Mr. Hockey My Story (2 page)

His longevity as a professional hockey player reflects his absolute passion for the game. I believe it was his passion to play that set him apart from his peers. As a young teenager, meeting Gordie for the first time, I already knew he was special. That feeling has not changed. Gordie Howe will always be one of my heroes. And, in my opinion, he will always be the best that ever played.

Bobby Orr

I
NTRODUCTION

T
he puck felt good in my hand.

I’d have liked it to be on my stick, but I suppose those days are long past. The only time I get on the ice now seems to be when I’m part of an occasion, which is exactly where I found myself last New Year’s Eve. Detroit was hosting the 2014 NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor game between the Red Wings and the Maple Leafs. The next day, more than a hundred thousand people would turn up at Michigan Stadium to watch Toronto beat Detroit in a shootout. But New Year’s Eve was for the old-timers.

The Wings had asked my old linemate Ted Lindsay and me to drop the ceremonial first puck in an alumni game between the two clubs. Steve Yzerman, retired since 2006, looked like he could still be playing in the NHL as he lined up to take the draw against Leafs captain Darryl Sittler. The weight of the rubber puck was pleasing as I bounced it in my hand and waited for them to come to the circle. I glanced over at Ted, as I had so many times before, and it seemed like it hadn’t been that long ago that we’d lined up to take the draw for real. We’ve both added more wrinkles and our hair is
thinner, but he didn’t look that much different to me than when we were on the Production Line together.

More than thirty-three thousand fans had shown up at Comerica Park, the Tigers’ home field, to watch hockey. I’ve been around Detroit so long that I can remember taking batting practice in old Tiger Stadium, when it was still called Briggs Stadium. As much as things change, though, they also stay the same. Hockey, for one, has remained a constant in my life. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in an NHL arena, at a local rink, or on a sheet of ice in the middle of a baseball stadium, when I’m around the game I feel at home. It’s a good thing, too, since I was such a shy kid. No matter how many people were in the stands, though, nerves were never a problem for me when I played. The ice was the one place I always felt comfortable. Stepping in front of a packed house at Comerica Park, I found that what was true then still held true that day. The faces may have changed, but when I waved to the crowd, it felt as familiar as if I were back at Olympia Stadium. I’m lucky for that. I’m lucky in a lot of ways.

I was fortunate enough to play professional hockey for thirty-two years. If you’d asked me when I broke into the league if I thought I’d still be playing five decades later, I would have said you were crazy. When the Red Wings called me up from their farm club in Omaha in 1946, I just wanted to last the season. From then on, if the team decided to bring me back for another year, I wasn’t going to complain. From the time I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was play hockey. Even at the end of my career, when I was the only guy in the dressing room with grandkids, strapping on my pads every day still felt as normal as ever. The air turning chilly in the fall was like nature’s way of telling me to put on my skates and get back to work.

I ended up watching a lot of the world go by while on the ice. My NHL career started a year after Harry Truman replaced Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. When I retired, Ronald Reagan was only a year away from taking over from Jimmy Carter. In between, I saw seven American presidents pass through office and even had a chance to meet some of them. It was a good long run by nearly any measure. During my first season with the Red Wings, Jackie Robinson was still a year away from breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier. When I hung up my skates for the first time in 1971, he’d already been in the Hall of Fame for a decade. In Detroit, we had front-row seats for the birth of Motown. I moved there during the city’s boomtown years, when Michigan was the center of the U.S. automotive industry. On the ice, the Red Wings piled up four Stanley Cup victories, and we probably should have won a few more. I managed to put the puck in the net 975 times in my professional career, while setting up scores for teammates on more than 1300 other occasions. Away from the arena, I was lucky enough to meet my beautiful wife, Colleen, and together we raised four wonderful children.

I like to think that I’m a family man first and a professional athlete second. With that said, though, I also know that I have hockey to thank for so many of the good things that have happened to me over the years. The game has blessed me with a lifetime of memories. I’ve had a chance to share some of them before, but I’ve never taken the time to tell my whole story in one place. It’s humbling to think that a shy kid from Saskatoon could write a book that anyone would want to read. As with so many things in my life, I’m grateful—and still somewhat amazed—to be given the opportunity.

