School Name History

Gordie Howe was born on March 31, 1928, in Floral, Saskatchewan. He was one of nine children. He started playing hockey at the age of five. At the age of seventeen, he played a year in Omaha before joining the Detroit Red Wings in 1946. That year, he used most of his paycheque ($1800) to install indoor plumbing in his parents’ home.

He soon became famous for both his ability to score goals and his competitive spirit. Howe helped Detroit become a dominating team in the early 1950s, along with teammates, Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay.  They were known as the Production Line, a name in keeping with a city known for its car manufacturing.

Colleen met Gordie in 1952 at the Lucky Strike bowling alley in Detroit.  It was a popular hangout for the Detroit Red Wings hockey players. She was an avid bowler and when Gordie got up the nerve to ask her for a ride home, their romance began.

Howe led the Detroit Red Wings to four Stanley Cup championships (1950, 1952, 1954, and 1955) and to seven first-place regular-season finishes (1949–55). He had a career record of 1760 NHL games played over thirty-two seasons, twenty-five of them with the Red Wings.

His speed, puck handling, wrist shots (made with either hand), and fighting earned him the title, “Mr. Hockey”.  The expression, “Gordie Howe Hat Trick,” consisting of a goal, an assist, and a fight all in a single game. It is interesting that he only scored two Gordie Howe Hat Tricks  in his career.

Gordie won the Hart Memorial Trophy for most valuable player (1952–53, 1957–60, and 1963) and the Art Ross Trophy as top point scorer (1951–54, 1957, and 1963). At the top of his career, in the 1968–69 season, he contributed 103 points.

Howe retired after the 1970–71 season to work in Detroit’s front office, but he really wanted to play hockey with his sons, Mark and Marty. This led to his joining the new WHA Houston Aeros, in 1973–74. He scored one hundred points in that first season and led the Aeros to back-to-back WHA titles.

After four seasons with the Aeros, Howe moved in 1977 to the WHA’s New England Whalers. Two years later in 1979, the team joined the NHL as the Hartford Whalers, where Howe completed his final season (1979–80).  At the age of forty-three, he played a full season, scoring fifteen goals and twenty-six assists.

At the time of his retirement, Howe had an NHL career record 1850 points (broken in 1989 by Wayne Gretzky) and 801  goals (broken in 1994 by Gretzky). Howe’s total professional career record stood at 975 goals and 1383 assists.

Howe later became director of player development for the Whalers and chairman of the board for a marketing company. His numerous honours include appointment (1971) to the Order of Canada. In 1972 he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and in 2008 he was honoured with the first NHL lifetime achievement award. Howe’s autobiography, Mr. Hockey: My Story, was published in 2014.

Colleen was a humanitarian, sports agent, and community worker. She served on the boards of the Michigan 4-H Foundation, the March of Dimes in Detroit, Houston, and Hartford, and the Colonial Bank of Connecticut. She formed the first Junior A Hockey club in the United States, the Detroit Junior Red Wings, and managed the team for three years. In 1993, Colleen Howe created the Howe Foundation, a charitable organization which worked to improve the quality of life for children of all ages by helping kids to get involved in sports. It also helped women to achieve success in sports business through education and networking.

Colleen created the sports agent company, Power Play International Inc., which handled all of Howe’s various business activities. She was a sought-after motivational speaker on sports, marketing, and being a successful businesswoman.

In 2009 Howe lost his beloved wife Colleen, affectionately known as Mrs. Hockey, to a form of dementia known as Pick’s Disease. He would spend the rest of his life raising money for research into the disease of dementia.

Gordie Howe died on June 10, 2016 in Toledo, Ohio at the age of eighty-eight.  His cremated remains, along with those of his wife Colleen, were interred in Saskatoon in September 2016 at the base of his statue outside of SaskTel Centre.