Gretzky kept Gordie Howe close as NHL goals record toppled

Murray Howe flew home from a visit to his son in Tel Aviv Sunday night, wondering at various points how Alex Ovechkin was making out down below and continents away. The Toledo radiologist and the Russian hockey player share a common lineage, because Murray’s dad, Gordie Howe, had once been the NHL’s greatest goal scorer. Wayne Gretzky later broke Howe’s record.

On Sunday, Ovechkin topped them all with a blast from the faceoff circle, a joyful dive down the ice, a mob with his teammates. Gretzky was in the press box, wearing on his jacket a red No. 9 pin — that was Howe’s number, and it was also his colour during the many years he played with the Detroit Red Wings.



Gretzky collected the pin during a visit with Howe at Saskatoon’s Kinsmen Sports Celebrity Dinner in 2015, and he kept it all these years. Sunday, he took that little piece of Saskatoon to the place where a new record was forged, and he wore Gordie on his chest as he hugged Ovechkin. “That was a great little nod to dad, and it doesn’t surprise me,” says Murray Howe, whose father — a Saskatoon native — died in 2016, aged 88.

“Gretzky, he’s always been so complimentary of my dad, and I think looked up to him as a second father and idol. Wayne was so excited to get one of those pins (in 2015). In fact, everybody in our family still treasures that little red pin.

It’s a great way to represent dad. And Wayne, I think, it was his way of saying ‘you know, Gordie’s here with us.’ ” Not many kids can say their dad was once the NHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer.

It’s the rarest of air, an impossible height — passed from Joe Malone (143), to Cy Denneny (247) to Howie Morenz (271) to Nels Stewart (324) to Maurice Richard (544) to Gordie Howe (801) to Wayne Gretzky (894) to Alex Ovechkin (895 and counting). The night Howe broke Richard’s record — Nov. 10, 1963 — 3,000 fans were turned away at the gate in Detroit because there was no room for them.

They stopped the game for 10 minutes after Howe scored on Montreal goalie Charlie Hodge, a brief interlude characterized by shouting, hugging, clearing debris. “That’s probably the best pain-killer ever invented,” a relieved Howe told reporters after that record-setting marker broke a six-game drought. “I feel altogether different now.

Maybe I’ll stop blinking.” The latter was a reference to a facial tic he’d developed after a near-fatal brain injury suffered years earlier — and while the goal did not, in fact, cure the blinking, it allowed him to set a fresh record with every marker he potted. When Richard broke the record in 1952, the Montreal Gazette headline read ‘Forum Rafters Shake as Rocket Bags Record Goal.

’ He received a congratulatory telegram from Stewart, whose record he’d just shattered, and Canadiens’ GM Frank Selke announced that the puck would be gifted to Queen Elizabeth. Stewart climbed to the top on Feb. 16, 1937, and allowed himself nothing more than a wide grin.

The man whose record he’d broken, Howie Morenz, was in hospital with a broken leg and the Canadian Press dispatch noted the record would stand “until Aurel Joliat of Canadiens scores nine more goals or Howie Morenz’s broken leg mends enough for him to score one.” Morenz was dead less than a month later, killed by complications from his broken leg, and Joliat never did catch Stewart. Howe’s record, meanwhile, stood for 30 years and four months, and Gretzky was the perfect person to break it.

Gretzky played Junior B hockey on the Seneca Nationals with Murray Howe when both were teens — “Wayne was the best on the team by far, and I was the worst on the team by far,” Murray says with a laugh — and the phenom would grill the younger Howe about everything Gordie, from sleep habits to diet to game-day regimen. Murray, enormously proud of his father, was glad to pass along everything he knew. His dad had shared bits of his greatness with the kids all their lives.

When Murray was six or seven years old, he skated alone one day at the Olympia — on the same surface where his father had broken Richard’s record a few years earlier — while waiting for the Red Wings to hit the ice for practice. “I’m pretending I’m in the NHL,” he says, “having a good time with it.” That’s when he felt a boom, his feet went out from under him, and he landed on his back – not knowing what had just happened.

