Gordie Howe

Gordon "Gordie" Howe, OC (March 31, 1928 – June 10, 2016) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. From 1946 to 1980, Howe played twenty-six seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) and six seasons in the World Hockey Association (WHA); his first 25 seasons were spent with the Detroit Red Wings. Nicknamed "Mr. Hockey", Howe was considered one of the greatest hockey players of all time.[2] A 23-time NHL All-Star, Howe held many of the sport's scoring records until they were broken in the 1990s by Wayne Gretzky. Howe continues to hold NHL records for most games and seasons played.

Howe was recruited by the Red Wings and made his NHL debut in 1946. Howe led the league in scoring each year from 1950 to 1954, then again in 1957 and 1963. He ranked among the top ten in league scoring for 21 consecutive years, and set a league record for points in a season (95) in 1953. Howe won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings four times, won six Hart Trophies as the league's most valuable player, and won six Art Ross Trophies as the leading scorer.

Howe retired in 1971 and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame the next year. However, he came back two years later to join his sons Mark and Marty on the Houston Aeros of the WHA. Although in his mid-40s, Howe scored over 100 points twice in six years. He made a brief return to the NHL in 1979–80, playing one season with the Hartford Whalers, then retired at the age of 52.

Howe was most famous for his scoring prowess, physical strength, and career longevity. He is the only player to have competed in the NHL in five different decades (1940s through 1980s). Although he only achieved the feat twice in his own career, Howe became the namesake of the "Gordie Howe hat trick": a goal, an assist, and a fight in the same game. He was the inaugural recipient of the NHL Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

Early life

Howe was born to Ab and Katherine Howe in a farmhouse in Floral, Saskatchewan; he was one of nine siblings. When Gordie was nine days old, the Howes moved to Saskatoon, where his father worked as a labourer during the Depression. In the summers, Howe would work construction with his father.

He was mildly dyslexic growing up, but was physically beyond his years at an early age. Already six feet tall in his mid-teens, doctors feared a calcium deficiency and encouraged him to strengthen his spine with chin-ups. He began playing organized hockey at eight years old. Howe quit school during the Depression to work in construction, then left Saskatoon at sixteen to pursue his hockey career.

Playing career

Howe was an ambidextrous player, one of just a few skaters able to use the straight sticks of his era to shoot either left- or right-handed. As a young teen Howe played bantam hockey with the King George Athletic Club in his hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, winning his first championship with them in the 1942 Saskatchewan Provincial Bantam Hockey Finals. He received his first taste of professional hockey at age 15 in 1943 when he was invited by the New York Rangers to their training camp held at "The Amphitheatre" in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He played well enough there that the Rangers wanted Howe to sign a "C" form which would have given that club his NHL rights and to play that year at Notre Dame, a Catholic school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, that was known for turning out good hockey players. Howe did not feel that was a good fit for him and wanted to go back home to play hockey with his friends so declined the Rangers' offer and returned to Saskatoon.

In 1944, Howe was noticed by Detroit Red Wings scout Fred Pinkney and was invited to their camp in Windsor, Ontario. He was signed by the Red Wings to a "C" form and assigned to their junior team, the Galt Red Wings. However, due to a maximum amount of Western players allowed by the league and the Red Wings' preference to develop older players, Howe's playing time with the team was initially limited. In 1945, however, he was promoted to the Omaha Knights of the minor professional United States Hockey League (USHL), where he scored 48 points in 51 games as a seventeen-year-old. While playing in Omaha, Frank Selke of the Toronto Maple Leafs organization noticed that Howe was not properly listed as Red Wings property. Having a good relationship with Detroit coach Jack Adams, he notified Adams of the clerical error and Howe was quickly put on the team's protected list.

Detroit Red Wings

Howe made his NHL debut on October 16, 1946, playing right wing for the Detroit Red Wings, scoring in his first game at the age of 18. He wore #17 as a rookie. However, when Roy Conacher moved on to the Chicago Black Hawks after the 1946–47 season, Howe was offered Conacher's #9, which he would wear for the rest of his career; although he had not requested the change, Howe accepted it when he was informed that "9" would entitle him to a lower Pullman berth on road trips. He quickly established himself as a great goalscorer and a gifted playmaker with a willingness to fight. Howe fought so often in his rookie season that coach Jack Adams told him, "I know you can fight. Now can you show me you can play hockey?" The term "Gordie Howe hat trick" (consisting of a goal, an assist, and a fight) was coined in reference to his penchant for fighting; however, Howe himself only recorded two such hat tricks in his career, on October 10, 1953, and March 21, 1954. Using his great physical strength, he was able to dominate the opposition in a career that spanned six decades (including one game with the Detroit Vipers of the IHL in 1997). In a feat unsurpassed by any hockey player, he finished in the top five in scoring for 20 straight seasons. Howe also scored 20 or more goals in 22 consecutive seasons between 1949 and 1971, an NHL record.

