Mark Howe, the Proto-Nicklas Lidstrom, Is at Last in the Hall of Fame

On Monday night, Mark Howe will at long last be where he belongs: in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Howe became eligible for election to the Hall in 1998, three years after his distinguished 22-season career ended, but only now is he being ushered into a club in which he has long deserved membership. Yet even that is somehow fitting for Howe, whose quiet excellence tended to be overlooked throughout his career.

Howe was nothing less than one of the greatest defensemen of his generation, and it was he, perhaps more than anyone else, who made the Flyers of the 1980s a perennial Stanley Cup contender. Howe’s play on the Philadelphia blue line looked an awful lot like Nicklas Lidstrom’s does on the Detroit blue line: near flawless through the use of positioning rather than body checking, virtually penalty-free, and with an effective attacking component that made him doubly good.

Compare Howe’s 16 N.H.L. seasons (1979-80 through 1994-95) with the 18 full N.H.L. seasons of Lidstrom (1991-92 through 2010-11), and you can see just how good Howe was.

Totals:

Howe in 929 games: 197+545=742, +400, 455 PiM

(per game: 0.78 pts, +0.42, 0.48 PiM)

Lidstrom in 1,494 games: 253+855=1108, +429, 486 PiM

(per game: 0.74 pts, +0.29, 0.33 PiM)

Howe’s record is remarkable. Certainly Lidstrom will be elected to the Hall in his first year of eligibility, and deservedly so. But Howe’s career averages are actually slightly better than Lidstrom’s, and he had to wait 13 years.

The things Howe is best known for are special enough, even if they lead people to miss the bigger picture of his on-ice accomplishments.

He is a son of Gordie Howe, and where Gordie could be and was often savagely rough, Mark was gentlemanly and clean. In any case, it was for the chance to play alongside his sons Mark and Marty that Gordie came out of retirement for the 1973-74 season.

The three formed a line for the Houston Aeros of the W.H.A., with Gordie, 45, centering Mark, 18, on the left and Marty, 19, on the right. Gordie scored 100 points and Marty 24. Mark scored 79 points in 76 games and was voted the rookie of the year.

But it should not have come as a big surprise – Mark had already led the Detroit Junior Red Wings to the national junior championship as a 15-year-old in 1971; won a silver medal with the United States at the 1972 Olympics at 16, the youngest hockey player ever to earn a medal; and been named Memorial Cup most valuable player with the Toronto Marlboros in ’73.

With the Howes leading the way, the Aeros won the Avco World Trophy as W.H.A. champions in 1974 and ’75. Then the family moved to Hartford and the New England Whalers, and Mark continued to excel:

WVIT in Hartford offered this back-in-the-day profile of Mark:

Father and sons stayed together for the Hartford Whalers’ first N.H.L. season, 1979-80, and by this time Mark Howe was playing defense more and more – though still putting up point-a-game numbers. Then came a horrific injury, when he was impaled by a prong at the center of the goal net – it entered through his thigh and buttock and narrowly missed his spine. You cannot find the injury on video, but witnesses call it gruesome. The N.H.L. subsequently redesigned the nets, removing the prong.

Despite losing 35 pounds while on a liquid diet recovering from the injury, Howe managed to come back and score 53 points in 76 games the next season. But in those high-scoring days, that was seen as a big decline, and he was dealt to Philadelphia for the 1982-83 campaign.

So began Howe’s greatest period. He was partnered with Brad McCrimmon on the Flyers’ defense for much of five seasons, and the pairing was practically impregnable in leading Philadelphia to the Stanley Cup finals in 1985 and ’87. (Howe’s plus-minus marks for those five seasons: plus-47, plus-30, plus-51, plus-85, plus-57. McCrimmon’s: plus-24, plus-19, plus-52, plus-83, plus-45.) Howe could score, too, averaging 19 goals and 63 points in that span:

Amazing how much that goal looks like the one he scored for the Whalers of the W.H.A. a few years before.

Howe’s best season was 1985-86, when he led the league with his plus-85 (followed by McCrimmon’s plus-83), while scoring 24 goals and 82 points – and did so while taking only 36 penalty minutes. Howe did not win the Norris Trophy that season; Paul Coffey did. But Howe should have. For that one season at least, Howe, like his father, had become the best player at his position; unlike his father, he never gave out a mean check or a cheap shot.

Howe continued to excel in Philadelphia until beginning the slow decline of a wise but still useful veteran. The Flyers let him go after the 1991-92 season so he could sign with Detroit to try to win a Stanley Cup. But in three seasons with the Red Wings – two spent alongside McCrimmon — he could not.

Perhaps the absence of a Stanley Cup on his resume was the reason for the long delay in according Howe the recognition he will receive Monday. He did make three trips to the finals with Philadelphia — and sat in the press box for a fourth, as a veteran scratch with Detroit. But he won two W.H.A. titles, was a first-team N.H.L. All-Star three times, had the rare distinction of skating for both the United States and Canada in international play and, as we have seen, had a career of overarching quality and class. Better late than never.

