Mr. Hockey My Story (7 page)

In my younger days, my hero was Ab Welsh. He was a great player and, like Harry Watson, he carried himself with a lot of class. In 1934, he was a member of the Saskatoon Quakers, the city’s senior team that went overseas to Italy and won a gold medal for Canada at the World Championships. As a kid, I would hang around the
rink all the time, looking for ways to get in. I’d wait outside and when the refreshments arrived for the players, I’d volunteer to help deliver them to the dressing rooms. Other times, I’d wait until the bus pulled up and ask if any equipment needed to be carried. The players knew how much watching a game meant to us, and they treated the local kids pretty well. Maybe they remembered being young players themselves. When I made the big leagues, I know I tried not to forget how I’d felt as a kid. One time, Ab Welsh brought me into the dressing room and I collected an autograph from every player. Then he asked which way I shot. I told him right. He said “good” and handed me a stick. I couldn’t believe it. It was about the first new stick I’d ever had. That kind gesture meant a heck of a lot to me. I walked out of there floating. It was a beautiful stick. Ab Welsh didn’t know it, but he made a friend for life that day. That stick actually ended up having a big influence on my career. It was a lie seven, which refers to the angle of the blade compared to the shaft. I ended up using that same lie for the rest of my career.

Growing up, I had a lot of good hockey role models. Not only did I have local players like Ab Welsh to admire, but we also had Foster Hewitt to describe the players in the NHL. Television wasn’t around yet, but we still knew what players looked like, which helped our imagination when listening to the radio. The credit for that belonged to BeeHive Corn Syrup. You may wonder what corn syrup has to do with hockey. I’ll bet nearly every Canadian kid who grew up around that time could tell you the answer. If you sent a BeeHive Corn Syrup label to the company, they’d send back a picture of the hockey player of your choice. The photo was black and white and a decent size, about four inches by six. My collection of BeeHive photos was a source of much pride. I used to take a route to school that meandered past a lot of different houses. When
I spotted a can of BeeHive Corn Syrup, I’d ask if I could have the label. If they didn’t want to give it to me right then, I’d ask if I could have it when the can was empty. A few weeks later, I’d go back and gather up the label. Stamps cost three cents at the time, so I did odd jobs to earn enough money for postage. It was worth it.

With only 120 players in the league, I had 180 pictures. Every time you sent a request and they didn’t have the player you wanted, you’d get a photo of Turk Broda instead. He was Toronto’s goalie starting around 1935 or ’36. I ended up trading a lot of Turk Brodas for other players to fill out my collection. I would stare at those pictures and wonder if someday a kid would ask for a BeeHive photo of Gordie Howe. Sitting in our drafty little house in Saskatoon, that seemed a million miles away. I couldn’t know it at the time, but I’d end up realizing those childhood dreams much sooner than I ever would have dared to guess. And when I did arrive in the NHL, would you believe who I scored my first goal against? Turk Broda.

Three

J
UNIOR
H
OCKEY

M
y first training camp came in 1943, when I was only fifteen. With so many NHL players serving in the war effort, teams were searching high and low for prospects who could fill in. The Howe family, like so many across the country, knew more than we would have liked to about that war. I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t get a decent night’s sleep until my brothers Norm and Vern returned home safely. Despite the uncertainty of the time, NHL teams managed to keep playing a full fifty-game schedule. But they did have extra roster spots to fill, which meant a lot of young players got a look earlier than they might have otherwise. Quite a few even broke into the league during those years. I wasn’t among them quite yet, but the circumstances did allow for my first taste of the big leagues. I can’t say it went as well as I would have liked.

Prairie boys must have played some good hockey back then, because with so many able-bodied men off fighting in the war,
NHL scouts became pretty familiar with cities, towns, and whistle-stops all over western Canada. A scout for the New York Rangers, Russ McCrory, watched me play that season and apparently liked what he saw. From what I heard later, I think a few different teams were interested in me at the time, but Mr. McCrory was the first to come by the house. We sat down and he talked to my parents while I mostly listened. The talk went on for a while as he explained what the New York Rangers could do for me and what it would be like to attend the team’s training camp. In the end, he asked if I wanted to travel to Winnipeg later that summer, when the Rangers would be holding camp with players from the big club. I’d never set foot out of Saskatchewan and certainly hadn’t been anywhere on my own. I was just a fifteen-year-old kid, and a shy one at that, but I loved hockey more than anything and the thought of skating with some of the best players in the world trumped my nervousness. I agreed to make the trip to Winnipeg and we’d see where things went from there.

