Mr. Hockey My Story (25 page)

What seemed unthinkable only a few months earlier had quickly become a reality. The Howe family had a plan: Murray would stay in Bloomfield Hills and chase his hockey dreams. The rest of us, meanwhile, would head to Texas to follow our own.

Twelve

O
VERTIME

T
he Howe family is full of great runners. My dad could run like a deer. Cathy ran track in high school. Murray has completed marathons and Colleen even ran a road race once. Running comes much less naturally to Mark and me. Just a few steps into a jog and my legs begin to feel like they’re plodding up and down like an elephant’s. Ideally, I prefer to do my conditioning on the ice or even on a stationary bike if necessary. Sometimes, though, you just need to bite the bullet. Once we landed in Houston, I knew I was serious about getting in shape when I added roadwork to my training regimen. My logic was the same as that of a kid who doesn’t like brussels sprouts. Anything I hated that much, I figured, had to be good for me.

Spending a couple of years eating banquet food and sitting behind a desk hadn’t done much for my waistline. I hadn’t let
myself go entirely, but at 223 pounds I was twelve or fourteen pounds over where I thought my playing weight should be. Colleen posted my weight on the refrigerator in bold numbers to remind me about the task at hand. Once I committed to getting back in shape, my body felt like the engine of an old rust bucket in the middle of a Detroit winter. It took a long time to turn over. In the beginning I’d take a hundred strides, walk to recover, and then run again. I gradually built up to running for two hundred steps, and then three hundred. I finally reached the point where I could run the whole thing and still have enough gas left in the tank to sprint to the end. The last fifty yards of my circuit were dead uphill, so the finishing kick always brought some pain. It was worth it, though. Between running, lifting weights, and riding a bike, I was starting to feel more like my old self. Regardless of what happened on land, though, I knew the bigger test was still to come.

Watching me huff and puff my way through the first few practices, the Aeros probably wondered if they’d made a very expensive mistake. There’s no way to sugarcoat it: I was terrible. I was sucking wind during drills and scrimmages like I never had before. Marty later told me that my face turned a shade of red and purple that had him a bit worried. I’m sure my new teammates thought the old man would give up the ghost before he ever saw a shift. I didn’t know it at the time, but my sons were so concerned they started calling Colleen at home to keep her updated. A doctor had given me a clean bill of health before we went to Houston, but it hadn’t done much to alleviate her worries. My struggles only confirmed her suspicion that she would have to try to talk me out of the whole idea before the season started. Just as the storm clouds were looking darkest, Bill Dineen piled on by telling us that training
camp was moving to two practices a day. It was the only time I truly questioned my decision to go to Houston. When Colleen and I talked that night, I admitted that there was a chance our WHA adventure could end badly. Just like always, however, she told me the only thing to do was to put one foot in front of the other and see where it went. In this case, it was actually one skate in front of the other, but I got the point. I figured that two-a-days would either cure me or kill me. My body was so exhausted by that point, I’m not sure which one I was hoping for more.

They say it’s always darkest before the dawn, and sometimes they’re actually right. A few days later my body didn’t hurt quite so much. Practice that day was also different. Before, my legs had been heavy, but now they were starting to get some of their old jump back. I began to feel good, like I’d been skating all year. The imaginary piano that had been strapped to my back also disappeared, thankfully. I still had a lot of work to do, but it was as if I’d broken through an invisible wall. The doubts were gone. Hockey was hockey again, and I knew I’d be okay.

•   •   •

F
rom the outside looking in, it might have appeared that the Howe family circus in Houston was just a novelty act cooked up by the WHA to sell tickets. Admittedly, the script looked like something out of a bad movie. An over-the-hill former star was coming out of retirement to play ice hockey in Texas with his two teenage sons. It was no gimmick, though. I’d never played in a game where there was a chance of embarrassing myself, and I didn’t intend to start. As for my boys, they were the real deal. Some reporters suggested that Marty and Mark snuck into the league on the coattails of my comeback, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. If
anything, I was tagging along with them. I was just a short-timer, but they were the future.

