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The two-week chase that made Gordie Howe the NHL’s goals king

Sixty-three years ago, Gordie Howe passed Maurice Richard at the Olympia to become the NHL’s career goals leader, a record he held for three decades.

Shaun
3–5 minutes
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Sixty-three years ago Tuesday, Gordie Howe became the greatest goal scorer the NHL had ever seen. It took him two weeks of waiting, one missed open net, and a goal scored while the Red Wings were a man down.

On Nov. 10, 1963, Howe beat Montreal goalie Charlie Hodge for the 545th goal of his NHL career, passing Maurice Richard for the all-time lead. He did it at the Olympia, against Richard’s own Canadiens, and he held the record for the next 30 years.

With the Red Wings in their centennial season, it is worth looking back at the night the franchise’s greatest player became the league’s.

The Rocket’s mark

Richard retired in 1960 as the NHL’s all-time goal-scoring leader, according to NHL.com, with 544 regular-season goals. For the next three seasons, no one caught him.

Howe got there first. On Oct. 27, 1963, he scored a power-play goal midway through the third period against Gump Worsley at the Olympia to tie Richard at 544, per NHL.com. Detroit lost that night, 6-4, to Montreal.

Fourteen days of waiting

For a player who had scored at will for nearly two decades, No. 545 did not come easily. Time magazine, writing the week after the record fell, called it “the most difficult he ever scored.”

According to Time’s account, Chicago, New York, Montreal, and Boston all kept Howe off the scoresheet during the chase. Against New York, he had a shot at an unprotected net and hit a metal stanchion instead. Time reported that Howe muttered, “This pressure is getting me.”

It is a rare glimpse of Howe as something other than unstoppable. Every game of that stretch carried the weight of a record a city had been waiting on.

The night at the Olympia

The Canadiens came back to Detroit on Sunday, Nov. 10. Fittingly, it was Montreal again, the team Richard played his whole career for.

The record came at an unlikely moment. With Detroit short-handed, Howe scored at 15:06 of the second period, according to NHL.com. Time described Howe flipping the puck to a teammate and getting it back before he beat Hodge.

NHL.com reports that the Olympia crowd of more than 15,000 gave him a 10-minute ovation. Afterward, Time reported, Howe said simply, “I feel ten pounds lighter.”

The Red Wings won 3-0, and the shutout carried its own history. NHL.com’s Dave Stubbs notes it was Terry Sawchuk’s 94th career shutout, tying George Hainsworth for the NHL lead. Sawchuk took the record outright with No. 95 at the Montreal Forum on Jan. 18, 1964. Two of the sport’s biggest records changed hands within about two months, both by Red Wings, both at Montreal’s expense.

There was one more coincidence. NHL.com notes that Nov. 10, 1963, came 17 years to the day after Howe first played on a line with Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvecchio, the trio later known as the Production Line.

How long it lasted

Howe did not stop at 545. He finished with 801 NHL goals over 26 seasons, per NHL.com, a total that became the standard for the next generation of scorers.

It took Wayne Gretzky to top it. On March 23, 1994, Gretzky scored his 802nd goal at 14:47 of the second period against Vancouver’s Kirk McLean at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., NHL.com records. That means Howe sat alone atop the NHL’s career goals list for a little more than 30 years.

Gretzky grew up idolizing Howe, and he has said the man matched the legend. “For me, when I met Gordie, he was bigger and better than I thought,” Gretzky told NHL.com in 2016.

Why it still matters in Detroit

Plenty of Howe’s numbers have been passed since. But the 545th goal is the moment the NHL’s scoring crown moved from Montreal to Detroit, and it stayed in Hockeytown for three decades. In a season built around 100 years of Red Wings hockey, few nights in franchise history carry more weight.

It also says something about Howe that the record nearly got to him. The two weeks between 544 and 545 are the rare stretch where Mr. Hockey looked human, and the way he finished it, short-handed and against the Rocket’s old team, is about as fitting as a record-breaker gets.

For more on Howe’s place in league history, read our look at how Gordie Howe’s first All-Star Game started a 32-year run no one has matched.

Sources

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