There was his dad at the other end of the ice, still in street clothes, stick raised in the air like he’d just scored a goal. And he had, kind of — he’d fired a long, hard shot that caught his son’s skates mid-stride and sent him sprawling. They both laughed, hard.

“The skills he had, that he could time that shot ...

it was a wrist shot, so I never heard it until it hit me,” Howe says. “And the fact that he would laugh, because he knew that I would think it was funny, instead of getting all upset that my dad knocked me on my ass. He could do so many things like that.

“Even though I ended up inheriting none of his hockey talent, it was still a privilege to be part of that world, with somebody who was literally a miracle worker on the ice. It was really, really a special time. I try to carry on that same tradition with our own family.

“I can’t do what he does, but I try to share all the things I love about my career and the things that I learned from my dad, and try to pass those on to our kids — give them a wonder and an awe for the world and for the outdoors, help people, be in nature ...

all that kind of stuff. “I try to be as much like Gordie Howe as I can, with the skill set that I have.” Gordie Howe, ever-competitive, noted before Gretzky broke his NHL goals record that he — Howe alone — would remain the major-professional leader, given that he’d netted 174 goals in the World Hockey Association for a combined total of 975.

He still holds that record today. On the other hand ..

. “I was thrilled for (Gretzky), and so was our whole family,” says the younger Howe. “I don’t think I ever thought, ‘oh, wow, I wish he didn’t break that record.

’ (Gordie) always felt that records were made to be broken, and he felt fortunate that he was able to play something he loved for so long. That’s literally how he looked at it. In a game he would lose, where somebody on the other team did something amazing, he’d go right up to him, pat him on the butt and say, ‘Wow, you had a game and a half today.

’ “He was always about the game and about the people and the memories, rather than ‘oh, boy, I lost today’. He never focused on that, because he said life goes on long enough that if you’re spending too much emotional energy thinking about each game that you won or you lost, you’re just going to get exhausted. So you savour the moment, celebrate everybody else in their moment, and then get ready for the next game.

” So Ovechkin is the new goal king, the man in the moment, following the skate strides of Gretzky, Howe, Richard and those famed fellows down the line. Each had a story, a past, a family, a home life away from the rink. Murray Howe remembers a childhood that “was literally like living with Superman”, his dad routinely performing feats nobody else could duplicate, while remaining approachable, unflappable, and friendly.

“I’ve seen him chop a tree one-handed, and you wonder how does he do that?” Howe says. “That’s how he was. And, of course, the skills he had on the ice, it was a dream come true to be out there when I was a little kid wanting to be a pro hockey player myself, and him showing me all these little tricks and things.

” Murray was three years old the night his dad broke Richard’s record, and when asked if he was at the game, he says he doesn’t think so — and he definitely has no memory of it. But his brothers Mark and Marty, who both went on to play in the NHL, had a picture in their shared bedroom from that night, and Murray would visit it often. “When I was six or seven years old, I would walk downstairs and look at that picture and just try to imagine what that had to be like,” he says.

“I remember that part of it, how significant that was. And I remember thinking, I’m glad he waited till I was born so I could at least experience it in some way and say I was kind of a part of it.” The record has now been broken for a third time during Murray Howe’s life, and he says he’s happy for Ovechkin.

He learned from his dad how hard it is to play at that level, for that long. “It’s a big deal,” Murray says. “It’s a huge accomplishment for Ovi.

“Nobody could hold a candle to Mr. Hockey in his time,” he added. “And the same thing with Wayne.

He just controlled the play. And with Ovi, everybody knows what he’s going to do. They just can’t stop him.

That’s a remarkable talent that sets him apart. So for Ovi, it’s a massive, massive accomplishment. And he no doubt has paid his price for that dedication to the game, being away from his his family, and taking all the punishment you take out there.

He’s earned that huge honour. “We’ll celebrate that, until somebody else comes along and beats it.” kemitchell@postmedia.

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