Mr. Hockey My Story

by Gordie Howe

  The powers that be had organized another Summit Series between Canada and the U.S.S.R., to be held before the start of the next season. Along with every other Canadian, I’d watched in 1972 as our national team beat the Soviets in what became an instant classic. This time around, a team of WHA all-stars would be representing Canada. The thought of wearing the Maple Leaf was too good to pass up. I was picked for the team along with Marty and Mark. Bobby Hull was on the squad, as well as Frank Mahovlich, Paul Henderson, and Pat Stapleton. They’d all played in the 1972 series and did their best to brace us for what to expect. Unfortunately, we didn’t fare as well as they had. We ended the series with one win, four losses, and three ties. I don’t have many regrets when it comes to hockey, but I do wish I could have played against the Russians when I was ten years younger. Facing them with fewer miles on my legs and more jump in my step would have been interesting.

  When we landed back in Houston for a second season of WHA hockey, it quickly became business as usual for the Howe family. At the start of their careers in Houston, both Mark and Marty had chosen to live at home. Since they were each working, Colleen decided they had to pay rent. She charged them $30 a week for room and board. They protested at first, but she said it was either that or they could foot the family’s grocery bill. They quickly opted for rent, which was a prudent financial decision. From the time he was little, Marty spent so much time staring into the fridge you’d think he was trying to keep the whole neighborhood air-conditioned. We used to joke that he ate only one meal a day, but it lasted from the time he woke up until he went to sleep.

  In my career with the Wings I was always one for routine, and that didn’t change when we moved to Texas. On game days, I still found that protein helped to settle my stomach. My boys took after their old man. Our big meal of the day would come around 1 P.M. The usual menu included either a sixteen-ounce porterhouse steak or a New York strip. I was a big fan of the beef in Texas. Colleen thought I was trying to compensate for a lifetime of living elsewhere by eating as much red meat as possible once I arrived in cattle country. For sides, we had cottage cheese, pears, and peaches with mayo, as well as the Howe family’s special salad. Dessert was either Jell-O or ice cream, depending on how my weight was doing. I’m sure my pregame meal wouldn’t be right for many players, but it worked well for me through the years. The rest of my game-day ritual included a mid-afternoon nap, which I’d take until around 5 P.M. After getting up, I’d dress, drink some tea with honey, and make my way to the rink. I did the same thing with few variations for more than twenty-five years. I found that being a creature of habit helped me focus on the game at hand instead of spending my energy worrying about other decisions.

  As a player, I wasn’t the most superstitious guy in the dressing room, but I wasn’t the least superstitious either. Driving to the arena in Detroit, I’d try to hit green lights all the way to the Olympia. If I could make it without stopping, I considered it a good omen. I was also particular about my sticks. I used Northland sticks, which had three stripes wrapped around the shaft just above the blade. If I scored a goal with a certain stick or even if I just liked it, I’d remove one of the stripes. I’d tell everyone that if they wanted to take one of my sticks, to be sure to leave the good ones. For a time, I also had lucky undershorts. If I wore the shorts and we won, I’d put them away and wear them the next game. It’s one habit I broke myself of, for obvious reasons. I eventually started buying them all in one color, so I wouldn’t know which ones were the winning shorts. I don’t know if any of those little rituals helped me on the ice, but I know one thing for certain: They didn’t hurt.

  My experience in both the NHL and the WHA meant that I used to get asked how the leagues stacked up against each other. The way I saw it, the NHL’s big advantage was depth. Up and down the roster, NHL clubs had more guys who were able to play at a high level. Although NHL players were, on average, bigger, smarter, and faster, the WHA wasn’t exactly full of scrubs. The top guys in the new league would have been stars in the NHL. In fact, there were NHL stars who went to the WHA, and WHA stars who went the other way. When the two leagues went head to head, the WHA actually performed quite well. The cumulative record ended up being 34–22–7 in favor of the WHA. Exhibition games aren’t the same as the real thing, but it does show that the WHA was far from devoid of talent. Critics used to question how good the league could be when one of its best players was in his mid-forties. I didn’t have much to say about that other than to point out that Number 9’s track record in the NHL wasn’t too bad either. Taking on an established league from scratch was no easy feat, but the WHA almost pulled it off. After all, the NHL owners wouldn’t have worked so hard to quash it if the new league wasn’t seen as a real threat.