Until that point, the farthest away from Saskatoon I’d ever been was Regina, about 150 miles south, and that was only once for a hockey game. It doesn’t seem too far now, but when I’d gone there the year before it had felt like a world away. It was my first road trip with teammates and we were excited about it for weeks. What could be better than traveling with your friends to play hockey? Getting on the train to Winnipeg was different. I was alone on an overnight trip to another province more than five hundred miles away. When the train pulled into the station in Winnipeg, no one from the team was there to meet me. I asked for directions to the Marlborough Hotel, where they’d told me I was staying, and found my way over. My roommate was a goaltending prospect, but we didn’t get to know each other very well. Early in camp, he took a puck in the
mouth and that was it for him. I ended up staying alone, which didn’t help the feelings of isolation that had already set in.

The Rangers held training camp at the Amphitheatre, a big old arena in Winnipeg that was knocked down in the mid-1950s and replaced by the Winnipeg Arena. Now even that’s gone, and the Jets play in a new building downtown. On the first day of camp, I remember being nervous as I walked from the hotel to the Amphitheatre. My nerves didn’t settle down once I got there. The first person I went to see after I signed in was the trainer, who handed out the equipment. All I’d brought with me were my skates, so I needed to be outfitted from top to bottom. To his frustration, I couldn’t answer many of his questions. I didn’t even know my size. When he asked what position I played, I said, “All of ’em,” because it was true. I’d played goalie, defenseman, and forward. I don’t know if he thought I was some kind of smart-ass or what, but he needed to get me out the door so he asked what position I’d
like
to play. I honestly didn’t know why the Rangers had brought me in, so I told him defenseman. I was comfortable on the blue line and figured I’d have as good a shot playing there as anywhere else. After being on the right wing for so many decades, it’s strange to think that my first tryout as a professional hockey player was on defense. After seeing the trainer, my day went only further downhill.

Growing up, we couldn’t afford proper equipment, so I didn’t know what to do with all of the pads and protectors I’d just been given. I sat on a bench in the dressing room with my gear on the floor in front of me and just stared at it for a while. I’d never worn a garter belt before, for one, so I didn’t know what it was for or how to put it on. I was also too shy to ask. Some of the other younger prospects noticed and started hacking on me for just sitting there looking confused. I didn’t like that too much. Who would? It reminded
me of my younger days when kids would tease me at school. I just wanted to figure it all out and get on the ice, where I knew what I was doing. One of the veterans, Alf Pike, eventually came in and sat down across from me. It was a godsend at the time. I watched Alf and mirrored his every move. He put on his right shin pad and I put on my right shin pad. I’ve dressed the same way ever since.

Once I stepped onto the ice, I was able to calm down. You often hear athletes talk about the playing field being a refuge from anything else that might be going on. That might sound like a cliché, but it’s the truth. It was certainly never truer for me than it was at the Rangers’ camp. Everything else around me was foreign—the city, the players, the equipment—but hockey was still the same, and I remember the relief I felt when it was time to play. I also recall thinking that I was capable of skating with everyone in camp. That realization was a boost to my confidence that I took with me after I left. I wasn’t the best guy there, but no one was doing anything that was beyond me. For a raw fifteen-year-old, everything at camp that was hockey related went as well as could be expected. Well, everything except for one incident, that is. During a scrimmage, an older player—Billy Warwick, if memory serves—was coming down the wing. I went low, stuck out my hip, and sent him for a ride almost into the seats. He ended up straddling the boards and he wasn’t too happy about it. Lester Patrick, the Rangers’ general manager, called me over and said, “You don’t do that here.” In the heat of the moment, I thought he was talking about how they played in Winnipeg. I replied, “I’m sorry, sir, I’ve never been here before.” It wasn’t until later that I realized he meant you don’t hit your own teammates like that during practice. Looking back now, I’m not sure my answer was half bad. It was the truth, after all.

