He had been waiting years for this moment.
His skates hit the ice, and he felt a chill run through his body.
A week ago, he was an obscure player on a minor league team.
Today, he was going to the big show.
He may have been a rookie, but he wanted to make his mark but the players around him were bigger, faster… tougher.
Play started and on pure instinct he raced towards the puck.
But before he could revel in his moment in the spotlight.
His world shook and he fell to the ice.
His vision blurred as the roar of the crowd faded and muffled.
He tried to shake it off and looked up as a hulking figure skated away.
On his back was #9.
This rookie had just been introduced to the most famous elbows in hockey.
And today… so will you.
I’m Craig Baird from Canadian History Ehx!
And this is the story of Mr. Hockey….…Gordie Howe!
I enjoy hockey, but I find it hard to get into it in this era. Sure, I cheer on the Edmonton Oilers during a Stanley Cup run, but there are many things that put a sour taste in my mouth in today’s game.
There were 21 teams when I was born and now there are 32. The NHL feels overstretched and the talent pool diluted.
As players make millions of dollars a year, advertising has creeped into every nook and cranny.
It’s everywhere.
On player’s helmets and jerseys. On tv digital board dynamically change as play happens, and sports betting seems to be encouraged more often than the air we breathe. Maybe I am an old man yelling at a cloud, but it all feels too much.
That is why I look to the past. To that golden era when there were only six teams.
When rivalries were intense and every team seemed to be stacked with Hall of Famers.
Some of the greatest players ever were part of that Original Six Era.
Of all those players, there is one I would consider to be the greatest and most complete hockey player ever.
Gordie Howe.
Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid are all legends of the game, but they don’t compare to the man they called Mr. Hockey.
He is so ingrained in our culture that when Donald Trump started on his rants about making Canada the 51st state, many Canadians responded with “Elbows Up”.
That comes from Gordie Howe, who was known for flattening opposing players in the corners.
His journey to becoming a legend began in a farmhouse in Floral, Saskatchewan just southeast of Saskatoon.
It’s where Gordon Howe was born on March 31, 1928, to Katherine and Albert Howe.
The family moved just nine days after he was born to be closer to his father’s work in Saskatoon.
He was one of the lucky ones to have work during The Great Depression, but the pay was abysmal for the growing Howe family, which included eight siblings.
Those early years were tough, not only were finances tight but also Gordie was often sick.
Much like Clark Kent whose body had to adapt to his new home on Earth to become Superman, the Man of Steel.
So was Gordie.
Living in poverty meant a lack of proper nutrition. Sometimes, the family ate porridge three times a day.
When he was five, Gordie’ calcium deficiency impacted his bone density.
To prevent a serious injury, he was put on a strict vitamin regiment and the family doctor also recommended he hang by his arms from a doorway and swing side to side to straighten his spine.
But that’s not how Gordie became Mr. Hockey.
That happened by chance.
Gordie was about six years old when there was a knock at the door.
A woman was at the door with a sack of items to sell to take care of her ailing husband.
Gordie had $1.50 in milk money, burning a hole in his pocket.
As the woman emptied the sack of her wares a pair of hockey skates fell out.
Gordie’s eyes widened.
He bought them even though they were too big for him.
From then on…For hours on end, he skated on the frozen slough behind the family’s home.
For protection he would tape Eaton’s catalogues to his shins and on weekends, Gordie and about 40 other kids played massive hockey games even as the temperature dipped to -30 Celsius.
The cold didn’t matter to Gordie; he was in love with hockey.
If he was ever coaxed indoors for lunch, he refused to take off his skates, so his mother would put newspaper down on the linoleum.
His dedication began to pay off as Gordie became a gifted young player full of confidence.
But off the ice it was a different story.
When Gordie tried to join a local organized hockey team, the other players made fun of him and he went home.
His father saw his disappointment and said,
“Never take any dirt from nobody because if you do, they’ll keep throwing it on you. That is the way life is.”