  When I look back at our team in Houston, I still think it was a heck of a squad. Our defense was definitely NHL caliber. Mark, for one, ended up playing sixteen years in the NHL and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2011. John Tonelli won four Stanley Cups and was selected to multiple All-Star teams. Marty went on to play 646 games as a professional, nearly 200 of which were in the NHL. I stand by the belief that the Aeros would have been among the top six or eight clubs in the NHL if given the chance. What we might have lacked in talent, we made up for in chemistry. The guys in the locker room trusted one another, which counts for a lot. In our four seasons in Houston between 1973 and 1977, we ended up winning a pile of games. Along with finishing first in our division four years in a row, we added a second consecutive Avco Cup to our trophy case in 1974–75. The time I spent in Houston also included a good run on the score sheet. I followed up my 100-point debut season with totals of 99 and 102. In my final year with the Aeros, injuries cost me 18 games and I finished with 68 points.

  The early years in Houston with Marty and Mark were some of the most fun I’d ever had playing hockey. It made my comeback decision feel like a no-brainer. Of course, nothing lasts forever. In the final year of our contract, ownership of the Aeros changed hands. The new group was on shaky financial footing from the start and we started to worry that the club would follow some of the other franchises into bankruptcy. As good as things had been in Houston, they were definitely taking a turn for the worse. Colleen started exploring our options and, of all things, a return to the NHL looked like it could be in the cards.

  There was a chance we might have ended up in Boston, which held the rights to Mark, or even back in Detroit. The Wings had traded for Marty’s rights and the club liked the idea of bringing the Howes back into the fold. We liked it as well. Regardless of how things had turned out toward the end, Detroit was part of our DNA. I never stopped appreciating the fans or loving the city, and a homecoming would have been better than a dream. As can happen, however, business and egos got in the way. Ted Lindsay took over as the team’s general manager while we were negotiating with the club. He made it pretty clear that a reunion wasn’t on his agenda. A deal that would have put the three of us in Boston was also scuttled at the eleventh hour, when the team’s owner balked at some of the guarantees included in our contract.

  Throughout all of the back and forth with the NHL clubs, the New England Whalers had been sitting patiently in the wings. They’d let us know that if things didn’t work out with Detroit or Boston, they had three lockers with our names on them waiting for us in Connecticut. After our deal with the Bruins fell apart, Colleen called Howard Baldwin, the president of the Whalers, and he was on the next plane to see us with a contract in hand. We arrived in Hartford in 1977 for another season of WHA hockey. We liked Connecticut so much we stayed there for the next fifteen years.

  Our time in New England also overlapped with an eventful period for hockey. In 1979, the NHL finally succeeded in ridding itself of its competitor through a merger with the WHA. Four teams ended up joining the league in the 1979–80 season: the Edmonton Oilers, the Winnipeg Jets, the Quebec Nordiques, and the New England Whalers, which changed its name to the Hartford Whalers due to pressure from the Bruins. A
fter two years of retirement and six in the WHA, I found myself once again playing hockey in the NHL.