When I wasn’t playing hockey, Winnipeg didn’t treat me that well. On the ice, I knew what I was doing. Off the ice, I missed home. For a kid who’d never really been away from Saskatoon or his family, nothing was easy or routine. I think about how shy I was then and wish I could go back to that time, put my arm around a young Gordie, and give him a few pointers. Even basic things like getting something to eat could cause me trouble. I remember that the Rangers had a training table set up at the hotel. Players would grab a plate and line up to eat buffet style. I was so nervous and awkward I couldn’t bring myself to go to the buffet table. All of the big players from the team were there and I didn’t want to bother anyone, so I just stood back and watched. No one was rude or shoved me out of the way, but we had only a short amount of time to eat and everyone needed to get down to business. As it happened, it was Alf Pike who realized I could use a hand. He pushed a few guys out of the way and told them that the kid needed to eat something as well. After I saw how things were done I felt more comfortable getting in there myself, but when you’re shy, doing something for the first time can be especially tough. I’ve always thought it would be easier to be one of those people who doesn’t worry about things like that, but that’s just not me.

If I had been more outgoing at fifteen, there’s a good chance I would have become a New York Ranger instead of spending more than a quarter of a century with the Detroit Red Wings. It’s hard for me to imagine a different life, one in which Colleen and I raised our kids in New York City. A moment that almost made that a reality came later in camp, though. Frank Boucher, the team’s coach, and Lester Patrick called me to their hotel room to talk about what came next. They liked enough of what they’d seen to sign me to a “C” form. At that time, the NHL had three types
of contracts for prospects, known as “A,” “B,” and “C” forms. They were a sweet deal for the teams, but not so great for a player. A “C” form essentially gave your rights to the club that signed you. They told you where to play and they could renew the agreement every year for as long as they wanted. If you eventually did sign a proper contract, your salary and signing bonus were already determined in the “C” form, which really cut down a player’s ability to negotiate early in his career.

Of course, I wasn’t too concerned about contracts and “C” forms at the time. The Rangers also wanted me to attend Notre Dame, a Catholic school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, that was known for turning out good hockey players. It’s a tradition that has lasted. A long list of current and former NHL players went to school there. As it happened, I’m not one of them. I wasn’t Catholic, so my first thought was that Notre Dame would be a bad fit. My next thought was about home. I’d only been in Winnipeg for a short time, but I didn’t like feeling so alone. The thought of living at a boarding school, and a strict one at that, where I wouldn’t know anyone didn’t sound good at all. The school is about twenty-five miles south of Regina, which felt like a long way from Saskatoon. I didn’t want to go to Notre Dame and I didn’t want to sign anything with the Rangers, so I listened to their offer and told them thank you very much, but that I really just wanted to go home. They pressed me a bit, but my mind was made up. When I left for my return trip to Saskatoon, I remained a free agent. It turned out to be the right move.

That said, my lack of formal education has bothered me ever since. Notre Dame is a fine school and I know I would have learned a lot there. I enjoyed a long career as a hockey player and I don’t have many regrets, but I do wish I had gone to school for a few
more years when I’d had the chance. As it played out, though, I was happy to leave camp and head home. That fall, I was back in school in Saskatoon, and by winter I was once again skating on hometown ice, playing hockey with my friends.

•   •   •

D
uring the 1943–44 season, scouts began to take more of an interest in what I was doing on the ice. I was still only fifteen, but I guess they started seeing me as a pretty good prospect. A number of teams sent letters and telegrams to our house, wanting to talk about a contract. In the middle of World War II those telegrams weren’t great for a jittery mother with two sons fighting overseas, Norm in the navy and Vern in the army. Every time one arrived her mind jumped to the worst conclusion. My dad eventually put a stop to it. He told the teams to quit writing. If they wanted to talk about my hockey career, they’d have to come by the house and do it in person. That’s how Fred Pinckney ended up in our parlor.