Gordie Howe has Died

johnmd20

mad dog
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Dec 30, 2003
61,996
New York City
This year is unbelievable. Titans of everything (sport, music, etc) just dying. RIP Gordie. You did a nice thing for Mrs. Krebbaple.
 

Vinho Tinto

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SoSH Member
Dec 9, 2003
7,047
Auburn, MA
I remember when I was a little boy watching him play for the Whalers. He was clearly much older than the rest of the players because he looked like my grandfather. It's been so long that I figured that I was making him older than he actually was. Just looked up that he played until he was 51, played in all 80 regular season games, and scored 15 goals in his final season. In every sense of the word he was a legend. Class on and off the ice.

RIP Mr Hockey.
 

mauf

Anderson Cooper × Mr. Rogers
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I didn't realize until just now that the first professional sporting event I ever attended was Gordie Howe's penultimate regular-season home game. Mr. Hockey had just celebrated his 52nd birthday, and the sport by then was dramatically different from it had been when he was its most dominant player. My 6-year old self was infatuated with Blaine Stoughton, a defensively challenged player who was in the midst of what would prove to be a career year, but my Dad kept pointing out Gordie Howe. Turns out my old man knew something -- that gray-haired guy was doing all the little things off the puck, and was one of the 3 or 4 best players on the ice that night, even if my Mom thought he was foolish for playing without a helmet. I never met Gordie Howe, but e. veryone I knew who did described him as an incredibly down-to-earth, gracious man. RIP.
 

phardenbrook

New Member
Jun 10, 2016
3
I didn't realize until just now that the first professional sporting event I ever attended was Gordie Howe's penultimate regular-season home game. Mr. Hockey had just celebrated his 52nd birthday, and the sport by then was dramatically different from it had been when he was its most dominant player. My 6-year old self was infatuated with Blaine Stoughton, a defensively challenged player who was in the midst of what would prove to be a career year, but my Dad kept pointing out Gordie Howe. Turns out my old man knew something -- that gray-haired guy was doing all the little things off the puck, and was one of the 3 or 4 best players on the ice that night, even if my Mom thought he was foolish for playing without a helmet. I never met Gordie Howe, but e. veryone I knew who did described him as an incredibly down-to-earth, gracious man. RIP.
When I was 7, I went to a lot of practices and Gordie always remembered my name and asked how I was. That still means a lot to me.

My favorite memory was at the home game before Gordie scored his 1,000th goal (NHL goals plus WHA). It appeared that he scored and the Civic Center went crazy for 5 minutes straight. Then they announced that John (Pie Face?) MacKenzie had actually scored and the place went crazy and boo'ed John every time he touched the puck. He was a huge local favorite and the fans turned on him for one game for scoring the goal. Gordie did get his goal but it was on the road. So close to witnessing history.
 

ifmanis5

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Sep 29, 2007
63,743
Rotten Apple
Can't imagine we will see another player (much less all time great) actually play meaningful minutes on a pro level with their sons. Insane to think that happened and hard to be more impressed by an athletic feat than that. His mix of toughness and skill is rarely seen in any sport. RIP.
 

LoweTek

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May 30, 2005
2,183
Central Florida
I remember a WHA game, Houston Aeros v. New England Whalers (I would have sworn they were originally named Boston Whalers) at the old Garden. I went to the game specifically to see Howe play. WHA games were sparsely attended then and you could pretty much walk around wherever you wanted. Toward the end of the first period, I went under the seats in the alleyway the visiting team uses to get to their dressing room. When it gets close to time for the players to come, they would draw a sort of a black curtain so fans wouldn't bother the visiting players. The WHA, I guess, didn't do this or the guy who does it was MIA, not sure. Either way it was not drawn.

So the period ends and I'm standing there at the base of the corrridor/runway and the players are heading toward me. They were turning to their left to go to the dressing room but there was a chain link gate which had not been unlocked yet. Gordie walked right up and stopped beside me. He was visibly pissed the gate was locked. I decided not to say anything. He was not saying anything either. He stood there, sweat pouring off of him like rain. It took maybe 5 minutes to get the gate unlocked. He kind of looked at me and nodded as he walked toward the locker room, almost as if to thank me for not bothering him.

The lasting memory from the encounter was the man was absolutely huge. Standing there on skates helped but he was a freaking giant standing next to me. I'm no taller than Pedroia. My head was at his elbow. He was built like a hardened bodybuilder, just huge. I'll never forget it.