  • • •

  My final year in Hartford was memorable. The minute we took the ice, Mark, Marty, and I became the first father–son combination to suit up together in an NHL game. By that time, three of my four kids were married and two of them had children. Mark and his wife, Ginger, had our first grandchild, Travis, in 1978. We were playing in Edmonton on the night it happened. I scored a goal, which marked my first as a grandfather. Cathy had our second grandchild, Jaime, in October of the following year. By then, when my younger teammates would refer to me as “Grampa,” I didn’t have much of a comeback. (Interestingly, though the guys called me “Grampa,” I never answered to “Dad.” In our first few practices together in Houston, I think Marty and Mark were confused when I didn’t respond to their calls on the ice. They soon figured out why and shifted from calling me “Dad” to “Gordie” just like everyone else. I thought that was the way it had to be. On a winning team there can’t be any divisions. To this day, Marty still calls me by my first name.) Between our four children, Colleen and I eventually ended up with nine grandkids.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one sporting some gray hairs. A mid-season trade with Winnipeg had brought forty-one-year-old Bobby Hull to Hartford. One night our coach, Don Blackburn, put us together on a line with Dave Keon, who was also in his early forties. I think we still hold the distinction of being the oldest line in hockey history. We were playing in Toronto, where Davey had starred for the Leafs in his prime. Not a bad line. We scored a couple of goals, which must have just killed Harold Ballard. I think the three of us actually chased the old man out of his booth that night.

  In February 1980, Scotty Bowman decided to add me to his team for the league’s All-Star game. It was being played in Detroit, and he thought I should be there. Scotty, who was behind the bench for Buffalo at the time, surely recognized that I was past my all-star days as a player, but as coach of the Prince of Wales Conference squad he had the prerogative to pick who he wanted. He took some heat for the choice, but he stuck to his guns. I can still remember the announcer calling the lineups that night. When my turn came around, he just called out, “Number 9.” The standing ovation from the crowd for my twenty-third All-Star Game appearance seemed to last forever. If Detroit fans consider you to be one of their own, they’ll stick with you through thick and thin. It didn’t matter that my hair was gray and I was playing for the Whalers, to them I was still Gordie Howe of the Detroit Red Wings. Standing on the ice that night was not only one of the great moments I enjoyed in the game of hockey but also one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my life. I was able to thank Scotty Bowman for it, but I wish I could have thanked each of the 21,000 fans there as well.

  By the time I hung up my skates for good at the end of the 1979–80 season, I’d just finished my thirty-second season of professional hockey. I was fifty-two years old. When I say it out loud, it almost seems unreal that I played in five different decades. At the time, however, it seemed completely natural. When winter arrived, it always just felt like time to put on my skates. It didn’t matter whether I was a kid or a grandfather, those feelings didn’t change. Over more than three decades of professional hockey, I scored 801 goals in the NHL and added another 174 in the WHA for a total of 975. I amassed 1383 assists, 1049 in the NHL and 334 in the WHA. With 1850 points in the NHL and 508 in my six WHA seasons, I ended up with a career total of 2358 points. Over those years, I also spent more than 2000 minutes in the penalty box (a handful of which I probably even deserved).

  My career, though, feels like much more than just a collection of numbers. It’s playing for the fans and my teammates, and all of the friendships Colleen and I made over the years. It’s being part of something bigger than just myself. It’s being on the ice, sweating and bleeding with the boys. It’s the wonderful life that hockey allowed me to give my family. It’s a game I love. When I’m asked how I was able to play for so long, my answer is always the same: I never stopped loving the game. As the decades passed, my life saw a lot of changes—everyone’s does—but that remained constant.

  Looking back at it all, the words I shared with the fans in 1959 during my appreciation night keep running through my head: It’s a long way from Saskatoon. No one could ask for a better ride.

  AFTERWORD

  MARTY, MARK, AND MURRAY HOWE AND CATHY PURNELL

  As kids going to school in Detroit, our teachers used to pass out a newspaper called My Weekly Reader. One day, when Murray was about six or seven, he opened his copy of My Weekly Reader and found a story about Dad. Excited to see a classmate’s father featured in such a prestigious publication, the other kids started to pepper Murray with questions. He didn’t have any answers, though. He knew that Dad played hockey for a living, but he never thought that was out of the ordinary. With the indignation that only a young child can muster, he rushed home after school to confront our parents. What made Dad so special that someone would write about him? How long had this been going on? Why had he not been informed of all of this sooner? In his typical fashion, Dad handled the questions in stride. He said it must have been a slow news week and they couldn’t find anything else to write about. Then he probably went outside and mowed the lawn. That was Murray’s introduction to the idea that our dad was famous.