Howe led Detroit to four Stanley Cup championships and to first place in regular season play for seven consecutive years (1948–49 to 1955–56), a feat never equaled in NHL history. During this time, Howe and his linemates, Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay, were known collectively as "The Production Line", both for their scoring and as an allusion to Detroit auto factories. The trio dominated the league in such a fashion that in 1949–50, they finished one-two-three in league scoring. Howe had been in his prime during a defensive era, the 1940s and 1950s, when scoring was difficult and checking was tight.

As his career just started going, however, Howe sustained the worst injury of his career, fracturing his skull after an attempt to check Toronto Maple Leafs captain Ted Kennedy into the boards went awry during the 1950 playoffs. The severity of the fracture was such that he was taken to the hospital for emergency surgery in order to relieve building pressure on his brain. The next season, he returned to record 86 points, winning the scoring title by 20 points.

As Howe emerged as one of the game's superstars, he was frequently compared to the Montreal Canadiens' Maurice "Rocket" Richard. Both were right wingers who wore the number 9, were frequently contenders for the league scoring title, and could also play rough if needed. During their first encounter in the Montreal Forum, when Howe was a rookie, he knocked Richard out cold with a punch after being shoved. The Red Wings and Canadiens faced off in four Stanley Cup finals during the 1950s. When Richard retired in 1960, he paid tribute to Howe, saying "Gordie could do everything."

The Red Wings were consistent contenders throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, but began to slump in the late 1960s. When Howe turned 40 in 1967–68, the league expanded from six to 12 teams and the number of scoring opportunities grew as the game schedule increased. Howe played the 1968–69 season on a line with Alex Delvecchio and Frank Mahovlich. Mahovlich was big, fast, and skilled, and Delvecchio was a gifted playmaker. The three were dubbed "The Production Line 3" and at 40 years old, Howe reached new scoring heights, topping 100 points for the only time of his NHL career with 44 goals and a career-high 59 assists.

Following his personal best 103-point season, however, conflict with the Red Wings organization arose after Howe discovered he was just the third-highest paid player on the team with a $45,000 salary. Furthermore, while owner Bruce Norris increased Howe's salary to $100,000, he blamed Howe's wife, Colleen, for the demand. Howe remained with the Red Wings for two more seasons, but after 25 years, a chronic wrist problem forced him to retire after the 1970–71 season and he took a job in the Red Wings front office. At the beginning of 1972, he was offered the job as first head coach of the New York Islanders, but turned it down.

World Hockey Association

A year later, Howe was offered a contract to play with the Houston Aeros of the newly formed World Hockey Association (WHA), who had also signed his sons Mark and Marty to contracts. Dissatisfied with not having any meaningful influence in the Red Wings' office, he underwent an operation to improve his wrist and make a return to hockey possible, and he led his new team to consecutive championships. In 1974, at the age of 46, Howe won the Gary L. Davidson Trophy, awarded to the WHA's Most Valuable Player (the trophy was renamed the Gordie Howe Trophy the following year). Howe played with the Aeros until 1977, when he and his sons joined the New England Whalers.

Team Canada 74

Gordie was named with sons Mark & Marty (although both were born in the U.S.) to the WHA version of Team Canada for an eight-game series against the USSR National team. This was primarily the same USSR team which had taken the NHL All Stars to the brink of defeat in an epic eight-game series in 1972. Playing on a line with son Mark and Ralph Backstrom, Gordie was a wonder for Team Canada in the series, with 7 points in 7 games and punishing the shocked young Russian stars with his physical play and ability at age 46. Although the WHA lost the series 4 games to one with 3 ties, the series was much closer than expected and Gordie was one of the best players for Canada.

In the final season of the WHA, Gordie had the opportunity to play with Wayne Gretzky in the 1979 WHA All-Star Game. The format of the game was a three-game series between the WHA All-Stars against HC Dynamo Moscow. The WHA All-Stars were coached by Jacques Demers, and Demers asked Howe if it was okay to put him on a line with Gretzky and his son Mark Howe. In Game One, the line scored seven points, as the WHA All-Stars won by a score of 4–2. In Game Two, Gretzky and Mark Howe each scored a goal and Gordie Howe picked up an assist as the WHA won 4–2. The line did not score in the final game but the WHA won by a score of 4–3.