•   •   •

S
ince retiring, I’ve often thought that some of the happiest years of my career were spent in Houston, where I had the chance to play with my sons Marty and Mark. I wasn’t the player then that I was during the glory years in Detroit, but how many fathers get the chance to play professional hockey with their kids? It’s what brought back the fun and excitement of my youth and kept me going into my fifties. Standing rinkside at the Winter Classic watching Mark—who’s best remembered as a Flyer, but ended his career in Detroit—take the ice for the Red Wings, it was easy for me to recall our years playing together in the World Hockey Association. Now retired for nearly twenty years and nursing a couple of bad disks in his back, I thought Mark still looked as smooth as ever on the ice. The countless laps he put in skating around the rink as a kid were clearly enough to last him a lifetime.

The alumni game, as exhibition matches often do, started slowly. Time away from the ice combined with a windy day and below-freezing temperatures had everyone more concerned about staying warm and healthy than trying to make a big play. Both squads were filled with players who knew each other well. The Leafs had brought fan favorites such as Doug Gilmour, Wendel Clark, and Borje Salming, while the Red Wings had matched with stalwarts like Brendan Shanahan, Igor Larionov, Sergei Fedorov, and Nick Lidstrom. Everyone was happy to laugh with old teammates and share a smile with former rivals—at least at the start of the game.

Compared to my era, NHL hockey has evolved in ways that are both good and bad. When I watched the alumni game, it was comforting to see that at least one thing hasn’t changed: The will to win never goes away. The boys on the ice may have lost a few
steps, but once they’d warmed up, they couldn’t help themselves. It didn’t matter how long they’d been retired, who they were playing, or where the game was being held—no one wanted to lose. At one point, Tiger Williams even started chirping at Chris Chelios for celebrating a goal with a little too much gusto. He wasn’t kidding, either. I might have some quibbles with the way the game is played today, but at its core, I know that hockey will always be hockey no matter what year the calendar reads.

Today’s brand of NHL hockey is still exciting, but if I had my way I’d like to see more creativity come back into the game. When I played, there were more opportunities to carry the puck, but you don’t see that as much anymore. As the game has evolved, the schemes have become more sophisticated. My old coach Tommy Ivan used to say there were only two moves you needed to know in order to play defense: either you knock the puck away from the man or you knock the man off the puck. It worked for us in the 1950s, but the game has changed a lot since then and, unfortunately, not all for the better. I don’t need to rehash criticisms of the neutral zone trap and other systems used to slow down talented players, except to say that they’ve choked some of the excitement from the game. These days, offenses are often reduced to dumping the puck into the other team’s zone or chipping it off the boards. There’s not enough room for players to generate speed through the neutral zone and make a play. This isn’t to say that the game isn’t good; far from it.

The NHL used to be limited to Canadian and American players, but now it includes the best players from around the world. I thought about that at the alumni game while watching Mark take a shift with Slava Fetisov, his old defense partner. Slava was there along with the other members of the so-called Russian
Five—Igor Larionov, Slava Kozlov, Sergei Fedorov, and Vladimir Konstantinov—who played together in Detroit in the 1990s. Seeing Russians and Europeans in the NHL is commonplace now, but it still feels relatively new to players of my generation. It’s made the game better.

When I’m asked to compare players from different eras, my answer is always the same. I’m convinced that great players would fare well no matter when they played. If Sidney Crosby had been around in the 1950s, he’d have been as good then as he is now. Likewise, Maurice Richard, Bobby Orr, and Wayne Gretzky would be standouts in any era. As for Gordie Howe? Well, my sons figure I’d do well in today’s game provided I could figure out how to stay on the ice. I was fortunate enough to win a number of awards during my career, but the Lady Byng Trophy wasn’t one of them. That wasn’t an accident.

