Varmaan yksi kautta aikojen kovimpia kuitenkin Mark Howe. Kuitenkin nimetty vielä Hall of Fameen. Pätkä tuosta hyvin pitkästä jutusta:
But defense wasn’t his first position as a player. It wasn’t where he skated when he represented Team USA at the 1972 Olympics (taking home a silver medal). It wasn’t where he began his professional career with Houston Aeros (winning two WHA championships in the process). It wasn’t even where he played when he first made the jump to the NHL in the wake of the WHA/NHL merger in 1979. He was a left winger who grew up watching and modeling his game after players like Frank Mahovlich, Bobby Hull, Nick Libett and Johnny Bucyk.
It wasn’t until he was 24 — six years into his professional career — that he switched positions from wing to defense. With little warning, Howe was asked to learn a new set of duties and responsibilities. And he did it so successfully that he made the Hockey Hall of Fame largely because of his work on the blue line — work that all began on Oct. 17, 1979, when Howe walked into the visitor’s locker room in Buffalo ready to take up his usual spot at left wing for the Hartford Whalers, just four games into the club’s first season in the NHL.
“I skated the morning skate on left wing and came in for the game, and the lineup was on the board and they had my name on defense. So I went up and erased it, put it back on left wing on my line,” Howe recalled with a laugh.
He wasn’t about to get off that easy.
“And then the coach, he said, ‘Who’s screwing with the lineup?’ I went, ‘God, so I’m playing defense tonight?’ I wish they had given me a little heads up.”
History
tells us that Howe chipped in with no goals and no assists in that game, a humble beginning for a season that would end with 80 points in 71 games as a blueliner, and finishing fifth in the Norris Trophy voting.
It took awhile for Mark Howe (and others) to recognize the traits that made him special on the blue line.
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