Mr. Hockey My Story (9 page)

The next step up the ladder for a prospect from Omaha was Detroit’s number-one farm team, the Indianapolis Capitals of the American Hockey League. I never made it to Indianapolis, though. At the end of the season, Tommy Ivan sat down with Jack Adams to talk about my future. They agreed that I wasn’t cut out for the minor leagues. I was eighteen years old and about to get the call to the
NHL.

Four

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ETROIT

I
f I say that today’s players have it easy, I know I’ll just sound like an old curmudgeon. I’m not exactly one for standing on my front porch and shaking a fist at the neighborhood kids, but I am in my eighties now, so if the shoe fits I might as well wear it. As I see it, the current generation of players can be pretty tough on the ice, but they definitely have things easier than we did once they’re off it. Away from the rink, a player’s life nowadays is pretty uptown. Salaries are in the millions and players live in fancy houses, drive fast cars, and fly to away games on private jets. It’s a far cry from how we lived in the 1940s. I’m not complaining, though. We got to play hockey for a living in the best league in the world, but beyond that the average player’s day-to-day life wasn’t nearly as glamorous as it is now.

Detroit’s training camp in 1946, before my first NHL season, is a case in point. The team decided to finish up camp in Detroit at Olympia Stadium. I loved that old barn. It was less than twenty years old at the time, but management didn’t invest in its upkeep as much as they needed to, so the building was starting to show signs of wear and tear. When camp moved to Detroit, Jack Adams told us that accommodations were tough to find near the arena, so he set up cots for the rookies in the corridors below the stands. I can’t imagine that sleeping on an army cot in a cold arena would go over that well with today’s players, but that’s exactly what we did. I think the arrangement suited Mr. Adams just fine. Not only did it save the club money, but there were curfews and bed checks, so he knew exactly where his players were at all times.

The first night at the Olympia we fell asleep easily enough, but we woke up in the middle of the night to little scratching sounds. Someone flicked on the lights and you can probably guess what we saw scurrying around on the floor. Rats. Big Detroit-sized rink rats that lived on the popcorn and other food that fans dropped beneath the stands. We jumped up, grabbed some hockey sticks, and started smacking the rats like crazy. They were likely even more upset about the situation than we were. Until we showed up, the Olympia was probably like an all-night smorgasbord. We slept with sticks next to our beds for the rest of the camp. When someone hit the lights, you’d wake up, grab your stick, and start swinging at those rats for all you were worth. Between us, we ended up getting quite a few, but I quickly learned that rats in the city are sort of like mosquitoes in the country. It doesn’t matter how many you kill, because it’s a battle you’re never going to win.

One thing I can say with confidence about the difference between my early years in the league and today’s NHL: These
days, rookies probably aren’t waking up in the middle of the night to kill rodents with their sticks. Having played in both eras, I can say that’s a change for the better. Of course, there are also much more significant differences between then and now. How contracts are signed, for one. Standard operating procedure these days involves agents and lawyers and team officials with business degrees hanging on their office walls. Back then, all of the Detroit Red Wings contracts were signed in a face-to-face meeting between Mr. Adams and the player. When I sat down with Mr. Adams to sign my second professional contract, we were still at least a couple of decades away from the arrival of agents and management companies.

I knew that getting promoted to the big club would mean a serious step up in pay from my minor league contract. When Mr. Adams pushed the paper across his desk, it turned out to be a one-year deal for $5000. That was nearly twice as much as I’d made the year before and more money than my dad had ever made in a single year in his life. To be honest, I wanted to play so badly I probably would have signed any offer passed my way. This one turned out to be a fairly standard rookie deal for the time, right down to a minor league clause. It stipulated that if the Red Wings saw fit to send me down to Indianapolis at any time during the season, my salary would be chopped to $3500. The thought terrified me. As much as I didn’t like the clause, it did provide some extra motivation. I didn’t want to go back down to the minors and I sure as heck didn’t want to lose out on all that money. I made a vow that I’d do whatever it took to stay with the club. The Red Wings kept me around for the whole year, but I worried incessantly about the possibility of being sent down. Thankfully, it was the only time one of my contracts had that type of stipulation.

