen’s first time in Texas. The Aeros met us at the airport with a limousine and placed yellow roses in our suite, which had a personalized nameplate affixed to the door. That night we took in a baseball game with the owners and their wives at the Astrodome. No papers had been signed yet, but the visit went a long way toward alleviating any lingering doubts. The money was right, we liked the city, and the organization looked to be filled with people of substance. By that point, we’d whittled down our checklist to two outstanding items: a conversation with Cathy and Murray, and another with Bruce Norris. Neither would be easy.
Only five weeks had passed since Doug Harvey’s draft-night phone call, but they’d flown by in a blur. Although our minds were made up about Houston, I was hesitant to tell the Wings. Despite all of our recent ups and downs, the team was still the only employer I’d known in my adult life. I hadn’t had much more than the clothes on my back when Jack Adams signed me to my first deal. Hockey and the Red Wings had given me a life. Saying good-bye wasn’t going to be easy. Houston had agreed to let me handle my business in Detroit before saying anything about our deal. They had the press release ready to go; all they needed was my okay. Keeping it under wraps wasn’t easy. The press could sense something in the air, and it was starting to swarm. Colleen started to press me to tell the Wings to put an end to the circus. It was something that had to be done in my own time, though. I let a few more days pass before finally picking up the phone and calling Bruce.
In the eleven years between 1966 and 1977, the Red Wings suffered through the worst stretch in team history, appearing in the playoffs only once, in 1970. They snapped the dry spell in 1978, but after a quarterfinals loss to Montreal it took another six years for the team to see the postseason again. All of the losing tested the patience of a loyal fan base, which wanted nothing more than to see the club put a winner on the ice. I knew that my phone call to Bruce in June 1973 wouldn’t help matters. When I reached him at his office at the Olympia, our conversation was short and to the point. I told him I hadn’t signed with Houston yet, but I’d made up my mind and I wouldn’t be returning to the club. He said he was sorry the situation had turned out the way it did. I agreed.
When I announced my resignation later that night, I tried to speak honestly about my situation. I told the press that the last few years hadn’t been happy ones for me and I was considering an offer from Houston, where I could play with my sons. The Detroit papers took it easy on me, but they used the opportunity to unload on the organization. As a loyal and longtime employee of the club, it wasn’t how I wanted to leave. Unfortunately, the acrimony ended up taking on a life of its own. When the team handed over my last paycheck, it was for the princely sum of $51. Normally it ran around $2000, but the team had decided to deduct my recent travel expenses. We booked all of our travel, both personal and business, through the Olympia Travel Bureau, which Bruce Norris owned. We always settled up our account promptly, but with me on the way out the door, they apparently wanted to make sure I didn’t skip town owing them any money. After twenty-seven years of faithful service, being considered a deadbeat felt like an unnecessary slap in the face.
My love for the Red Wings meant that I’d hoped to leave the club on good terms, but sports doesn’t always work out that way. The nature of the job as an athlete is different than trading stocks or crunching numbers. Players and teams often have relationships that are very public and deeply personal. It’s why even stoic athletes will tear up when announcing that they’re switching teams or retiring. I never considered my relationship with the Red Wings to be just about business. It might have drifted in that direction toward the end, but it’s still not how I feel about the team.
Just as hard as leaving the organization was saying good-bye to Detroit. By then, I’d lived there nearly twice as long as I had in Saskatoon. It was where Colleen and I had met and it was the only home our kids had ever known. The first house we bought after we were married was on Stawell Avenue. It was about three miles west of the Olympia and not far from where Colleen grew up. Marty and Mark were both born while we lived there. As they grew we started to feel like we needed more space, so we moved north to Lathrup Village. We had Cathy and Murray while in that house. All of our kids grew up skating on the ice rink we built in the front yard. Once I retired we bought a bigger house in Bloomfield Hills, an uptown suburb even farther north of the city.
When the time came to move to Houston, we had a tough decision to make about Murray. At thirteen, he was coming into his own on the ice and living in Texas, where the minor hockey system wasn’t close to what it was in Michigan, would have killed his chances to follow in his brothers’ footsteps. We’d always given our children a lot of room to make their own decisions, so we left the choice up to him. It wasn’t easy on the family, but he decided he loved hockey too much to give it up. To our relief, some good friends, the Robertsons, generously offered to take him in. They had five kids of their own and Murray had grown up around their house. Murray was our youngest and leaving him in Detroit was hard, but it’s what he wanted. I didn’t tell him so at the time, but I knew I would have done the same thing if I’d been in his shoes.
What seemed unthinkable only a few months earlier had quickly become a reality. The Howe family had a plan: Murray would stay in Bloomfield Hills and chase his hockey dreams. The rest of us, meanwhile, would head to Texas to follow our own.