Should Hall of Famers Have to Shine Internationally Too?

Four new members will be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto tonight, and the consensus is that a better quartet has not been so honored in many years. Ed Belfour, Doug Gilmour, Mark Howe and Joe Nieuwendyk are all names familiar to any hockey fan and each had a lengthy and successful career in the N.H.L.

Each also had important international experience. Belfour was Canada’s third goalie when it won the gold medal at the 2002 Olympics. Gilmour played at the 1981 world juniors, was part of the incredible Canadian win at the 1987 Canada Cup and played in the 1990 world championship. He also played in Switzerland during the lockout of 1994-95.

Howe won a silver medal at the 1972 Olympics with Team USA, a feat notable for two reasons. First, the Americans had been relegated to Pool B for that year’s world championship, meaning they were ranked so low no one could have imagined the team’s enormous Olympic success. As well, Howe was — and still is — the youngest man ever to play at the Olympics, at age 16 years, 8 months, 8 days. His other Team USA appearance came at the 1981 Canada Cup.

Nieuwendyk represented Canada four times; first at the 1986 world juniors, winning silver, and later at the 1990 world championship with Gilmour. He then played at the first two Olympics to feature N.H.L. players, finishing fourth in 1998 in Nagano, and winning gold in 2002.

But here is the curious paradox to these great players’ careers. Each is supremely proud of representing his country in international play, but if they hadn’t played a single moment internationally, would they still be being honored tonight? Almost certainly the answer is yes. While each had success on the international stage, it wasn’t necessarily the crux or defining moment of his career.

Yet for a modern hockey player to be considered worthy of the Hockey Hall of Fame, shouldn’t his international resume be superb and work alongside his N.H.L. portfolio? After all, playing for one’s country is not just an honor — it’s a way of filtering the greatest of the great players from the merely great players. There is an important symbolism attached to playing internationally. It means at that time, for that event, a player is considered among the very best at his position and from his country. A player can win a Stanley Cup as a fourth-line utility man. The Olympics call for stars.

In the old days, amateur (i.e., international players) and pro (i.e., N.H.L.) players were two different beasts. But today, they are one and the same. Wayne Gretzky was the best N.H.L. player, but he also played every international event because he was (A) allowed to and (B) clearly among that group we might call the best of the best.

For the Hockey Hall of Fame to truly earn its stripes as representing hockey and not just the N.H.L., it must surely consider both aspects of a player’s career. As well, it can and should induct players who were the opposite to tonight’s four: players who had outstanding international careers and only very good (or no) N.H.L. careers. Take a player like Robert Reichel, for instance, an excellent example of a superb international player who reached a lesser level in the N.H.L.

Reichel played 830 N.H.L. regular season games with four teams, collecting 252 goals and 630 points. In 13 N.H.L. seasons, his teams made the playoffs 10 times, but he never won the Stanley Cup. All in all, this was a superior N.H.L. career, but not one deserving Hall of Fame recognition.

But consider his international career with Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic. He played at the world juniors three times (1988-90), meaning that for three straight years he was among the best young players in his country. Between 1990 and 2003, he played in 77 world championship games, winning three gold medals and four bronze. He also won the historic Olympic gold with the Czechs in 1998, the nation’s first, and played in Salt Lake in 2002 as well as the 1991 Canada Cup and 2004 World Cup.

Given that the Czech Republic is one of the top hockey countries in the world, and Reichel was on his national team whenever he was available for a decade and a half (captaining the team on several occasions, no less), is he not among that group of hockey players who deserves a place in the Hockey Hall of Fame? Yet he has never received serious consideration, and likely never will, because his N.H.L. credentials aren’t strong enough. But, when he played the best of the best — a level above the N.H.L. — he excelled.

And what about a coach like Russia’s Viktor Tikhonov? He never coached in the N.H.L., but he coached against the N.H.L.’s best when those players represented their countries — and he won far more often than he lost. One could easily call him the Scotty Bowman of international play, both for his longevity and success. From his first tournament 1976 to his last in 2004 he won multiple gold medals at the Olympics and world championships, and led the Soviets to that historic clobbering of Canada, 8-1, at the 1981 Canada Cup. He also took his all-stars to victory over the N.H.L. stars at the 1979 Challenge Cup at Madison Square Garden. Not a Hockey Hall of Fame-worthy coach? Puh-lease.

The International Ice Hockey Federation has its own hall of fame, and by definition makes it clear that being elected is based on international success. But the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto has always maintained it celebrates the best players in the game, period. The class of 2012 is beyond reproach, but it could do more to incorporate international play into its voting consideration (not to mention the addition of several more women to keep company with Angela James and Cammi Granato). After all, nothing beats best-on-best competition. Nothing.