During those years, Mr. Adams held most of the cards when contract negotiations came around. Not only did he have years of experience cutting deals with players but also, in my case, he was sitting across from an eighteen-year-old kid who wanted to play hockey for his team more than anything. Not exactly a position of strength for yours truly. At the time, the owners had the players over a barrel and they knew it. With six teams in the league, there were only about 120 jobs to be had at any given time. Every player in the NHL, including the stars, knew that there were guys champing at the bit to take his spot. Also, players were kept largely in the dark about team finances. We didn’t know how much money franchises were making or losing, and even if we had, it wouldn’t have meant much to most of us. Hockey was what we knew best. The owners and team officials, on the other hand, knew about the business side of the game. A lot of years passed and many things had to change before players figured out how to balance the scales more in our favor.

As much as I wanted to play for the Red Wings, I did screw up my courage enough to press Mr. Adams on one point. I thought about all of those nights I’d walked down to meet the train in Galt, hoping it would stop so I could see about my jacket. I also remembered all the times I’d walked back to my boarding house, disappointed that the train had just kept rolling through town. Before I signed the deal, I told him he’d have to deliver on his promise and get me a jacket. Once again, he chuckled, but this time he came through. I guess he didn’t want to risk losing a decent prospect over the cost of a coat. He directed me to a downtown store and told me to go in, pick out a jacket, and sign for it. I went with Marty Pavelich and Ted Lindsay. The jacket I got had big, heavy slit pockets. The material was smooth on the outside, like
satin, and it had leather sleeves with alpaca lining. It also had a big “D” with “Red Wings” written on it. Every time I put on that sharp-looking jacket I felt a bit more like I belonged.

•   •   •

M
y first NHL game arrived on October 16, 1946. It was Detroit’s home opener against the Maple Leafs. Under normal circumstances my nerves would really kick in before a game. Early in my career, I used to go so far as to eat steak in the morning and eggs in the afternoon. I’d get so nervous on game days that protein was the only thing I knew I could keep down. As the puck was about to drop in the biggest game of my life, though, I was uncharacteristically calm. I didn’t see the need to get that worked up, since I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to see much ice time. We went through warm-up and then lined up at the blue line for the national anthem—they didn’t resurface the ice between warm-up and the game. The referee would just blow the whistle and the two teams would stand on their respective lines listening to the song. I was standing alongside my teammates only half paying attention to “The Star-Spangled Banner” (they didn’t play the Canadian anthem at the time), but my mind wasn’t really on hockey. I was actually thinking about cribbage. My roommates had introduced me to the game in Windsor during the first part of training camp. It had hooked me, but I was still in the early stages of figuring it out. After the anthem, we’d head over to the bench and Mr. Adams would bark out the starters. They’d skate back to the circle and everyone else would take a seat. I was still busy counting crib hands in my head (15–2, 15–4, 15–6) when I heard Mr. Adams yell, “Sid, Adam Brown, and Howe!” I had no clue I’d be on the top line. I didn’t have enough time to get nervous before the puck dropped.

Our line played well that night. In the first period, Brown opened the scoring with a pass from Sid Abel. The Leafs tied it at 1–1 about halfway through the second. Not long after that, I was coming up the right wing when Sid passed the puck to Brown, who head-manned it to me around the Leafs’ blue line. I got on top of the puck about ten feet in front of Turk Broda. In that moment I wasn’t thinking about my collection of Broda BeeHive photos, I just wanted to find a way to beat him. Turk was stocky compared to today’s goalies, but he could really move. I slapped at the puck and it went over his shoulder and into the net. It wasn’t the prettiest goal I ever scored, but they all count.

Late in the third period, we found ourselves down 3–2. We yanked the goalie and Sid found a way to tie it up with little time left. Sid was always a clutch player. That night he managed to salvage us a tie. I didn’t have high expectations for my career at that point. I just wanted to stick around for a full season so I could say that I played a year in the big leagues. After I scored, I thought I’d always be in the record books, at the very least. Going into the next game, I did assume that we’d played well enough that Mr. Adams would leave our line together for a while. Boy, was I wrong. If there was one thing I learned about Mr. Adams over the years, it was that just when you thought you knew what he was doing, he’d switch it up on you. He dropped me from that line and I saw the ice only sporadically from then on. It took nine more games to score my second goal and another eleven after that to notch my third.

