Dead Wing

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Gordie Not

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And Howe

(Kudos to Monty)

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Brass Bone-anza 

(Props to Don)

Gordie Howe, who was a better hockey player at 52 than 99% of the players who’ve ever laced them up in the NHL, has died at the age of 88, delaying his next comeback. The only athlete whose nickname unironically encompassed an entire sport (though as Don observed, now that his Wings are broken, he may be better known as Mister Mister Hockey), Howe was the best all-around player in NHL history. He set records for seasons, goals, points, assists and for records set en route to 20 straight Top 5 scoring seasons, 4 Stanley Cup championships, 23 All-Star Games, and 6 Hart trophies as league MVP. After a brief retirement and his induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame, he spent 6 seasons with his sons Marty and Mark with the World Hockey Association’s Houston Aeros and New England Whalers, winning 2 Avco Cups and notching 2 100-point seasons in his mid-40s. After the WHA-NHL merger, he played one more season with the Whalers, notching 41 more points at the age of 52, then skated 1 short shift with the IHL’s Detroit Vipers at the age of 69 in 1997 to record his 6th decade of professional hockey. When not lighting the lamp, Howe was probably hitting someone, as unlike other stars, he had no issues with the physical aspects of the game, earning 1685 minutes in box, where he presumably did not feel shame. Howe was further immortalized as the namesake of the Gordie Howe hat trick – a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game – despite only doing it twice himself as he didn’t find a lot of takers for fisticuff action. Despite his status as one of the game’s all-time greats, the Red Wings took advantage of his trusting nature and paid him relative peanuts – after a career high 103-point season, he found he was the third-highest paid player on the team. When this became known, his linemate Ted Lindsay started the campaign that eventually led to the NHL Players’ Association. 

Burns Out

Pat Burns, former holder of one of the best mustaches in the NHL, has died after collecting a very unwelcome hat trick, with lung cancer following previous bouts of colon and liver cancer at the age of 58. A former junior hockey player, Burns was a detective sergeant in Gatineau, Quebec with 16 years on the force when Wayne Gretzky told him he should be a coach for a junior hockey team he owned. In Canada, when The Great One tells you to be a coach, you coach. He quickly made the NHL and raised the hopes of 3 of the Original 6 with his tough tactics earning him the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year three times, as he took the Canadiens, Bruins and Maple Leafs to the playoffs, even pulling off the miracle of getting the Maple Leafs within a game of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals, before his teams tired of his rage-filled tirades shy of the prize. Then came 2003 when he took a New Jersey Devils franchise that had only won the Stanley Cup twice in the previous 8 seasons to an NHL championship in his first season with the team. Then got fired after an upset in the first round the following year. In all, his career record was 501-353-151, and his teams missed the playoffs only twice in 14 seasons.

Ice Road Mucker

Bob Probert, a fixture from when the NHL was fun, has died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 45. Probert was one of the NHL’s best enforcers and bodyguards for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks from 1985 to 2002. Forming one half of the Bruise Brothers with Joey Kocur, Probert was best known for his career-long battle with Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers and Winnipeg Jets thug Tie Domi, with Domi adopting his signature move, miming a heavyweight championship belt around his waist, after a 1992 encounter with Probert. Though best known for his donnybrooks, Probert could play a little, scoring 60 goals in his first junior season and earning an all-star spot in 1987-88 by scoring 29 goals then leading the team in the playoffs with 8 more. Of note to the trivially minded, he scored the last goal at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens in 1999 with the Blackhawks.

Cold Hard Cash

(Props to Don for the headline and the heads up)
Scott Cashman, former goalie at Boston University who helped lead the team to the NCAA Frozen Four twice, helping to revive the program after two down years, has died of a heart attack at 39. Cashman was the 1989-90 Hockey East Rookie of the Year, three time team MVP, three time Eberly Award winner as outstanding goaltender in the Beanpot and in 2005 was inducted into both the Beanpot and Boston University Halls of Fame. After graduation, his pro career ended due to a spinal injury, but he still would have been the second best goalie wearing the Terriers red and white this season.

For Rest: Gump

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No Worsley for the Wear

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He’s Gump, He’s Gump, He Might be Dead
Since he’s second lead in the latest dead pool update, you can pretty much be assured that he is. Gump Worsley, the losingest goaltender in NHL history, has died at the age of 77. But to paraphrase Roger Craig, it takes a pretty good goaltender to lose 353 games. Worsley accumulated a lot of those losses playing behind some awful Ranger teams, but won 4 Stanley Cups and two Vezina trophies after a trade to Montreal. Worsley also earned some notoriety as one of the last goaltenders to wear a mask, despite having been hit by objects throwing everything from a dead rabbit to a folding chair fans and having been knocked unconscious by a puck to the face. Although he likened goaltending to being one step above javelin catcher, he resisted the mask until the final 6 games of his career in 1974 at the age of 45.

Greer and Present Danger

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What shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart?
(A Don duo)
Tige Andrews, the captain who corralled those wacky hip kids on The Mod Squad, has died at the age of 87. He was “hey, it’s that guy” in cameos on dozens of TV shows from the 1960s through the 1980s, and was the lamest lycanthrope ever as Bert/The Werewolf in The Werewolf of Woodstock.

Offsides

(Props to Monty)
Former Chicago Blackhawk tough guy Keith Magnuson was killed in a three-car accident when the car in which he was riding, driven by former Toronto Maple Leaf Rob Ramage crossed over a median and hit an oncoming car in suburban Toronto. Ramage had been drinking and was charged with "impaired driving causing death," a charge that could keep him on ice for life. Ironically, Magnuson and Ramage were returning from the funeral of yet another former NHLer (because you can't swing a dead defenseman in Toronto without hitting an ex-hockey player) Keith McCreary, who helped form the NHL Alumni Association. And really, what better way to pay your respects than to get drunk at a funeral and kill someone? A two-time NHL All-Star, in 2001 Magnuson was named to the Blackhawks 75th Anniversary team, high praise from a team that has won 1 Stanley Cup in the last 66 years and for three seasons in the 1960s featured a horse on skates as a right winger.

Do You Believe in Seat Belts? No.

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Miracle Man on Ice
Herb Brooks, architect of one of the greatest moments in American sports history, died yesterday in a single-car accident in his beloved home state of Minnesota. Brooks first displayed his hockey acumen at the University of Minnesota, turning around a long-struggling program to win 3 national titles. But his greatest moments came as the head coach of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team that overcame the dominating Soviet team and then the Finns to win the gold medal.