Twelve
OVERTIME
The Howe family is full of great runners. My dad could run like a deer. Cathy ran track in high school. Murray has completed marathons and Colleen even ran a road race once. Running comes much less naturally to Mark and me. Just a few steps into a jog and my legs begin to feel like they’re plodding up and down like an elephant’s. Ideally, I prefer to do my conditioning on the ice or even on a stationary bike if necessary. Sometimes, though, you just need to bite the bullet. Once we landed in Houston, I knew I was serious about getting in shape when I added roadwork to my training regimen. My logic was the same as that of a kid who doesn’t like brussels sprouts. Anything I hated that much, I figured, had to be good for me.
Spending a couple of years eating banquet food and sitting behind a desk hadn’t done much for my waistline. I hadn’t let myself go entirely, but at 223 pounds I was twelve or fourteen pounds over where I thought my playing weight should be. Colleen posted my weight on the refrigerator in bold numbers to remind me about the task at hand. Once I committed to getting back in shape, my body felt like the engine of an old rust bucket in the middle of a Detroit winter. It took a long time to turn over. In the beginning I’d take a hundred strides, walk to recover, and then run again
. I gradually built up to running for two hundred steps, and then three hundred. I finally reached the point where I could run the whole thing and still have enough gas left in the tank to sprint to the end. The last fifty yards of my circuit were dead uphill, so the finishing kick always brought some pain. It was worth it, though. Between running, lifting weights, and riding a bike, I was starting to feel more like my old self. Regardless of what happened on land, though, I knew the bigger test was still to come.
Watching me huff and puff my way through the first few practices, the Aeros probably wondered if they’d made a very expensive mistake. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: I was terrible. I was sucking wind during drills and scrimmages like I never had before. Marty later told me that my face turned a shade of red and purple that had him a bit worried. I’m sure my new teammates thought the old man would give up the ghost before he ever saw a shift. I didn’t know it at the time, but my sons were so concerned they started calling Colleen at home to keep her updated. A doctor had given me a clean bill of health before we went to Houston, but it hadn’t done much to alleviate her worries. My struggles only confirmed her suspicion that she would have to try to talk me out of the whole idea before the season started. Just as the storm clouds were looking darkest, Bill Dineen piled on by telling us that training camp was moving to two practices a day. It was the only time I truly questioned my decision to go to Houston. When Colleen and I talked that night, I admitted that there was a chance our WHA adventure could end badly. Just like always, however, she told me the only thing to do was to put one foot in front of the other and see where it went. In this case, it was actually one skate in front of the other, but I got the point. I figured that two-a-days would either cure me or kill me. My body was so exhausted by that point, I’m not sure which one I was hoping for more.
They say it’s always darkest before the dawn, and sometimes they’re actually right. A few days later my body didn’t hurt quite so much. Practice that day was also different. Before, my legs had been heavy, but now they were starting to get some of their old jump back. I began to feel good, like I’d been skating all year. The imaginary piano that had been strapped to my back also disappeared, thankfully. I still had a lot of work to do, but it was as if I’d broken through an invisible wall. The doubts were gone. Hockey was hockey again, and I knew I’d be okay.
• • •
From the outside looking in, it might have appeared that the Howe family circus in Houston was just a novelty act cooked up by the WHA to sell tickets. Admittedly, the script looked like something out of a bad movie. An over-the-hill former star was coming out of retirement to play ice hockey in Texas with his two teenage sons. It was no gimmick, though. I’d never played in a game where there was a chance of embarrassing myself, and I didn’t intend to start. As for my boys, they were the real deal. Some reporters suggested that Marty and Mark snuck into the league on the coattails of my comeback, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. If anything, I was tagging along with them. I was just a short-timer, but they were the future.
We knew that any publicity we could bring to the WHA would help the cause. Texans love their sports, but they hadn’t had much experience with hockey. We were game for anything we could do to promote the team. Well, almost anything. I drew the line at elephants. A year earlier, Bill Dineen had volunteered to ride an elephant in Houston’s Shrine Circus parade. He was busy waving to the crowd when the elephant in front of his decided to empty its bladder. Before Bill knew what was happening, his elephant dipped its trunk in the puddle, slurped up the pool of liquid, and proceeded to spray it all over its rider. I loved hockey, but I didn’t know if I loved it as much as Bill. Elephants aside, our preseason tour was full of newspaper interviews, talk shows, and radio spots. Everyone wanted to know how the old man would fare once he got on the ice. I have to admit, I did too.
