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Gordie Howe’s first All-Star Game started a 32-year run no one has matched

Seventy-eight years ago this week, a 20-year-old Gordie Howe played in his first NHL All-Star Game, the start of a record 23 appearances.

Shaun
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Seventy-eight years ago Tuesday, on Nov. 3, 1948, a 20-year-old right wing from Floral, Saskatchewan, pulled on an All-Star sweater for the first time. Gordie Howe would wear one in 23 NHL All-Star Games before he was done, more than anyone in league history.

As the Red Wings mark 100 years since the franchise’s first NHL game, that first All-Star night in Chicago is a good place to measure what Howe meant. It wasn’t his best game or his biggest moment. It was the opening of a run that lasted 32 years, and nothing on his long list of records says more about him.

A different kind of All-Star Game

The 1948 game was only the second NHL All-Star Game, and it looked nothing like the modern event. It matched the reigning Stanley Cup champion, the Toronto Maple Leafs, against a team of NHL All-Stars at Chicago Stadium. The All-Stars won 3-1, according to the NHL’s list of All-Star Game results.

Howe was in his third NHL season. He debuted on Oct. 16, 1946, in the Red Wings’ season opener against Toronto at Olympia Stadium, and his rookie numbers were modest: seven goals and 15 assists in 58 games. Before his second season he switched from No. 17 to No. 9, the number he wore the rest of his career and the one the Red Wings retired on March 12, 1972.

He was not yet “Mr. Hockey.” He was a young winger on a line with Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay that came together in 1946-47. By 1948-49, the season that All-Star Game kicked off, the trio was known as the Production Line, and Abel won the Hart Trophy as league MVP that season.

What came next

The young winger who made the 1948 roster grew into the best player in the league within two years. In 1949-50, the Production Line finished first, second, and third in NHL scoring: Lindsay with 78 points, Abel with 69, and Howe with 68. The Red Wings’ centennial pages call it “an accomplishment which has never been duplicated.”

In 1950-51, Howe led the NHL with 43 goals, 43 assists, and 86 points in 70 games. That was the first of four straight scoring titles. The full Detroit resume, per the Red Wings:

  • Four Stanley Cups (1950, 1952, 1954, and 1955)
  • Six Art Ross Trophies and six Hart Trophies
  • 12 first-team and nine second-team NHL All-Star selections
  • 1,687 games, 786 goals, 1,023 assists, and 1,809 points in 25 seasons with Detroit

Across his whole NHL career, which ended with Hartford, he played 1,767 games and finished with 801 goals and 1,850 points, according to NHL.com.

Why 23 is the number

Records get broken. This one hasn’t. Howe played in 23 All-Star Games, and NHL.com lists Ray Bourque second. Howe also holds the All-Star record with six power-play goals; per NHL.com, no one else has more than three.

Mitten Hockey’s take: the 23 is the best single number for understanding Howe, because it measures something the goal totals can’t. To be picked that many times, a player has to be among the league’s best year after year, through changes in teammates, coaches, rules, and even leagues. Howe’s selections ran from his third NHL season to his last.

The last of the 23 came back home. On Feb. 5, 1980, the All-Star Game was played at Joe Louis Arena, and Howe was there with the Hartford Whalers. It was the first time he played in an All-Star Game for a team other than the Red Wings, so 22 of his 23 came as a Red Wing.

NHL.com says he was the final player introduced that night, and the crowd of 21,002, then the largest to see an NHL game, gave him a four-minute ovation. He was 51 years, 10 months, and 5 days old. He didn’t score, but he stole the puck and set up Real Cloutier for the final goal of the Wales Conference’s 6-3 win.

That’s the arc: a 20-year-old in Chicago in 1948 and a 51-year-old in Detroit in 1980, with the league’s best around him both times. Gretzky put it simply in a 2021 NHL.com column: “The greatest player ever. I say this all the time.”

The centennial connection

The Red Wings will host a Centennial Celebration Game against the Boston Bruins on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at Little Caesars Arena, marking 100 years since the franchise’s first NHL game in 1926. A century of Detroit hockey has produced plenty of great players, but no player in league history has been picked to stand with the NHL’s best as often as Howe. The run started 78 years ago this week in Chicago.

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