We knew that any publicity we could bring to the WHA would help the cause. Texans love their sports, but they hadn’t had much experience with hockey. We were game for anything we could do to promote the team. Well, almost anything. I drew the line at elephants. A year earlier, Bill Dineen had volunteered to ride an elephant in Houston’s Shrine Circus parade. He was busy waving to the crowd when the elephant in front of his decided to empty its bladder. Before Bill knew what was happening, his elephant dipped its trunk in the puddle, slurped up the pool of liquid, and proceeded to spray it all over its rider. I loved hockey, but I didn’t know if I loved it as much as Bill. Elephants aside, our preseason tour was full of newspaper interviews, talk shows, and radio spots. Everyone wanted to know how the old man would fare once he got on the ice. I have to admit, I did too.

The city of Houston, for its part, was behind us from the start. On the way to the arena for the home opener, we looked up and saw a big banner hanging from one of the office towers. It read: “Welcome to Howeston.” I just hoped I could live up to my end of the deal. I’d wrenched my back during our exhibition tour and it was still acting up by game day. I’d spent the previous night in traction at the hospital trying to get it ready. Colleen wanted me to sit out the opener, but I figured I owed it to myself, and to the Aeros, to give it a try.

Skating onto the ice for the first time in Houston was surreal. After spending a quarter-century wearing red and white in Detroit, I hardly recognized myself when I looked down and saw blue for the first time. (It reminded me of a bad dream I had once, in which Trader Jack dealt me to the Leafs.) Sam Houston Coliseum had
taken the place of the Olympia. It wasn’t a bad old barn, but it had seen better days. By the time the puck dropped, about two-thirds of its roughly nine thousand–seat capacity was full. Our trainer, Bobby Brown, had his hands full keeping my back spasms at bay. Every time I came off the ice, he hooked me up to a little black box with a wire that sent an electric pulse into my back. The thing worked like a charm. I played the whole game, but it still wasn’t enough to get the season off on the right foot and we ended up losing to the Cleveland Crusaders. On the way off the ice, a funny thing happened. The fans cheered for us like we’d just skated the other guys out of the building. Mark, who always took losses hard, didn’t know what to make of it. I told him they just appreciated our effort. They cheered everything, the good plays as well as the bad. They even cheered the ice-sweeping crew. Looking back, I think the fans knew they’d eventually figure out the hockey part and, in the meantime, they weren’t going to let any of the details spoil a good time.

It didn’t take the team long to start repaying the fans for their loyalty. Bill had put together a nice little squad. Not only were we good once the puck dropped but also our camaraderie off the ice turned out to be special. Our roster might have been bookended by the oldest player in the league and the youngest, but it didn’t matter; all of us were pulling in the same direction. It brought back memories of my early days in Detroit. None of us was making much money at the time, so when we’d go out on the town Alex Delvecchio would get everyone to throw $5 on the table. When the pile was gone, the drinkers would put down more money and whoever was done could leave gracefully. If you wanted only a beer or two, it meant you weren’t stuck buying rounds for the whole squad the entire night. Little things like that matter to team chemistry. For some guys,
it can make the difference between hanging out with teammates or spending time alone. In Houston, we had guys looking out for the little things. With so many of us new to town, the team ended up doing everything together. As so often happens with close-knit groups, the results started to show on the ice.

By the time I reached Houston, I hadn’t won a championship in nearly twenty years. My final seasons in Detroit had been so grim that the notion of winning anything substantial hadn’t even crossed my mind for a while. Retiring then put an end to the idea altogether. At forty-five years old, who would have thought I’d get another chance, and in Texas of all places? Our 48 wins and 5 ties put us on top of our division. During the season both Mark and Marty proved that Houston’s decision to draft underage players was based on sound hockey logic. Mark was named rookie of the year and Marty established himself as a defenseman the league would have to reckon with for a long time to come. As for me, I think I might have surprised a few people, maybe even myself. I had a private goal of 70 points, but I hadn’t counted on the team gelling as it did or the arthritis in my wrists easing off enough to allow me to start feeling the puck again. With 31 goals and 69 assists for an even 100 points, I was named the league’s most valuable player. What’s even better, the team kept winning in the playoffs, beating Winnipeg in the quarterfinals and Minnesota in the semis to earn our way to the finals.