Gordie listened…sort of.
Off the ice, he was extremely shy and bashful. His social anxiety was so bad that he once refused to buy himself an ice cream cone with the quarter his father had given him because he felt awkward.
When he wasn’t playing hockey, Gordie was one of the nicest people you could ever meet.
On the ice, he followed his father’s advice and became the meanest SOB on skates.
Generations of hockey players would learn the hard way that if you tangled with Mr. Hockey, you would pay.
Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day.
For now… Gordie was an awkward, talented kid.
Gordie wasn’t yet 16, when he scored nine points in a single game.
He impressed a local businessman so much that he gifted Gordie his first brand-new pair of gloves and shin pads.
But Saskatoon was a long distance from the big six NHL markets, so when he wasn’t on the ice he was working with his father as a labourer.
It made Gordie into an absolute unit of muscle.
His father said that Gordie could pick up a 40-kilogram cement bag in each hand.
When you get a chance, Google “Gordie Howe fishing.”
You’ll see his incredible physique in his prime.
And that is what would be slamming opponents into the boards at high speed.
Word spread to Toronto, Montreal, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Detroit about a young phenom tearing up Saskatoon leagues.
The first to see him for themselves were the New York Rangers, who offered Gordie a visit to the team’s tryout camp in Winnipeg.
It would be his first time away from home.
Still a teenager, he was deeply homesick.
The other young players noticed and quickly targeted him.
Through intense loneliness at training camp, Gordie impressed everyone.
Rangers manager Lester Patrick offered Gordie a contract, but the future Mr. Hockey declined.
He just wanted to go home.
Letting him go would haunt Patrick for the rest of his life.
And as Gordie returned to the safety of home… another team had their eyes on the young wunderkind.
In 1944, Fred Pinkney, was a timekeeper for the Saskatoon Quakers.
He was also…. a scout for the Detroit Red Wings.
He had heard about a kid called Gordie Howe and wanted to see if he was as good as people said.
Fred approached Gordie’s coach Buck Crawford and asked him to point the kid out at the next King George Athletic Club game.
Buck told him to keep an eye on the score because Gordie would be the first one to put a puck in the net.
Minutes later, players skated to center ice.
The puck dropped and Fred watched as a player won the face off, then sped to the net and scored.
He was so impressed he approached Gordie’s father and offered him $100 for him to the night before Gordie turned 16.
That was the legal age to sign a player, and he wanted to have his foot in the door as other clubs both in the NHL and in the minors, were coveting Gordie.
Telegrams arrived at the Howe home constantly.
For Gordie’s mother, who had two sons serving overseas in the war, every telegram brought fear that one of her sons was dead.
Instead, they were offers for Gordie as his 16th birthday approached.
When the day finally arrived, Fred Pinkney was at the Howe’s front door with an invitation to the 1944 Red Wings tryout camp in Windsor, Ontario.
Gordie, worried about being homesick and asked if any other players from Saskatoon would be there.
Fred assured him that there would be, but Gordie couldn’t decide if he wanted to go.
Finally, his father said.
“Do you want to play hockey? Well, then I think here is your opportunity. If you don’t want to, say so.”
That’s all Gordie needed to hear.
He signed on the dotted line.
A few months later Gordie Howe was on a train wearing a brand-new suit.
Fred Pinkney had bought it for him, and he was on his way to try out for the Red Wings.
At the September 1944 training camp, Gordie impressed everyone.
Team owner Jack Adams offered him a contract on the spot.
Gordie agreed to sign and asked for a Red Wings windbreaker.
Then he was on his way to Galt, Ontario.
The historic community is now the southern core of Cambridge, and is located along the Grand River, back then it was home to the Red Wings farm team.
And it is where Gordie had a great first season with them in 1944-45.
He was once again invited to training camp where Jack Adams offered him a contract of $2,700 to play for the Omaha Knights for the 1945-46 season.
