Gordie Howe Quotes

All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.

You never learn anything if you're the one talking

Mark

As Peggy Fleming, the former Olympic champion figure skater, said, the most important thing is to love your sport. Never compete just to please someone else. “You’ve got to love what you’re doing,” hockey great Gordie Howe said. “If you love it, you can overcome any handicap or the soreness or all the aches and pains.

Bruce, on the other hand, was sometimes too clever for his own good. He was a tremendous influence on me, teaching me all about sports, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Johnny Unitas and Gordie Howe.

All hockey players are bilingual. They know English and profanity.” – Gordie Howe

The Red Wings had missed the playoffs that year, so he’d picked up a gig as a television commentator for the postseason. On an off day, he wound up watching a bridge game between some of the players. Our dad was an avid bridge player and a real student of the game. At one point, Dick Duff, who played left wing for the Canadiens, took a trick by finessing a mediocre trump card past the other players. Appreciating the move, Dad mumbled, “Great play” under his breath. One of Montreal’s defensemen, J.C. Tremblay, overheard him and snapped, “What would a dummy like you know about it?” That didn’t sit well with Dad. He told J.C. to remember what he’d said and walked away. Six months later, the Red Wings were in Montreal to play the Canadiens. As it happened, it was the night that Dad scored his 600th goal. The fans had barely finished giving him a standing ovation for the achievement, when they reversed course and started to rain down boos. A few minutes after his big goal, Dad trailed J.C. into the corner after a puck. When he came out of the corner, he left J.C. on the ice with a fractured cheekbone. The Forum crowd didn’t know why it had happened, but Dick Duff did. He skated past Gordie and said, “Card game.” Dad just nodded.

It all began the previous summer, when Ted Lindsay visited Marquette Branch Prison as part of a promotional tour with GM Jack Adams. The star winger got along well with the prison’s inmates, and the warden issued an invitation: Come back in the winter for a friendly game. Adams accepted, and on February 2, 1954, the Red Wings arrived to face a pickup team of convicts, surrounded by guard towers and razor wire. Needless to say, there was significant concern over the safety of those involved, and the potential for acts of serious violence. But once the inmates were assured that Gordie Howe would try to keep his elbows down, the game went ahead as scheduled.