Gordie Howe: The humble 'Mr. Hockey'
NHL legend revered for his simplicity
One of Harry Neale's favourite stories about coaching Gordie Howe with the New England Whalers had to do with the team curfew.
Neale was 40. Mr. Hockey, who passed away at age 88 on Friday, was 49. The Whalers had a curfew of 11 p.m. while away from Hartford.
During the team's first road trip, Neale went to check on his players. He started at one end of the hall of the team hotel. The first room was Gordie's. Neale could see the light was on in Howe's room from looking underneath the door.
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Neale thought to himself, "I'm not going to knock on Gordie Howe's door and disturb him. He's Gordie Howe."
The next morning, Howe was in the hotel dining room eating breakfast and reading a newspaper when he spotted Neale. Howe summoned over his coach.
Howe told Neale that he stayed up well past 11 o'clock waiting for the curfew check. Howe joked that he needs all the sleep he can get and that he was disappointed that there was no knock on the door.
No special treatment
The message was clear: Howe wanted to be handled like every other player. He didn't want any special treatment.
If you ever wondered why most of the game's superstars – Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky and now Sidney Crosby and Jonathan Toews – are so humble, grounded and low key, well, Howe set the trend in the 1950s.
"I would agree with that," Detroit Red Wings senior vice-president Jim Devellano said on Friday. "As you know Wayne Gretzky idolized Gordie. When you spend time with Wayne you see a lot of similarities. Some of the players you mentioned looked up to Wayne Gretzky as a mentor."
Devellano has been with the Red Wings for 34 years and feels fortunate to have gotten to know Howe well through many encounters and lunches with Mr. Hockey and his wife Colleen.
As a boy growing up in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood of Toronto, Devellano remembers collecting hockey cards. Back then there were 120 players in the six-team NHL.
"I guess you could say in the schoolyard is when I began to practice trading players," Devellano said. "I would trade two Teeder Kennedys for a Gordie Howe to get the complete set."
A couple years ago, when a stroke almost took Howe's life, Devellano wasn't surprised to see Mr. Hockey rebound after a stem-cell procedure in Mexico. He was in good spirits in late March, when a few days before his 88th birthday Howe visited the Red Wings in the dressing room and the Joe Louis Arena crowd sang happy birthday to the legend.
But the Howe family began to share with close friends about a month ago that Gordie's health was slipping.
"I first watched Gordie in the mid-1950s going to the games with my parents," Devellano said. "The Red Wings would visit seven times every year.
'He could do it all'
"It didn't take long for me to realize the best players in the league were Maurice 'the Rocket' Richard and Gordie Howe. They were popular players, but the most effective.
"Howe was the better all-around player because he could score or pass the puck, fight or check. He could do it all. He was probably the best player in the world in the 1960s.
"If he wasn't the best ever, he's certainly right up there. It's Howe, Gretzky, Orr and [Mario] Lemieux. I don't care how you rank them. They are the best players."
If Devellano could tell hockey fans one thing about Howe, what would it be?
"His lack of big-shot-itis," Devellano said. "He would have every right to strut around, think of himself as something special. I loved him for his simplicity. It didn't matter if you were the parking lot attendant, the milkman, the postman or the maid, he treated everyone the same way."