As much as I hated being glued to the bench, my hockey education was coming along in leaps and bounds. I remember one time early in that first season I had Bruins goalie Frank Brimsek beat, but instead of burying the puck, I got cute and just slid it toward the net. Brimsek’s nickname was “Mister Zero” and, of
course, he reached out with his paddle and kept it out. He ended up being one of the first American-born player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Wherever they’re born, NHL goalies, for the most part, are so good that if they can see the puck they’ll save it. When I got back to the bench, Sid Abel told me as much. When you get an opportunity to score, he said, you drill the puck into the back of the net as hard as you can. Later that game I got another chance at Brimsek and didn’t make the same mistake twice. I wired one by him, just like Sid told me to. I learned a lot from veterans that year, sometimes just by watching them. Sid, for instance, used to customize his sticks to help his feel. He’d sit in the dressing room with a rasp and round off the heel and toe of his blade, something he felt allowed for better puck control. I copied that trick and found it helped both my stickhandling and my shooting. Throughout that first year, I kept reminding myself of what Joe Carveth had told me in Omaha: The first half of the season might be rough, but things will eventually settle down. Once again, it turned out to be pretty good advice.

When I did make it onto the ice, I was determined to contribute however I could. I figured that if dropping the gloves was what got me from Omaha to Detroit, it would probably help keep me there as well. It’s fair to say that early in my career I was so eager to make an impression, I didn’t care who was in front of me. I took on all comers, even the Rocket himself. At the time, Maurice Richard was arguably the biggest star in the game. Hockey fans don’t need me to run down his resumé, but it obviously stacks up against anyone’s and then some. A couple of seasons earlier he’d become the first player to score 50 goals in 50 games. It took until the 1980s before anyone else (Mike Bossy and Wayne Gretzky) would match that feat. In 1946, I was just a no-name rookie, but I didn’t care.
The Rocket might have been among the bigger guys in the league, but I was still a good size, even at eighteen. If anyone got into it with a teammate, I was going to look him up, and that’s where my thinking stopped. I fought pretty much everyone I could in my first few trips through the league. Of course, that also meant I ended up becoming well acquainted with the penalty box.

I guess Mr. Adams eventually had his fill of playing short-handed because a rookie couldn’t stay out of the box. One day, he called me into his office and sat me down for a talk. Well, it wasn’t so much a talk as it was a lecture. He asked if my plan was to fight the whole league one player at a time. I didn’t yet know the term “rhetorical question,” but I was pretty sure Mr. Adams wasn’t looking for an answer. He knew I could fight, he said. Now I needed to prove that I could play hockey. Years later, when I ran summer hockey camps, I’d echo that sentiment to the kids. Take it from someone with plenty of experience, I’d tell them: You don’t win many games from the penalty box. Even after my talk with Mr. Adams I still wasn’t exactly a candidate for the league’s most gentlemanly player. Although I was fortunate enough to win a number of awards in my career, for some reason I never seemed to be up for the Lady Byng Trophy. I guess I didn’t make too much of a case for myself most seasons. If I’m being perfectly honest, there may have even been a couple of times I got away with something that could have drawn a whistle. Maybe.

I played in 58 games that first season, scoring 7 goals and adding 15 assists. The totals weren’t bad for a rookie, I guess. We finished fourth that year and lost to Toronto in the semifinals of the playoffs. During that series, Toronto tough guy Gus Mortson and I weren’t seeing eye to eye on much. Back then, teams shared the same penalty box. The setup wasn’t always a good idea. We
got chucked in there for fighting and, once there, figured we’d see if we couldn’t resolve our differences. Our meeting of the minds quickly broke down and, as can happen, our scrap spilled out of the box and into the stands. A fan might have thrown a chair at Gus, at some point. I’m pretty sure the police showed up. They were a bit worried about the potential for a riot. That sounds a bit worse than it really was. “Riot” is a big word. If anything, it would have been only a little riot. As it was, the situation didn’t get too out of hand. I respected what Mr. Adams said about fighting, but if it was a choice between that and sticking up for a teammate, then it seemed like an easy decision in my books. It wasn’t the last time I got into it with Gus. We also had a bit of a dustup during the All-Star Game in 1948. Some people admonished us then, saying that fighting during an exhibition game designed to promote the league was inappropriate. In hindsight, they may have had a point. If I’m being honest, though, I still have to say that it felt like the right thing to do at the time.