This time, Gordie said “I’m not sure I want to sign with your organization Mr. Adams. You don’t keep your word.”
Adams was shocked at the accusation, but as Gordie said he had asked for a Red Wings windbreaker, but he never received it.
Adams rushed to get him a windbreaker and Gordie finally agreed to a contract, and he was off to Omaha where he had a respectable season where he scored 48 points in 52 games.
The next autumn, Gordie was back at the Red Wings training camp but this time he wouldn’t be signing with a farm team.
In 1946 Adams offered him $5,000 to play for the Red Wings.
Gordie had finally made it to the NHL.
On Oct. 16, 1946, in front of 12,756 people Gordie Howe stepped onto the ice at Detroit’s Olympia Stadium.
The 18-year-old Saskatchewan native suited up for the Detroit Red Wings against the defending Stanley Cup champion Toronto Maple Leafs.
It was the opening night of the 1946–47 season and, although nobody could know it then, it was also the beginning of one of the longest and most remarkable careers in hockey history.
To put it into perspective, Bobby Orr hadn’t been born yet.
That wouldn’t happen for another two years.
By the time Gordie Howe played his final NHL game, in 1980 Bobby Orr had already played for a decade, retired and been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
That is how long Gordie Howe played professional hockey.
And he began his illustrious career with a bang.
In his debut Gordie scored the first of what would eventually become 801 regular-season NHL goals, but at the time he wasn’t thinking about records.
He later said his immediate ambition was simply to stay in the NHL for a full season so he could say he’d played a year in the big leagues.
And he did well for a rookie that first season by scoring 22 points in 58 games.
He wasn’t exactly lighting the league on fire, but it was just his first year… and he was still a teenager.
The following 1947-48, season Gordie was put on a line with fellow future Hall of Famers Syd Howe, no relation, and future best friend Ted Lindsay.
They became known as The Production Line and they became unstoppable.
Their first season together, Gordie doubled his scoring by their second season the three finished 1-2-3 in league scoring.
It is something that has never been accomplished since by a single line in the league’s history and it helped establish the Detroit Red Wings as a new powerhouse in the NHL.
In 1949-50, the Red Wings finished first in the league and reached the Stanley Cup Final for the third consecutive season.
They had lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs the previous two seasons, but now they faced the New York Rangers.
After seven hard-fought games the Detroit Red Wings won their first Stanley Cup since 1943.
Unfortunately, Gordie Howe wasn’t there to lift the cup.
A few weeks earlier on March 28, 1950, Gordie slammed headfirst into the boards against the Leafs.
Detroit’s Olympia Stadium went silent as Gordie collapsed on the ice. He was motionless as blood ran down his forehead, nose and cheek.
Red Wings team doctor Dr. Charles Karibo ordered paramedics to rush Gordie to the nearby Harper Hospital.
Gordie was taken away in an ambulance, as his pulse and blood pressure began to nosedive.
Gordie had a lacerated eyeball, fractured nose and cheekbone, and a possible hemorrhaging of the brain.
Gordie was at death’s door as a gifted neurosurgeon, Dr. Frederic Schreiber, drilled into his skull above the eye to relieve pressure on the brain.
After the 90-minute surgery, Gordie was placed in an oxygen tent.
Across Canada, radio stations did not sign off as usual that night.
Instead, they provided constant reports of Gordie’s condition.
Thanks to the incredible work by doctors, Gordie Howe was alive but missed the rest of the playoffs.
So, when the Red Wings finally won the Stanley Cup, he wasn’t on the ice.
Instead, he was in the crowd wearing a suit and a hat to cover his bandages.
However, he had played in at least one playoff game, so his name was etched on the Stanley Cup
Something Gordie never felt he deserved He said,
“I like to earn things. To be on the ice and sweat and bleed with the boys.”
Despite his near-death experience in the playoffs, Gordie Howe returned to the NHL for the 1950-51 season and quickly became the best player in the league.
