Gordie Howe

The Prairie Boy Who Became Mr. Hockey

Gordon Howe was born on March 31, 1928, in Floral, Saskatchewan, a small farming community in the Canadian prairies. He was the fourth of nine children in a family that struggled financially through the Great Depression. He learned to skate on frozen sloughs and ponds near his home and showed exceptional ability almost immediately.

At fifteen he attended a New York Rangers training camp but was told he was too young. He showed up at a Detroit Red Wings camp the following year and never left. He made the NHL roster at eighteen and in 1950 played in his first Stanley Cup Final. He would win four championships with Detroit — in 1950, 1952, 1954, and 1955 — and become the most dominant player of his era.

A Career That Spanned Five Decades

What made Howe extraordinary was not just his skill but his longevity and versatility. He was an elite scorer — he led the NHL in scoring six times — but also a feared physical player. The "Gordie Howe hat trick" became a hockey expression: a goal, an assist, and a fight in the same game. He was ambidextrous, shot from either side, and possessed an upper body strength that made him impossible to knock off the puck.

After retiring from the Red Wings in 1971 with what were then NHL records for goals (786) and points (1,850), Howe came back in 1973 to play with his sons Mark and Marty in the World Hockey Association, suiting up for the Houston Aeros and the New England Whalers. He returned to the NHL with the Hartford Whalers in 1979–80, playing one final season at age 51. He had played professional hockey in five different decades.

His friendship and professional rivalry with Trevor Linden's era of the game was shaped in part by Howe's long shadow — every NHL power forward of the following generation was measured against the standard he set.

Legacy and Later Life

Howe's NHL records were eventually broken by Wayne Gretzky — who idolized Howe and wore #99 partly in tribute to "double 9." Gretzky consistently referred to Howe as the greatest hockey player who ever lived. Howe was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972 and was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players in 2017, a year after his death.

In later life Howe suffered from dementia. In 2014 he was treated with experimental stem cell therapy following a stroke, and his family and medical team reported remarkable improvement. He died on June 10, 2016, at age 88, widely mourned across Canada and the hockey world. The NHL retired his number 9 with the Detroit Red Wings, and several arenas and streets bear his name. He remains the standard by which all hockey immortals are measured.