RIP, Gordie.
 

vintage'67

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Jul 15, 2005
327
As a high school player near Hartford shortly after his retirement, I was lucky enough to be on the ice with Mr. Hockey when he agreed to come to our practice a couple of times. He was very humble, kind of like he thought he might not have anything to teach us. More than his height, which LoweTek mentioned, I will always remember how thick he was. Gnarled fingers, thicker than any I've ever seen. Wrists that seemed twice as thick as an average man's. His upper body and legs just so solid, even in his mid-50s, like he'd been a dock worker his whole life. Muscular, but not like pretty much anyone I've ever seen who got that way from working out in a gym. His ability to fire a puck with just a snap of the wrist, no other part of his body assisting, was unreal. While not a wrist shot, that video Spaceman's Bong posted shows how little arm movement he needed to fire that puck. Remarkable to see it up close.

Having watched a lot of Gretzky from his early years, I'm always moved by his affection and respect for Gordie. RIP indeed.
 

OCST

Sunny von Bulow
SoSH Member
Jan 10, 2004
24,483
The 718
Cross posting from the dead people thread- I met him at a game in Hartford and got his autograph on a Whalers pennant that I still have somewhere. Super nice guy.

The Whalers were my first sports love. This is sad.
 

OCST

Sunny von Bulow
SoSH Member
Jan 10, 2004
24,483
The 718
Can't imagine we will see another player (much less all time great) actually play meaningful minutes on a pro level with their sons. Insane to think that happened and hard to be more impressed by an athletic feat than that. His mix of toughness and skill is rarely seen in any sport. RIP.
Griffey Sr and Jr both played for the Mariners, but for much less time in a less physically demanding sport.

Marty was meh and I think he was there for the publicity value. Mark was legit All-Star quality in his own right.

Mark had a horrific injury. He slid into the net, which at the time had a metal spike anchoring it into the ice. The spike gashed him badly (IIRC it tore his sphincter). He missed a ton of time and it looked like his career was over. They dumped him and he went to the Flyers, where he revived his career and was All-Star quality again- yet another Fuckup by the Whalers FO. This was the impetus for putting the net on magnets.
 

RoDaddy

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Jun 19, 2002
3,245
Albany area, NY
One of the greatest athletes in the history of North American sports. I'm surprised and disappointed there hasn't been a bigger response to this. For all his greatness, I most remember him and Derek Sanderson lining up for a face off during a Bruins penalty kill, and Sanderson just elbowing him in the face for no apparent reason! They fought and got tossed, exactly what Sanderson and the Bruins wanted to get him off the power play

I also remember the B's chasing after his son Mark, an excellent defenseman. I believe they drafted him while he was playing in the WHL. They never did sign him and too bad, as he would have put those talented Bruins teams of the mid-70s to early eighties over the top
 

Dummy Hoy

Angry Pissbum
SoSH Member
Jul 22, 2006
8,232
Falmouth
The Mr. Hockey nickname was a great fit...he was everything hockey players are supposed to be- tough, skilled, enduring, humble. His wife was pretty awesome too by all accounts.

I always used to underrate him because I viewed him as a stats accumulator, but I was clearly wrong. Probably the best W ever.
 

vintage'67

Member
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Jul 15, 2005
327
Griffey Sr and Jr both played for the Mariners, but for much less time in a less physically demanding sport.

Marty was meh and I think he was there for the publicity value. Mark was legit All-Star quality in his own right.

Mark had a horrific injury. He slid into the net, which at the time had a metal spike anchoring it into the ice. The spike gashed him badly (IIRC it tore his sphincter). He missed a ton of time and it looked like his career was over. They dumped him and he went to the Flyers, where he revived his career and was All-Star quality again- yet another Fuckup by the Whalers FO. This was the impetus for putting the net on magnets.
Mark's injury was horrific; huge pool of blood on the ice under him. All of us in the stands had no idea exactly what happened to him or why there was so much blood. As bad as it was, the spike did (just) miss his spinal column.
 

Lou Lucier

New Member
Nov 28, 2005
8
The Whalers were my first sports love. This is sad.
My father was the executive chef at the Sheraton (now a Hilton) from the mid-70s to early 80s, so I pretty much grew up at the adjoining hotel, mall, and coliseum. I was Hartford’s pre-teen, Brass-Bonanza-humming, sports-obsessed-boy version of “Eloise.” (The big white parrot in the Civic Center’s pet store landed on my head once.)

As Jeff Jacobs wrote in The Courant the other day, “We only borrowed Gordie for a time in Hartford, but what a time it was.”

I was young, fairly ignorant of Gordie’s career with the Wings; I was fairly ignorant of the NHL — I was WHA all the way. I didn’t quite understand why everyone my Dad’s age were crazy about the old guys: Gordie, Bob McKenzie, Dave Keon, Rick Lee, and later Bobby Hull; my first favorite pro athlete was Mark Howe, an eventual Hall of Famer in his own right.

What I did understand was that The Whalers were Hartford and the Howes were the Whalers. Thank you, No. 9.