He briefly wore a helmet before abandoning it for the rest of his career.
When asked why he wore a cup but not a helmet, he said that you could always get someone to do your thinking for you.
The belief was that wearing a helmet made a player look weak and scared.
It was not until the 1979-80 season, Gordie’s last in the NHL, that helmets became mandatory for all new players.
Unfortunately, that came 11 years too late for Bill Masterton, who died on Jan. 15, 1968, when he hit his head on the ice while playing with the Minnesota North Stars.
For Gordie, the risk was worth it.
Which seems crazy as he led the league in goals, assists and points.
In an incredible stretch from 1950-51 to 1956-57, Gordie won six Art Ross Trophies as the league’s leading scorer, four Hart Trophies as the league MVP and three Stanley Cups with the Red Wings.
In 1952-53, he became the first player in NHL history to record 90 points.
That same season he nearly equalled Rocket Richard’s record of 50 goals in a season but fell just by just one goal.
As he dominated the NHL his personal life blossomed.
He met a young woman named Colleen Joffa, quickly fell in love and married on April 15, 1953.
Colleen and Gordie became inseparable.
Off the ice he was shy, and quiet where Colleen was confident and had a keen business sense.
They were the perfect match.
As he broke records on the ice, she invested in various ventures and formed Power Play International to manage the business interests of the family.
During their marriage, she created the first Junior A level hockey team in the United States, the Detroit Junior Red Wings –, organized the construction of Michigan’s first public indoor rink and ran for Congress.
She even trademarked her husband’s name, his nickname of Mr. Hockey and her own nickname of Mrs. Hockey.
She did all of this while also raising four children, including Marty and Mark who both went on to play in the NHL.
Mark would eventually join his father in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
It could be argued; Colleen was the first woman to be a sports agent but unfortunately, she couldn’t directly negotiate Gordie’s contracts with Red Wings GM Jack Adams.
He would never allow a woman to dictate salary terms to him.
Instead, each season, Gordie went into Adams’ office and negotiated his contract.
Unlike Colleen, he was too trusting of management.
Assured by Adams that he was the highest paid player in the league, Gordie always accepted a $1,000 raise per season and believed he was being fairly treated.
In truth, Gordie wasn’t the highest paid player in the league, or even on his own team.
Even as his best friend, Ted Lindsay, formed the first players association, Gordie was hesitant to be involved because of his belief he was being fairly treated.
Meanwhile, Adams was taking advantage of his good nature, and he wouldn’t find out until ten years into his career that he was the third-highest paid player on the team and that he had been financially exploited for a decade.
His teammate, Bobby Baun, never scored more than 20 points per season, and he was making nearly $20,000 more than Gordie.
Gordie confronted Red Wings’ owner Bruce Norris in 1969, and was offered a $100,000 contract and said,
“Gordie, you never asked for anything more. I’m a businessman.”
The great irony was that as quiet and trusting as Gordie was off the ice, he was the complete opposite on the ice.
In the rough world of hockey, if a player hit him, Gordie never lashed out, instead, like a predator waiting for prey, he waited until the time was right.
It could come that later game, or later that season… but you could NEVER escape Gordie’s wrath on the ice.
He was vengeful but for good reason, he was incredible on skates, and some players had no choice but to play dirty.
Jean Beliveau described getting Gordie off the puck as akin to wrestling with a telephone pole.
Toronto’s Paul Henderson called him as mean as a rattlesnake on the ice.
Gordie’s name is so synonymous with toughness that the term Gordie Howe Hat Trick is a part of the lexicon.
That happens when a player scores a goal, registers an assist and takes part in one fight in a game.
However, if you look at the stats Gordie did this twice in his long career.
Because of his reputation, every season new player tried to prove themselves by going up against Gordie Howe.
They would soon learn that it always ended the same… with regret.
Rookies would rue the day they took on Mr. Hockey.
