HOWE’S IMPACT IS IMMEASURABLE
Red Wings great left major mark on game, lives
Gordie Howe was playing at the old Olympia, and an opposing player hit him and cut his hand. He had to leave the ice and go to the trainer’s room, where John (Jack) Finley, the Detroit Red Wings’ longtime physician, began stitching him up carefully.
“Hurry up,” Howe said. “I’ve got to get back out there.”
As Finley sped up, Howe added, “By the way, Jack, don’t go anywhere. Because the guy who did this is going to be in here real soon.”
Scotty Bowman told that story June 10, after the death of Howe, Gordie Howe, center, plays Oct. 26, 1967, against the Seals.
88, was announced. Just as Wayne Gretzky told ESPN about being with Howe at a White House dinner, and there were so many forks that Gretzky asked his childhood hero which one they should use.
“Kid, I have no idea,” Howe said. “I’ll follow the president, and you follow me.”
Who really follows Gordie Howe? Nobody can. Nobody will give us stories like that, or memories like those, not 25 years with a single team, not five decades of hockey, not a standing ovation at Joe Louis Arena as a whitehaired, 51-year-old All-Star.
You lose athletes like this, and there’s a hole on the shelf forever. Nobody slides over. Nobody fills the space.
LARGER THAN LIFE
Who didn’t know Howe in Detroit? Or Michigan? Who doesn’t have some kind of story? As with legendary Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell, whose viewing drew more than 10,000 people to Comerica Park, it seems everyone who ever shook Howe’s hand was moved to remember it as a personal highlight. Someone will boast how he chatted with a youth hockey team and tell you how he signed autographs in a parking lot, and someone will detail how, if a child didn’t say please or thank you, he’d mark the child’s palm with the pen.
As a child, Howe, born in a tiny farm town named Floral, Saskatchewan, grew strong by carrying buckets of water into the house (his family had no indoor plumbing). Later he hauled bags of cement when he quit school to work in construction.
As a teen player, he was 6 feet tall and ambidextrous. His physique grew so chiseled, he could crush your hand when he shook it. His signing bonus with the Red Wings was a team jacket.
“After I finished a game at the Olympia, I used to walk home,” he once told me. “Then, when I moved into a residential area, I took the bus down Grand River. You don’t get too flamboyant on $6,000 a year.”
Even so, he quickly fought his way into the league and at 18 was already known as a brute force, at times, almost superhuman. During the 1950 playoffs, Howe suffered a serious injury when his head crashed into the boards, and doctors had to drill a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure. Many thought he’d never play again. He came back the next year and led the league in scoring.
He led the Red Wings to the NHL’s best record for seven years in a row. He won six MVP awards, won six scoring titles, held up four Stanley Cups and kept playing and playing, even as his once brown hair receded on that high, prominent forehead, until he looked more like a professor than a hockey player.