Hockey Hall of Famer Mark Howe knows what it feels like to be on the ice for a season’s opening game.
The National Hockey League’s 109th year began on Tuesday, Oct. 7 with three games that “broke the seal” for the season, including a game played by the defending Stanley Cup Champions Florida Panthers, who hosted, and bested, the Chicago Blackhawks by a score of 3–2, with 19,655 fans in attendance.
Opening Night at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Fla. began with the Stanley Cup out on the ice as the championship banner was raised to the rafters. The Panthers have captured the Stanley Cup in consecutive seasons.
The league moves to a full schedule on Thursday, Oct. 9, with 14 games set to be played.
Howe told The Epoch Times what it feels like to start a new season.
“You go through training camp, then you’re looking forward to it. The first 20 games mean so much towards the rest of the season. It means so much to a team, to come out flying,” Howe, a veteran of 22 professional seasons, told The Epoch Times. “I remember playing our [World Hockey Association Houston Aeros] first game of the season in Los Angeles. I was an 18-year-old rookie. Sure, I was nervous. If you’re not nervous about opening night there’s something wrong with you.”
Many of Howe’s 22 opening nights in the WHA and NHL seem to share an underlying theme of “anything is possible.” Howe, now 70, after retiring as one of the NHL’s preeminent two-way defensemen of the 1980s, spent more than two decades scouting for the Detroit Red Wings. Being the son of a fellow Hall of Famer, Gordie Howe—known as “Mr. Hockey”—brought enormous pressure for the defenseman.
“In my first exhibition game, I was so focused on my first shift. It was the beginning of my dream to play pro hockey. My parents always let us kids be ourselves. We made mistakes and learned from them,” said Howe, who, alongside his brother Marty and their father, won consecutive WHA AVCO World Trophy championships with the Aeros.
The second game in Howe’s professional career, during the 1973–1974 WHA season, came in Edmonton. He remembers being “run over.”
“I was lying on the ice, my helmet and gloves went flying. I didn’t see it coming but someone put a good lick on me.”
There isn’t much that Howe hadn’t seen or experienced in his skating days. After six seasons in the upstart WHA with Houston and New England Whalers, the NHL expanded at the start of the 1979–1980 season. Four teams, including the Whalers, joined the established NHL. Renamed the Hartford Whalers, Howe spent three seasons in the “Insurance Capital of the World” before moving on to a 10-year run with the Philadelphia Flyers.
Hartford was “the weakest among the four teams going to the NHL,” recalls Howe, who now spends a majority of his time by the New Jersey shore in Ocean County. “I was looking forward to going to the Flyers, and getting out of Hartford. When I arrived in Philly, I fell in love with the place. My first game with the Flyers, in the first period, I take a pass from my teammate Paul Holmgren. The puck hits me in my face—right in the cheek. Paul laughed, as he told me to learn how to take a pass.”
After finding professional peace in the City of Brotherly Love for a decade, Howe finished up a distinguished career with three seasons with the Detroit Red Wings. Knowing when to call an end to skating didn’t come quickly or easily. While battling lingering effects from countless injuries accrued over 1,300-plus games played, Howe sought out advice from his dad.
All “Mr. Hockey” would offer was—“You'll know when it’s time.”
After coming home from a big victory and then having difficulty getting to the rink the next day, Howe found clarity in coming to the decision. It was in January or February of the 1994–1995 season, as Howe remembers, that he decided he would retire. Calling his dad first, and then informing the Red Wings management, Howe remembers being relieved. When Detroit reached the Stanley Cup Finals, he didn’t see any ice time. His role was relegated to being among the reserve players for the Cup Finals.
An extensive history of injuries, including concussions, broken bones, countless sutures, and one lengthy hospitalization, all due to hits on the ice, made Howe’s decision simpler.
The worst of these occurred early, when Howe was 25. In a game in Hartford against the visiting New York Islanders, he received a deep puncture wound in his rectal area after sliding into a metal bar in the back of the goalie net.
“I needed 4 1/2 pints of blood. That injury set me back more than a year in my career,” he said.
Howe recalls wanting to have played in two more seasons after the Stanley Cup Finals in the spring of 1995, but his body was telling him otherwise. Experiencing the jitters and fanfare of NHL opening nights has limits.
Howe remains happy with the collection of memories the game of hockey has given him.