The WHA didn’t miss many tricks when it came to earning a few extra dollars. Looking for any way it could to bring in some money, it sold the naming rights to its championship trophy to a defense contractor called Avco. The big prize in the league was thereafter known as the Avco Cup. It lacked the history of the Stanley Cup and it was certainly more commercial, but everything
has to start somewhere. Like any team fighting for a championship, we’d put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into the season and we wanted to take home the trophy, regardless of what it was called. The finals couldn’t have gone any better. We played the Chicago Cougars and swept them in four straight to win the second title in the WHA’s brief history. I hadn’t tasted champagne in the dressing room since 1955. It was just as sweet as I remembered.

•   •   •

W
hen we sat down with Jim Smith and Bill Dineen to broker our contract with the Aeros, only the first year of my deal was set in stone. At the time, I hadn’t been certain if my body would hold up or how I’d feel about the rigors of practice and the grind of being on the road. As ever, winning a title did wonders for my aches and pains. Playing in front of full houses in Houston alongside my boys was also so much fun that I had a big decision to make about whether I had more hockey left in me. I’d put in enough work to get back in shape that I figured my forty-six-year-old bones could handle another year if I asked them to. The lure of playing against the Russians was also tempting.

The powers that be had organized another Summit Series between Canada and the U.S.S.R., to be held before the start of the next season. Along with every other Canadian, I’d watched in 1972 as our national team beat the Soviets in what became an instant classic. This time around, a team of WHA all-stars would be representing Canada. The thought of wearing the Maple Leaf was too good to pass up. I was picked for the team along with Marty and Mark. Bobby Hull was on the squad, as well as Frank Mahovlich, Paul Henderson, and Pat Stapleton. They’d all played in the 1972 series and did their best to brace us for what to expect.
Unfortunately, we didn’t fare as well as they had. We ended the series with one win, four losses, and three ties. I don’t have many regrets when it comes to hockey, but I do wish I could have played against the Russians when I was ten years younger. Facing them with fewer miles on my legs and more jump in my step would have been interesting.

When we landed back in Houston for a second season of WHA hockey, it quickly became business as usual for the Howe family. At the start of their careers in Houston, both Mark and Marty had chosen to live at home. Since they were each working, Colleen decided they had to pay rent. She charged them $30 a week for room and board. They protested at first, but she said it was either that or they could foot the family’s grocery bill. They quickly opted for rent, which was a prudent financial decision. From the time he was little, Marty spent so much time staring into the fridge you’d think he was trying to keep the whole neighborhood air-conditioned. We used to joke that he ate only one meal a day, but it lasted from the time he woke up until he went to sleep.

In my career with the Wings I was always one for routine, and that didn’t change when we moved to Texas. On game days, I still found that protein helped to settle my stomach. My boys took after their old man. Our big meal of the day would come around 1
P.M
. The usual menu included either a sixteen-ounce porterhouse steak or a New York strip. I was a big fan of the beef in Texas. Colleen thought I was trying to compensate for a lifetime of living elsewhere by eating as much red meat as possible once I arrived in cattle country. For sides, we had cottage cheese, pears, and peaches with mayo, as well as the Howe family’s special salad. Dessert was either Jell-O or ice cream, depending on how my weight was doing. I’m sure my pregame meal wouldn’t be right for many players, but
it worked well for me through the years. The rest of my game-day ritual included a mid-afternoon nap, which I’d take until around 5
P.M
. After getting up, I’d dress, drink some tea with honey, and make my way to the rink. I did the same thing with few variations for more than twenty-five years. I found that being a creature of habit helped me focus on the game at hand instead of spending my energy worrying about other decisions.