Lou Fontinato of the New York Rangers was considered one of the toughest players in the league, and he was itching to take down Gordie.
When he had his chance, he hit Gordie in the face with his stick and split his lip.
As he had many times before, Gordie waited.
Later that season, the Red Wings and Rangers faced off at Madison Square Garden.
On Feb. 1, 1959, Detroit’s Red Kelly and the Rangers’ Eddie Shack were fighting near the New York net.
Fontinato was leaning on the net watching them and before he knew it, Gordie grabbed him by the hockey sweater and punched him in the face.
Detroit’s Lefty Wilson watched from the bench and said.
“With every blow you could hear something break. Squish Squish.”
Fontinato fought back as best as he could, and even gave Gordie a black eye, but he got the worst of it.
He spent the night in the hospital with a broken nose and dislocated jaw.
That night Gordie sent a message to the league and from then on, every rookie and player thought long and hard before taking aim at Mr. Hockey.
After becoming an NHL dynasty in the 1950s, the Detroit Red Wings slowly fell from grace.
Great players were traded away, and the Stanley Cup wins became a distant memory.
Gordie Howe never left.
He continued to deliver for the team.
In 1962-63, he won his sixth Art Ross trophy as the leading scorer in the NHL. That same season, he won his sixth Hart Trophy as league MVP.
Only one player, has won more Hart Trophies.
Wayne Gretzky.
Meanwhile as the Swinging Sixties came to an end Gordie scored103 points during the 1968-69 season.
He had the highest scoring season of his career at 41 years old and is the only NHL player to ever do it.
Most incredibly, apart from the serious injury he suffered during the 1949-50 Stanley Cup Final, Gordie rarely missed a game due to injury.
From 1950-51 to 1969-70, he never played in fewer than 64 games in 70 games season.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t have injuries.
By 1970-71 though, a nagging wrist problem finally started to slow the ageless wonder down.
That means he only played in 63 games and only scored 52 points.’
The lowest since his sophomore season in the league.
He said,
“My legs didn’t bounce back last year the way they used to. I remember they were hurt, or that I was bruised.”
Gordie finally realized that it was time to retire.
The Red Wings immediately appointed the 43-year-old as the team’s vice president with a salary of $75,000.
While it was a nice gesture, Gordie soon realized he was nothing more than a prop.
He had no real duties, and no say in how the club was run.
Often, his only job was to appear at functions as a team representative.
During one of those events, he met an 11-year-old hockey phenom I’ve already mentioned.
He would one day break many of his records, I’m talking of course of… Wayne Gretzky.
Gordie called his time in the position as the Mushroom Treatment. “That’s when they keep you in the dark and come in once in a while to throw a little manure on you.”
Gordie still longed to be on the ice.
Part of him regretted hanging up his skates.
He would have a chance to dust them off and even make a family affair thanks to a new league.
The World Hockey Association.
In 1971, sports promoters Dennis Murphy and Gardy Davidson, with the help of Western Canada Hockey League owner Bill Hunter, formed the World Hockey Association.
Within a year, their league had 10 teams scattered around North America.
Some cities like Edmonton, Quebec City, Winnipeg, San Francisco and Houston, had no NHL team, others competed with it for fans.
To survive, this new league needed the best players possible.
At the time, the NHL’s average salary was $25,000 and most players had little control over their careers.
The WHA wanted to change that.
They offered salaries that exceeded $100,000 per year, and the league drew in several high-profile NHL players including future Hall of Famers Bernie Parent and Gerry Cheevers.
Their biggest get was Bobby Hull, who signed a 10-year contract with the Winnipeg Jets for a record $1.75 million with a $1 million signing bonus.
To pay his signing bonus, all the team owners pooled their money together.
His defection to the WHA instantly lent credibility to the new league.
As this happened Gordie Howe was twiddling his thumbs at his Detroit Red Wings desk waiting for something to do.
