Stadiums Aren't For Sleeping

Wayne Carleton had taken the puck on a breakaway at the red line of Detroit's Olympia Stadium and there was nothing between the Toronto Maple Leaf left wing and Detroit Goaltender Roy Edwards but a few steaming, mushy yards of opaque hockey rink. Carleton may be excused if he sighed to himself that this goal was surely going to be easy. The only man near him when the puck bounced out to the tip of his stylishly curved hockey stick was Detroit's ranking senior citizen, 41-year-old Right Wing Gordie Howe. The old codger couldn't catch the 23-year-old Carleton with a laser beam. Or could he?

Carleton was underway, shoulders hunched, head down. By the time he had taken half a dozen choppy strides, however, he had company. From that vast wellspring of talent and energy Howe had summoned one more burst of speed. As Howe so often has done, he overtook the breakaway man with a lunge and locked his stick under Carleton's arm. Referee Vern Buffey's arm shot skyward and his whistle grated against his upper plate. But he couldn't blow it until Carleton shot, which he insisted on attempting with Howe clinging to his jersey like another layer of sweat. The puck went astray, Howe went to the penalty box and Carleton returned to the Toronto bench in frustration.

You could make a case for Howe's maneuver against Carleton being the turning point of the Red Wings' victory as a new NHL season opened Saturday night. At the time the home side was ahead 3-1 in the third period but withering in the saunalike atmosphere, and the Wings barely hung on to win 3-2. The heat and humidity drained the snap from the legs and burned holes in the lungs of young and old alike. But there was Howe, opening his 24th season, still combining the grace of Dick Button, the concentration of Arnold Palmer and the raw power of Jimmy Brown. And, more important perhaps, still able to pump up that one grand effort when it was needed most.

Foremost among the four minor-leaguers who will get their first taste of the majors here Wednesday is Gordon Howe, 19-year-old right wing. He is a hard checker and unusually poised. Right wing is weak, but if Rookie Howe continues his preseason play, this flaw will not be critical.

That was Howe's introduction to Red Wing fans in a Detroit newspaper of Oct. 16, 1946. Elsewhere in the news of the day, a number of Nazis were to be hung in a prison yard at Nuremberg that morning. Walter Winchell "breathlessly" recommended the movie based on Ernest Hemingway's classic short story The Killers, which was opening at the Adams Theater downtown. (Another rookie was making his debut in that one: it was Burt Lancaster's first film.)

"Most of us were living across the river in Windsor at the time," Howe recalls. "I had a room in the same boarding house with Ted Lindsay, Max McNab, Doc Couture and a few other guys. I didn't have money for a car. Heck, I was lucky to have a room.

"I'd been sleeping in a storeroom in the stadium under the grandstand during training camp. Funny thing is, I nearly slept through my first practice session when we moved into Olympia before the opening game that season. The storeroom where I had my bed was off by itself, and I didn't have an alarm clock. I woke up when I heard the pucks banging against the boards."

Gordon Howe had been promoted to the Red Wings from their Omaha farm club that summer. He had earned $2,500 for his first year at Omaha and had saved $1,800 of it. "I spent all $1,800 putting plumbing in my folks' home in Floral, Saskatchewan."

Gordie came to Detroit for the sum of $7,000—the NHL minimum—moved from the Stadium into the Windsor boarding house and hoped that he would be able to play at least well enough to please the Red Wings' gruff, gravel-voiced manager, Jack Adams.

Howe is the squad's baby, but he was one of Detroit's most valuable men last night. In his first major league game he scored a goal, skated tirelessly and had perfect poise.