Gordie: A Hockey Legend

Sporting News, The, Dec 26, 1994 by Steve Gietschier

Back in the good old days, hockey teams reserved the sweaters with No. 9 on their backs for their best wingers. The Canadiens' Rocket Richard, the Rangers' Andy Bathgate, the Bruins' Johnny Bucyk and the Blackhawks' Bobby Hull all wore that coveted numeral. But the greatest No. 9 of all and the best hockey player ever, according to MacSkimming, an Ottawa writer, was Gordie Howe of the Red Wings.

Howe played major league hockey for an astounding 32 seasons: 25 with the Wings, six with the Houston Aeros and New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association and a final year with the Hartford Whalers back in the NHL. He scored 801 regular-season NHL goals, 174 in the WHA and another 96 in the NHL and WHA play-offs. He won six scoring titles and seven most valuable player awards and earned first-team All-Star recognition a dozen times. Most impressive, he placed among the top five scorers in the NHL every season in the 1950s and the 1960s. When 20 goals was the standard of excellence, he netted 35 or more nine times.

MacSkimming makes a strong and intelligent case for Howe as the embodiment of the myth of the quintessential hockey player: "Supremely skilled on the ice, rugged physically, resourceful mentally, tough, he is at the same time modest, decent, self-deprecating, and always, always a credit to his sport, his family and himself." It is no wonder Wayne Gretzky settled on No. 99 in Howe's honor.

And yet, this living legend declined MacSkimming's offer to help him write his autobiography. Left to his own devices, MacSkimming has fashioned a very impressive book nonetheless, thoughtful, well-written and marvelously evocative of the era when the NHL had only six teams and the Red Wings were one of the best. The book explores in fine detail the glory years of Detroit hockey when General Manager and Coach Jack Adams built a consistent contender for the Stanley Cup and then capriciously tore it to pieces.

Howe's complex character did not include more than a dose of off-ice leadership. He rarely stood up to management, accepted a deflated salary annually and remained mum when teammate Ted Lindsay tried to hold together the first attempt to form a players association. But on the ice, Howe was a primal force whose superb skills, intuitive power and longevity earned him a singular place in hockey's Pantheon. And now he has been rewarded with an excellent biography.