Hartford Whalers

When the WHA folded in 1979, the renamed Hartford Whalers joined the NHL. While the Red Wings still held his NHL rights even though he had retired eight years earlier, the Whalers and Red Wings reached a gentleman's agreement in which the Red Wings agreed not to reclaim him. Howe had experienced dizzy spells in the late part of the 1978–79 WHA season, and underwent an “extensive battery of tests” before making his decision to play the 1979–80 season. The 51-year-old Howe signed on for one final season playing in all 80 games of the schedule, helping his team to make the playoffs with 15 goals. One particular honour was when Howe, Phil Esposito, and Jean Ratelle were selected to the mid-season All-Star Game by coach Scotty Bowman, as a nod to their storied careers before they retired. Howe had played in five decades of All-Star Games and he would skate alongside the second-youngest to ever play in an All-Star Game, 19-year-old Wayne Gretzky. The Joe Louis Arena crowd gave him a standing ovation twice, lasting so long that he had to skate to the bench to stop people from cheering. He had one assist in the Wales Conference's 6–3 win.

Legacy

Howe's name and nickname, "Mr. Hockey", as well as his late wife's nickname as "Mrs. Hockey", are registered trademarks. Howe was also referred to during his career as Power, Mr. Everything, Mr. All-Star, The Most, The Great Gordie, The King of Hockey, The Legend, The Man, No. 9, and "Mr. Elbows" (for his tough physical play). Over the years Howe became good friends with Gretzky, who had idolized Howe as a young player, and who would later break many of Howe's scoring records and milestones.

Another milestone in a remarkable career was reached in 1997 when Howe played professional hockey in a sixth decade. He was signed to a one-game contract by the Detroit Vipers of the IHL and, almost 70 years old, made a return to the ice for one shift. In doing so, he became the only player in hockey history to compete in six different decades at the professional level, having played in the NHL, WHA and IHL from the 1940s to 1990s.

His most productive seasons came during an era when scoring was difficult and checking was tight, and he never scored 50 goals in a single season, yet Howe ranks fourth in NHL history with 1,850 total points, including 801 goals and 1,049 assists. When career regular season goals from both the NHL and the WHA are combined, he ranks first in goals with 975.

At the time of his retirement, Howe's professional totals, including playoffs, for the NHL and WHA combined, were first. He finished with 2,421 games played, 1,071 goals, 1,518 assists, and 2,589 points. Later on, however, Wayne Gretzky would pass him in goals (1,072), assists (2,297), and points (3,369), but not in games played or games played with one team.

Howe played internationally on one occasion, at the 1974 Summit Series.

In May 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder announced that a new international bridge spanning the Detroit River would be named in honour of Howe. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is set to open in 2020.

Retirement

In 1998, The Hockey News released their List of Top 100 NHL Players of All Time and listed Howe third overall, ahead of Mario Lemieux, but behind Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr. Of the list, Orr was quoted as regarding Howe as the greatest player.

On April 10, 2007, Howe was honoured with the unveiling of a new bronze statue in Joe Louis Arena. The statue is 12-feet tall and weighs about 4,500 pounds. The man who was commissioned to create the art was Omri Amrany. The statue contains all of Howe's stats and history. Another statue of Howe was erected in downtown Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, on the corner of 20th Street and 1st Ave. He is depicted wearing a Detroit Red Wings sweater. The statue has since been relocated to the SaskTel Centre.

In 2000, Howe was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.

In February 2011, various groups proposed naming the New International Trade Crossing bridge, a proposed bridge that will connect Detroit and Windsor by linking Highway 401 in Ontario with Interstate 75 and Interstate 94 in Michigan, in honour of Gordie Howe. On May 14, 2015, during an event attended by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, it was officially announced that the bridge would be known as the Gordie Howe International Bridge.

Canadian actor Michael Shanks portrayed Howe in the Hallmark movie Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story. The film aired April 28, 2013, on CBC and on the Hallmark Channel in the U.S. on May 5.

Personal life

Howe met his wife, Colleen, at a bowling alley when she was 17 years old, and they were married four years later on April 15, 1953. A middle school in Abbotsford, British Columbia, is named after Gordie and Colleen Howe, and a campground and football stadium are named after Gordie Howe in his hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Two of their sons, Marty and Mark, were his teammates on the WHA Houston Aeros and the New England (WHA)/Hartford (NHL) Whalers. Mark would go on to have a long NHL career, playing 16 seasons for the Hartford Whalers, the Philadelphia Flyers, and the Red Wings and was one of the dominant two-way defensemen of the 1980s. He followed his father by being elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011. Their third son, Murray, is a radiologist in Toledo, Ohio, and only daughter, Cathy, lives in Lubbock, Texas.

Colleen Howe was one of the founders of the Detroit Junior Red Wings and represented both Gordie and Mark financially during their careers. She died in 2009 at age 76 after a long battle with Pick's disease.

Suffering from dementia and declining health, Howe spent most of his time after his wife's death residing with all four of his children on a rotating basis. While staying at his daughter's home in Texas, he suffered a major stroke on October 26, 2014.

Howe's younger brother, Vic Howe, also played in the NHL appearing in 33 games with the New York Rangers between 1950 and 1955. He died at age 85 in Moncton, New Brunswick on January 31, 2015.

Howe died on June 10, 2016 after several years of declining health that included a stroke.