256 pages, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, ISBN-13: 978-0399172915
Gordie Howe was the greatest hockey player ever. Ever, do you hear? Don’t believe me? Well, according to the blurb on the back cover, no less a personage than Wayne Gretzky thinks so, too. So there. When reading Mr. Hockey: My Story, one hears the voice of a modest man who just happened to have an extraordinary skill in playing Canada’s national game. And it’s a soft-spoken voice, at that. While Gordie – I call him Gordie – talks about his goals and assists and penalty minutes and all of the other stats he racked up over 25 years of playing hockey, one gets the impression while reading his book that he did so merely because he was expected to (with each record set down he is quick to mention when (if) the record in question was broken and by whom…Gretzky. It’s always Gretzky).
Gordie’s life is revealed over 200+ pages, briskly and without fuss. His birth in Floral, Saskatchewan, growing up during the Great Depression, learning to skate and play hockey as all good Canadian lads should, playing in the juniors and making it at last to the big leagues where he would stay for a quarter of a century, into his retirement and his return to hockey to play with his sons for the Houston Aeros and then the Hartford Whalers before definitively hanging up his skates for good. Most of the book deals with his career on the ice and about the business of hockey when the NHL had only six teams and both the game and the business was vastly different than it is today. Howe’s stories paint a good picture of what those times were like, but he is careful not to criticize either the game at that time or today’s players.
There are a plethora of touching moments when he talks about his personal life, especially his wife of 56 years, Colleen. Included in the book are letters they wrote to each other, both when they were courting and when he was away at training camp or on the road. There are also letters written by his sons included in the book and they helped the reader picture the man off the ice, a man who comes across as your prototypical American Dad circa the Glorious 50s (his daughters, I have to say, get rather short shrift; I guess they should have learned to play hockey?). For all that, Mr. Hockey doesn’t really reveal any great new details about the man, nor does it stray away from the tried-and-true format for sports biographies; he respects everyone, loves his life and has no regrets. Perhaps that’s all true, but…really, there’s little meat on these bones.
Mr. Hockey: My Story is not a bad book by any stretch, and it is good
that we have Howe’s thoughts put down on paper for all time. The man himself was
very plain-spoken and humble, oftentimes not giving himself enough credit for
his accomplishments. While this isn’t necessarily a bad trait to have
personally (though it cost him a fortune during his playing days due to lack of
negotiating skills), to hear him explain it, he doesn’t come across as the
Superman that other people make him out to be (the last chapter of the book, written
by his family, explains things about him that contributed to his longevity and
success). As for his popularity in the Motor City, that is easy enough to explain
in Mr. Hockey’s own words: “If
Detroit fans consider you to be one of their own, they’ll stick with you
through thick and thin”.
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