  We’ve all been asked what it was like being raised by arguably the world’s best-known hockey player, but we doubt anyone finds our answers too satisfying. We didn’t realize that our father was famous, because he just seemed like a normal dad. Other than being away a lot during the winter, he did the same things as every other parent on our block. That’s what we thought as kids, anyway. As adults, we realize that we were wrong. He is different—a lot different. That difference just doesn’t have anything to do with hockey.

  If Dad has a selfish bone in his body, the four of us have yet to see it. That’s not hyperbole, either. He’s the most genuinely helpful person we’ve ever met. When he’s at home, if he’s not raking leaves, he’s sweeping the floor or wiping down a countertop. At a gas station, after he finishes cleaning his own windshield, he doesn’t think anything of moving over to the next car and cleaning it as well. It’s not like he has nervous energy to burn off. You only have to watch him skate to know that he’s as laid-back as they come. Rather, he just feels compelled to do nice things for people all the time. It’s in his nature. He’s humble and patient and never complains about anything. The rest of us complain all the time, but not him. It’s not how he was raised.

  Growing up in Saskatoon during the 1930s put a stamp on his character that he’s kept for his entire life. His childhood wasn’t easy. Our grandmother brought up nine children by herself with basically no resources whatsoever. She led a completely selfless existence in which she put her kids’ welfare ahead of her own. At that time, you had to be tough to survive and, boy, was she ever. She used to help us with jigsaw puzzles when we were kids and occasionally Mark, who was around ten or eleven at the time, would feel brave and challenge her to an arm wrestle. He was strong for a kid his age and she must have been in her sixties, but it didn’t matter to her. She’d get down on the floor and pin his arm as quickly as he put it up there. For his part, Grandpa Albert was also as tough as they come. You couldn’t be a shrinking violet and still run gangs of relief workers, as he did, during the Depression. He taught a young Gordie not to back down from anything. If you did, then it would be your own fault when you took the worst of it. When you look at Dad, it’s as if he turned out to be an exact composite of his parents.

  • • •

  Anyone who watched Gordie Howe play might wonder if we’re talking about the same guy or if his kids are just trying to sugarcoat things. It’s no secret that Dad is remembered as much for the stitches he handed out as he is for the goals he scored. We know that. The Gordie Howe hat trick is named after him for a reason. Our mother spent half of her marriage trying to understand the two s
ides of her husband, and we’re not sure if even she had him figured out. How can someone who’s so kind and soft-spoken at home become so remorseless once he puts on skates? It’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde duality that’s not easy to reconcile.

  The way Dad saw it, as a professional hockey player his job was to win games. As it turned out, he was perfectly suited to the task because he wanted to win more than anyone you’ll ever meet. He decided early in his career that to be successful in the NHL he’d need to give the opposition a reason to slow down when they came to get the puck. If that meant throwing an elbow or putting some lumber on a guy, then it seemed like fair game to him. After all, everyone in the NHL was being paid to be there, and the odd cut or bruise was just a cost of doing business. Ironically, it was the respect he had for other players that made him feel like he had a license to play as ruthlessly as he did. He wasn’t mean-spirited or dirty; he just figured that a few stitches or a knock to the ribs didn’t cause any real harm. If it gave him the extra split second he needed to make a play, then that was justification enough for him. In his mind, playing any other way would be shortchanging the team. Some people might not approve, but his tactics gave him the space he needed to operate for more than thirty years. There was definitely a method to his madness.

  When Mark was playing in Philadelphia, Brad McCrimmon told him a story from his rookie year with the Bruins, about the first time he played against Dad. They went into the corner together and Brad came out with a nick over his eye that needed stitches. When he returned to the bench, his teammates asked what had happened. He said that Gordie’s stick had popped up and caught him in the eye. It had been an accident, though, and Gordie had said he was sorry. All the guys started to laugh. They pointed to their own scars and told Brad that Gordie had apologized for this one and that one, too. That was Dad. He let everyone on the ice know they shouldn’t get too close.