Howe and Howe

Tonight, four players who had distinguished careers in the NHL (and WHA, in one case) will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.  The main person that I would like to talk about today is the son of Mr. Hockey.  It took Mark Howe 13 years (that's the years since his first year of eligibility) to finally get the call from the Hall, but he will be inducted and not only will he be around to enjoy it, so will his father Gordie, who was the face of the Detroit Red Wings (the last team Mark played for before retiring), as well as the holder of the record for most goals in a career (before Wayne Gretzky broke it in 1994).  Mark began his professional career in Houston of the WHA, but would be in a Whalers uniform by the time the league folded.  The Hartford Whalers were his first team in the NHL (and Gordie's last NHL team, ironically) and though he struggled to find his niche early on, it would be with the Philadelphia Flyers that he would find his game and position, as he moved from left wing to become one of the more underrated defensemen in the league.  He would eventually finish his career in 1995 with Detroit.

Mark Howe never won the Norris Trophy, a product of playing in the same era as Ray Bourque and Paul Coffey, among others, and reached the Stanley Cup Finals three times, falling short in all three.  As a current scout for the Red Wings, he has four Stanley Cup rings to his name, a credit to his mental acumen in his playing days.  It took a while for Mark Howe to get to the Hall of Fame, but there is no chance that he would have traded the Howe name for anything in the world.