He had already received the Order of Canada, his #9 retired by the Red Wings and the Hockey Hall of Fame waived its usual waiting period to immediately induct him.
But Gordie was bored and disenchanted with the Red Wings.
Two years into retirement he beamed with pride when Mark and Marty signed four-year contracts with the WHA’s Houston Aeros on June 5, 1973
He also got an idea.
He approached Houston’s management and asked them why have two Howes when you could have three.
Well… let’s be honest… the deal was successfully orchestrated by Colleen Howe.
Within weeks, Gordie had signed a one-year contract to play for the Houston Aeros.
He was 45 years old and returned to professional hockey on Oct. 13, 1973.
Despite his age, Gordie immediately had an impact as the Aeros won the league championship, the Avro Cup, in his first season.
He also finished third in league scoring, with 100 points in 76 games.
It was clear that Gordie was still a force to be reckoned with.
To top it off, he won the Gary L. Davidson Award as the league MVP.
The next season, the award was renamed The Gordie Howe Trophy.
While he initially signed a one-year contract, Gordie decided to put pen to paper for another season with Houston.
Once again, he led them to the Avco Cup and recorded 99 points in 75 games.
Gordie also kept his fierce reputation intact.
He may have been approaching 50 but in a game against the Phoenix Roadrunners, Robbie Ftorek broke Marty Howe’s cheekbone.
Marty told his father it was okay and that Robbie was a friend and a mentor when they played earlier for Team Canada.
That didn’t matter.
If you messed with his sons, you messed with him… and by now we know what happens with you mess with Mr. Hockey…
The next time the two teams faced each other, Gordie found Robbie and hit him in the face with his stick.
Meanwhile, the Howes continued to play and win with Houston but by the beginning of the 77/78 season the team was facing financial hardship.
The trio was traded to the New England Whalers for two seasons where they crossed paths with Wayne Gretzky.
During a game in the 1978-79 season, Gretzky was giddy with excitement to share the ice with his idol, even though they were opponents. In his first shift, Gretzky stole the puck off Gordie’s stick. As he skated away, his hand suddenly went numb when Gordie smacked his stick against his thumb.
And said
“Kid, don’t ever take the puck from me again.”
Knowing he got off easy Gretzky responded,
“No sir, I never will!”
By the end of that 78/79 season the great WHA experiment finally ended.
The NHL negotiated the merger of the two leagues and four teams, the Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets joined the league.
That meant at the age of 50, Gordie Howe would be making his return to the league he dominated for decades.
It didn’t matter he was a grandfather. In the 1979-80 season, he played every single game and recorded 41 points that season, Gordie was also selected to play in the All-Star Game.
It would be played at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.
The crowd gave him two standing ovations, and eventually Gordie had to skate out to centre ice to ask the crowd to stop cheering so the game could be played.
His final professional game would be played a few months later on April 11, 1980.
Gordie and his sons Mark and Marty Howe faced the Montreal Canadiens in Game 3 of their Stanley Cup Preliminary Round series at the Hartford Civic Center.
There was no planned farewell lap, no final goal, and no certainty that Howe would never play again.
The Whalers had lost the first two games of the best-of-five series in Montreal.
They had to win Game 3 to keep their season alive.
Gordie had not announced his retirement before the game, but the team loss meant the end.
And at 52 years and 10 days Gordie Howe officially retired from professional hockey.
He is the oldest player in the history of the league, and his statistics are mind boggling.
In 2,186 NHL and WHA regular games, he scored 976 goals, 1,383 assists and 2,358 points.
In 235 playoff games, he added another 96 goals, 135 assists and 231 points.
His 801 NHL goals, 1,049 NHL assists and 1,850 points were all records when he retired.
All three were broken by Wayne Gretzky.
When his career finally came to an end, Gordie settled into his role as a living legend.
Everywhere he went, he was seen as Mr. Hockey. When The Hockey News ranked him the third greatest hockey player ever after Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr, both players disagreed, stating Gordie was the greatest player ever.