To my way of thinking, the two most important things you need to survive in pro hockey are time and space. I found that a surefire way to earn a wider berth the next time I came around was to give someone a good crack. If his teammates took away a message as well, then so much the better. I’m aware that not everyone approved of how I played, but I don’t think any apologies are in order. Early in my career I decided that it was worth it to do whatever was necessary to earn the extra split second it takes to make a pass or shoot the puck. The way I saw it, everyone in the league was getting paid to do a job. Mine was to help my team win games. There were lines I wouldn’t cross, but as long as I did everything in my power up to that point, I didn’t have any problem sleeping at night.

These days, officials might see things differently. Back then, we had more leeway to police ourselves, and I think the game was more civilized as a result. Everyone knew the rules, both written
and unwritten, as well as the consequences for breaking them. It bred a lot of respect into the game. The referees still blew their whistles, but the play wasn’t stopped as often as it is now. Of course, today’s game also has its advantages. In my day, there was too much hooking and holding by players who couldn’t keep up. It was terrible. The league has done a good job of cutting down on much of that nonsense. I enjoyed the style of hockey played in my era, but I suppose there will always be trade-offs no matter when you play.

Since retiring, I’m sometimes asked how I managed to play into my fifties. My answer is simple: I loved playing the game. That’s all there is to it. It’s the one thing I have in common with every great player I’ve ever known. It doesn’t matter who you ask—Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau, Bobby Hull, or Bobby Orr—the answer is always the same. I remember being at a banquet in Brampton in the early 1970s and meeting an eleven-year-old Wayne Gretzky, who was already making a name for himself by that point. When I shook his hand, I saw a look in his eye that I recognized straight away. Years later, I wasn’t the least surprised when his name started going into the record books.

If I learned one thing by playing professional hockey for thirty-two years, it’s that you have to love what you do. And that’s not just true for sports. Not long ago, I was talking to our son Murray, who’s a doctor, and told him the same thing. If a day comes when he wakes up and doesn’t love medicine, then he’ll know it’s time to hang up his lab coat and do something else. It wasn’t the first time we’ve had that conversation and it probably won’t be the last. I figure life’s too short to live any other way.

I was lucky enough to find hockey when I was six years old. It’s been eighty years since then, and I still love the game just as much as I ever did. I don’t have to scratch very far beneath the surface
to find the shy kid who was raised in Saskatoon in the Dust Bowl years. Looking back at where I’ve been still makes me shake my head in disbelief. I couldn’t have been any more fortunate. I wish everyone my kind of luck.

One

E
ARLY
D
AYS

H
ow do I even begin to tell the story of my whole life?

Like so many folks, I’ve been a father, a son, a friend, and a husband. I’ve done things I’m proud of and some I wish I could take back. And, of course, there’s hockey. For the Howe family there’s always hockey. I love the game. It was good to me, and when I stop to think about it, I like to believe I gave a little back to it as well. One thing is for certain: I never got tired of lacing up my skates. If I could take a few turns around a sheet of ice right now, I would.

As much as I’m known for playing hockey, the game isn’t where my story starts. In fact, it doesn’t even begin with me. The whole thing was set in motion long before I even showed up. It’s humbling when you stop to think about it. If you make it anywhere in life, you owe that success to the people along the way who stuck up for you, or made sacrifices for you, and gave you a push when you needed it. In my case, those people were my family.

•   •   •

I
n any case, to tell the story right, I need to go all the way back to the beginning—to a little farmhouse with a dirt wall in Floral, Saskatchewan. People often assume that I come from Floral, but that’s not exactly right. I was born there on March 31, 1928, but nine days later the family moved down the road to Saskatoon. There wasn’t much to Floral back then. Just a small collection of houses huddled around a grain elevator. I went back to see our farmhouse once. It was a few miles from the elevator, tiny, made of wood, and built into a hill. I thought about my parents living in such a dingy place, raising a bunch of kids. The high plains of Saskatchewan can get pretty bleak, especially during winter. Their lives weren’t easy; I know that.