The city of Houston, for its part, was behind us from the start. On the way to the arena for the home opener, we looked up and saw a big banner hanging from one of the office towers. It read: “Welcome to Howeston.” I just hoped I could live up to my end of the deal. I’d wrenched my back during our exhibition tour and it was still acting up by game day. I’d spent the previous night in traction at the hospital trying to get it ready. Colleen wanted me to sit out the opener, but I figured I owed it to myself, and to the Aeros, to give it a try.
Skating onto the ice for the first time in Houston was surreal. After spending a quarter-century wearing red and white in Detroit, I hardly recognized myself when I looked down and saw blue for the first time. (It reminded me of a bad dream I had once, in which Trader Jack dealt me to the Leafs.) Sam Houston Coliseum had taken the place of the Olympia. It wasn’t a bad old barn, but it had seen better days. By the time the puck dropped, about two-thirds of its roughly nine thousand–seat capacity was full. Our trainer, Bobby Brown, had his hands full keeping my back spasms at bay. Every time I came off the ice, he hooked me up to a little black box with a wire that sent an electric pulse into my back. The thing worked like a charm. I played the whole game, but it still wasn’t enough to get the season off on the right foot and we ended up losing to the Cleveland Crusaders. On the way off the ice, a funny thing happened. The fans cheered for us like we’d just skated the other guys out of the building. Mark, who always took losses hard, didn’t know what to make of it. I told him they just appreciated our effort. They cheered everything, the good plays as well as the bad. They even cheered the ice-sweeping crew. Looking back, I think the fans knew they’d eventually figure out the hockey part and, in the meantime, they weren’t going to let any of the details spoil a good time.
It didn’t take the team long to start repaying the fans for their loyalty. Bill had put together a nice little squad. Not only were we good once the puck dropped but also our camaraderie off the ice turned out to be special. Our roster might have been bookended by the oldest player in the league and the youngest, but it didn’t matter; all of us were pulling in the same direction. It brought back memories of my early days in Detroit. None of us was making much money at the time, so when we’d go out on the town Alex Delvecchio would get everyone to throw $5 on the table. When the pile was gone, the drinkers would put down more money and whoever was done could leave gracefully. If you wanted only a beer or two, it meant you weren’t stuck buying rounds for the whole squad the entire night. Little things like that matter to team chemistry. For some guys, it can make the difference between hanging out with teammates or spending time alone. In Houston, we had guys looking out for the little things. With so many of us new to town, the team ended up doing everything together. As so often happens with close-knit groups, the results started to show on the ice.
By the time I reached Houston, I hadn’t won a championship in nearly twenty years. My final seasons in Detroit had been so grim that the notion of winning anything substantial hadn’t even crossed my mind for a while. Retiring then put an end to the idea altogether. At forty-five years old, who would have thought I’d get another chance, and in Texas of all places? Our 48 wins and 5 ties put us on top of our division. During the season both Mark and Marty proved that Houston’s decision to draft underage players was based on sound hockey logic. Mark was named rookie of the year and Marty established himself as a defenseman the league would have to reckon with for a long time to come. As for me, I think I might have surprised a few people, maybe even myself. I had a private goal of 70 points, but I hadn’t counted on the team gelling as it did or the arthritis in my wrists easing off enough to allow me to start feeling the puck again. With 31 goals and 69 assists for an even 100 points, I was named the league’s most valuable player. What’s even better, the team kept winning in the playoffs, beating Winnipeg in the quarterfinals and Minnesota in the semis to earn our way to the finals.
The WHA didn’t miss many tricks when it came to earning a few extra dollars. Looking for any way it could to bring in some money, it sold the naming rights to its championship trophy to a defense contra
ctor called Avco. The big prize in the league was thereafter known as the Avco Cup. It lacked the history of the Stanley Cup and it was certainly more commercial, but everything has to start somewhere. Like any team fighting for a championship, we’d put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into the season and we wanted to take home the trophy, regardless of what it was called. The finals couldn’t have gone any better. We played the Chicago Cougars and swept them in four straight to win the second title in the WHA’s brief history. I hadn’t tasted champagne in the dressing room since 1955. It was just as sweet as I remembered.
• • •
When we sat down with Jim Smith and Bill Dineen to broker our contract with the Aeros, only the first year of my deal was set in stone. At the time, I hadn’t been certain if my body would hold up or how I’d feel about the rigors of practice and the grind of being on the road. As ever, winning a title did wonders for my aches and pains. Playing in front of full houses in Houston alongside my boys was also so much fun that I had a big decision to make about whether I had more hockey left in me. I’d put in enough work to get back in shape that I figured my forty-six-year-old bones could handle another year if I asked them to. The lure of playing against the Russians was also tempting.