Longevity is the least glamorous form of greatness, and it is the one Gordie Howe owned completely. He played professional hockey in five different decades, against opponents who had not been born when he started, and he was still useful at an age when most of his contemporaries had been retired for twenty years.
Howe was born in Floral, Saskatchewan, and grew up during the Depression on the prairie, where winter is long and a frozen slough is a free rink. The family had little. He was shy to the point of appearing slow, dropped out of school early, and arrived at his first professional camp as an awkward, enormously strong teenager who was not sure he belonged.
He signed with the Detroit Red Wings and stayed for the better part of a quarter of a century. The nickname came later and was never really challenged: Mr. Hockey. It survived because it was not a marketing idea but a description that people reached for independently, and because nobody could think of anyone it fitted better.
Strength, and the use of it
Howe was ambidextrous enough to shoot from either side, which meant defenders could not predict which way he would release the puck, and he was physically imposing in a way that is difficult to convey from statistics. He had unusually broad shoulders and heavy wrists, and he used them. Opponents learned that retaliation against him was a poor investment, usually repaid at a time of his own choosing.
This produced one of the sport's enduring pieces of folklore. A goal, an assist and a fight in the same game is still called a Gordie Howe hat trick, which is a tribute less to how often he achieved it than to the fact that he was the obvious person to name it after. He was, by the testimony of almost everyone who faced him, the most quietly intimidating player of his era.
The injury that nearly ended it
During a playoff game in 1950 Howe was badly hurt, suffering a serious head injury that required emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. He was not expected to play again, and for a period the concern was simply whether he would recover fully. He returned the following season and went on to produce the most dominant stretch of his career.
He said little about it afterwards, which was characteristic. Howe's public manner was so mild that it startled people who had watched him work. He signed autographs patiently, spoke in short sentences, and gave almost no sign of the competitive streak that teammates described as bottomless.
Detroit, and a long argument about money
For most of his Red Wings career Howe was paid less than his value, in a league where players had no agents, no free movement and very little information. He discovered at one point that a teammate he outperformed was earning more than he was, a revelation that shaped his later willingness to challenge management. The era's power imbalance was almost total, and Howe's eventual departure from Detroit was coloured by it.
He retired in 1971 into a front-office position that turned out to be largely ceremonial. He was restless, his wrist had been repaired, and he was in his forties with nothing to do. Then an idea arrived that nobody had seriously entertained before.
He was the most complete player the sport produced, and the most reluctant to say so about himself.
Playing with his sons
The World Hockey Association, a rival league competing with the NHL for players, offered Howe a contract with the Houston Aeros, where his sons Mark and Marty had also signed. A father playing on a professional line with his two sons had no real precedent in major team sport. It could easily have been a stunt. It was not: Howe was productive, the team was successful, and Mark went on to a long and distinguished career of his own.
The WHA years mattered beyond the novelty. Howe later returned to the NHL when the leagues merged, and played a full season in his fifties. He appeared in an All-Star Game at an age when most participants were children during his first retirement, and received the longest ovation of the night.
Howe's final NHL season came after the league absorbed several WHA clubs, which meant he faced opponents whose fathers he had also played against. He is the only player to have appeared in the NHL across five separate decades.
The measure of him
Comparisons between eras are usually unsatisfying, and Howe is the hardest case of all, because the thing that distinguished him was time. Wayne Gretzky, who grew up idolising him and later broke many of his records, has been consistent in describing Howe as the greatest player he ever saw, and has pointed out that the records were accumulated against defences that were permitted to do things no modern defence would be allowed.
What is beyond argument is the combination. Plenty of players have been more skilled in a given season, and plenty have been more feared. Nobody has matched the span, and nobody has matched the particular mix of touch and menace that made him both the leading scorer and the last man anybody wanted to provoke.
After the ice
Howe spent his retirement in a near-permanent public role, travelling to arenas, charity games and card shows, and treating supporters with a patience that embarrassed younger players who watched it. He and his wife Colleen, who effectively managed his affairs and was an influential figure in American youth hockey in her own right, remained inseparable until her death.
He died in 2016. The tributes converged on the same point: that he had been not only the best player of his generation but the most approachable, and that the gap between how he played and how he behaved afterwards was the most remarkable thing about him.
