Gordie Howe played professional hockey across six different decades
Gordie Howe skated in the NHL in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the only player ever to span five decades in that league. Then, in 1997, he took a single shift for a minor-league team, stretching his professional career into a sixth. Mr. Hockey simply refused to stop.
He was born in a farmhouse in Floral, Saskatchewan, one of nine children, and the family moved to Saskatoon when he was nine days old. His father laboured through the Depression, and young Gordie worked construction beside him in summers. Mildly dyslexic but physically precocious, he stood six feet tall in his mid-teens, and worried doctors had him do chin-ups to strengthen his spine. He left school, then left home at 16 to chase hockey. Unusually, he could shoot either left or right with the straight sticks of the era.
A Detroit scout signed him in 1944. He debuted for the Red Wings in October 1946 at 18 and scored in his first game. His rookie number was 17; he switched to No. 9 only after learning it came with a lower sleeping berth on road trains. He fought so often that coach Jack Adams asked whether he could also play hockey. Scoring, setting up a teammate and brawling in the same night is still called a Gordie Howe hat trick, though he pulled off that combination only twice.
He answered Adams emphatically: six scoring titles, six Hart Trophies as most valuable player, four Stanley Cups and 21 straight years among the league's top ten scorers. He was prized as a complete forward, strong in defence as well as attack. When he retired in 1971, his 801 goals and 1,850 points were NHL records that stood until Wayne Gretzky broke them.
Retirement did not take. Two years later, in his mid-40s, he signed with the Houston Aeros of the rival WHA so he could skate alongside two of his sons and was named its most valuable player in 1974. With the New England Whalers he became the first to play a pro game at 50, and when the club entered the NHL as Hartford he returned for 1979 to 1980 as the oldest man ever to play in the league.
Source: Gordie Howe
