Gordie Howe
Gordon Howe was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. From 1946 to 1980, he played 26 seasons in the National Hockey League and six seasons in the World Hockey Association ; his first 25 seasons were spent with the Detroit Red Wings. Nicknamed "Mr. Hockey", Howe is often considered the most complete player ever to play the game and one of the greatest of all time. At his retirement, his 801 goals, 1,049 assists, and 1,850 total points were all NHL records that stood until they were broken by Wayne Gretzky, who himself has been a major champion of Howe's legacy. A 23-time NHL All-Star, he shares the NHL record for seasons played with Chris Chelios, and his all-time NHL games played record of 1,767 was only surpassed in 2021 by Patrick Marleau. In 2017, Howe was named one of the "100 Greatest NHL Players".
Howe made his NHL debut with the Red Wings in 1946. He won the Art Ross Trophy for leading the league in points each year from 1950–51 to 1953–54, then again in 1956–57 and 1962–63, for a total of six times, which is the second most in NHL history. He led the NHL in goal-scoring four times. He ranked among the top ten in the NHL scoring for 21 consecutive years. He set an NHL record for points in a season in 1953, a record that was broken six years later. He won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings four times and won six Hart Trophies as the NHL's most valuable player. He also led the NHL in playoff points six times.
Howe retired for the first time in 1971 and was immediately inducted into the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame that same year. He was then inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame the following year but came back two years later to join his sons Mark and Marty on the Houston Aeros of the WHA. Although in his mid-40s, he scored over 100 points twice in six years, won two straight Avco World Trophies, and was named most valuable player in 1974. He made a brief return to the NHL in 1979–80, playing one season with the Hartford Whalers, then retired at age 52. His involvement with the WHA was central to their brief pre-NHL merger success, forcing the NHL to recruit European talent and expand to new markets.
Although Howe was most famous for his scoring prowess, he possessed great physical strength and toughness, and he redefined the ideal qualities of a forward by becoming known for his superior play on both offense and defense. He is the only player to have competed in the NHL in five different decades ; he also played a shift in a 1997 game for the Detroit Vipers of the IHL, playing professional hockey for a sixth decade. He became the namesake of the "Gordie Howe hat trick": a goal, an assist, and a fight in the same game, though he only recorded two such games in his career. He was the inaugural recipient of the NHL Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.
Early life
Howe was born in a farmhouse in Floral, Saskatchewan, the son of Katherine and Albert Howe. 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. Howe 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 age eight. Howe quit school during the Depression to work in construction, then left Saskatoon at 16 to pursue his hockey career.Playing careers
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, he played bantam hockey with the King George Athletic Club in Saskatoon, 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 National Hockey League rights, and to play that year at the College of Notre Dame, a Catholic high school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, that was known for producing good hockey players. However, Howe did not feel that was a good fit for him and wanted to go back home to play hockey with his friends; he 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. Due to the maximum number 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. However, in 1945, he was promoted to the Omaha Knights of the minor professional United States Hockey League, where he scored 48 points in 51 games as a 17-year-old. While playing in Omaha, Frank Selke of the Toronto Maple Leafs noticed Howe's rights needed to be properly listed as Red Wings property. Having a good relationship with Detroit head 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 age 18. He wore number 17 as a rookie. However, when Roy Conacher joined the Chicago Black Hawks after the 1946–47 season, Howe was offered Conacher's number 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 "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 head 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" 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. 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, the latter of which remains a feat never equalled in NHL history. During this time, Howe and his linemates—centre Sid Abel and left winger 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 NHL in such a fashion that in 1949–50, they finished one-two-three in NHL scoring. This was despite the fact Howe's career prime was during a defensive era, when scoring was difficult and checking was tight.
However, as he was emerging as one of the top players in the league, Howe sustained the worst injury of his career - his skull was fractured and his cheekbone and nose were broken after his attempt to check the 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 the pressure on his brain. He missed the rest of the playoffs, but his dominant teammates were still able to win the Stanley Cup.
The next season, 1950–51, Howe came back, responding to his severe injuries by playing in every game, by leading the NHL in goals, assists, and total points, and by winning the scoring title by 20 points. This was the first year of a four-year period of dominance by Howe which the NHL had never seen before. He won four straight scoring titles and in two of the years he led the NHL in both goals and assists, which has only been done by five other players in history. In three of those years, he led the NHL in goals. In 1952–53, Howe became the first NHL player to score 90 points, finishing the season with 95 points and a career-best 49 goals which just missed tying the league record of 50 goals held by Maurice "Rocket" Richard. Prior to Howe, no NHLer had led the NHL in points more than two times in a row. Only three other players have ever matched the feat of winning four straight scoring titles since—Phil Esposito, Jaromír Jágr, and Wayne Gretzky.
As Howe emerged as one of the game's superstars, he was frequently compared to the Montreal Canadiens' Maurice Richard. Both were right wingers who wore #9, were regular challengers for the league scoring title, and could also play roughly if needed. Their first NHL match-up was in 1946, where Richard hit Howe with a hard check and an elbow to the chin. Howe and Richard never got to fight due to Sid Abel intervening. Abel received a broken nose. Howe recalled "They always thought there was bad blood because I hit once coming across the line and he spun like a rocket and fell down. He wasn't hurt that much and I started to laugh. But the laughter stopped when there were eight guys on me". Howe also had a rivalry with the Canadiens' centre Jean Béliveau, who wrote in his autobiography that "trying to strong-arm Gordie off the puck in a corner was akin to wrestling with a telephone pole". The Red Wings and Canadiens faced off in four Stanley Cup Finals during the 1950s, and again in the 1966 final; Detroit prevailed in 1952, 1954 and 1955, but Montreal triumphed in 1956 and 1966.
The Red Wings also had a fierce rivalry with the Chicago Blackhawks who defeated them in the 1961 Stanley Cup Finals. Chicago's Stan Mikita recalled one time as a rookie when he slashed Howe saying "he was an old man who didn't belong on the ice"; later in the season Howe exacted revenge with a check that gave Mikita a concussion. Bobby Hull recalled the times he and Howe played against each other saying 'I enjoyed every high-sticking minute of it', describing Howe as "strong as a bull and tougher than a night in jail". In the 1968 All-Star Game where Hull and Howe were teammates for the first time, Hull said "it was nice finally having Gordie on my side. He was no fun playing against". Hull and Howe would also be rivals in the World Hockey Association, as members of the Winnipeg Jets and Houston Aeros, respectively, and would be reunited as teammates on the Hartford Whalers where they finished off their playing careers.
After being consistent contenders through the 1950s and early 1960s, the Red Wings began to slump in the late 1960s. When Howe turned 40 in 1967–68, the NHL expanded from 6 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 a scorer, and Delvecchio was a gifted playmaker. The three were dubbed "The Production Line 3", and at age 40, Howe scored 103 points, surpassing 100 points for the only time in his NHL career by scoring 44 goals and a career-high 59 assists.
Following his personal best 103-point season, conflict arose with the Red Wings after Howe discovered he was just the third-highest paid player on the team with a $45,000 salary. While team owner Bruce Norris increased Howe's salary to $100,000, he blamed Howe's wife, Colleen, for the demand. Howe remained with the club 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 declined it.
By the end of his NHL career, Howe had won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player six times: 1952, 1953, 1957, 1958, 1960 and 1963—at that time the most of any player, and as of 2025 second only to Gretzky's nine. He also finished second or third in the voting for the Hart a further six times. Howe was named to the NHL's First All-Star Team 12 times and to the Second All-Star Team eight times.
Howe was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1971. His number 9 jersey was retired by the Red Wings on March 12, 1972.