He even came out of retirement once again, albeit briefly.
In 1997, he signed a one-game contract to play with the Detroit Vipers of the International Hockey League at the age of 69.
With that one game, he became the only person in hockey history to play in six different decades at the professional level.
He also received multiple honorary degrees, and in 2000 he was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame.
In 2007, he was honoured with a statue outside Joe Louis Arena next to the Gordie Howe Entrance.
Another statue was unveiled around that same time in downtown Saskatoon.
But amid all the honours, there was heartache.
On March 6, 2009, his beloved wife Colleen died from the neurological disease Pick’s Disease.
After her death, Gordie devoted himself to charitable causes related to degenerative diseases and founded the Gordie and Colleen Howe Fund for Alzheimer’s.
In 2013, Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story starring Michael Shanks as Gordie aired on CBC.
The film earned four Canadian Screen Awards and won eight Leo Awards.
A year later, Gordie released his memoir Mr. Hockey: My Story.
Sadly, Gordie’s final years were marked by his own struggles with dementia. On June 10, 2016, he died at the home of his son Murray at the age of 88.
At the time, I was the City Hall Reporter at the Regina Leader-Post.
I remember when his death was announced that a quiet hush fell over the newsroom.
I was born after Gordie retired, but I knew a Canadian icon was gone.
The next day, the front page of the newspaper was completely black except for the image of Gordie Howe in his Detroit Red Wings sweater.
Gordie’s funeral was held on June 15, 2016.
His cremated remains, along with Colleen’s, were interred at the base of his statue next to the SaskTel Centre.
I visited his statue in the summer of 2025. I made sure that the picture I took featured his legendary elbow in my face.
A year later, on July 24, 2026, the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Windsor and Detroit opened to traffic.
That opening was a bit delayed for…reasons.
But Gordie Howe was one of those sports figures who became so well-known that he feels like he’s been woven into the very fibres of our culture.
In 1986, the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released. For the entire film, the character of Cameron Fyfe, played by Alan Ruck, wears Gordie’s Red Wings jersey despite the film taking place in Chicago.
John Hughes, the film’s writer and director, grew up idolizing Gordie.
He had a terrible relationship with his father and looked to his grandfather as a fatherly figure.
His grandfather was a devoted Red Wings fan and often took Hughes to games where he saw Gordie play.
And here’s something you might not know…Gordie personally provided the jersey in the film.
It wouldn’t be the first time he was featured on screen.
(BEAT)A few years later in 1992, the 16th episode of The Simpsons third season featured Gordie as a major plot point.
In the episode, titled Bart the Lover Bart catfishes his teacher Edna Krabappel after seeing her personal ad in the newspaper.
Pretending to be a man named Woodrow, the two converse over letters until Edna asks for a picture.
To keep her from discovering the truth, Bart sends her a picture of Gordie Howe.
Originally, the picture was going to be of football star Johnny Unitas, but they couldn’t get the rights to his image.
Producer Al Jean, a Red Wings fan, suggested Gordie Howe instead.
When Gordie was contacted, he was hesitant, but Colleen thought it would be great.
The episode ended with a display of Gordie’s NHL and WHA statistics.
Ironically, despite my deep love for hockey history, my first exposure to Mr. Hockey wasn’t through seeing video of his playing days.
It was when I was a young lad, watching my favourite show,
The Simpsons… and they just happened to feature an episode of Mr. Hockey as a plot point.
*sources*
- Mr. Hockey My Story by Gordie Howe
- Gordie A Hockey Legend by Roy MacSkimming
- NHL: https://www.nhl.com/player/gordie-howe-8448000/stats
- Canadian Encyclopedia: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/gordie-howe
- Sportsnet: https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/gordie-howe-life-legacy-mr-hockey/
- Macleans: https://macleans.ca/society/gordie-howe/
