In the eyes of many, Gordie Howe typified the game of hockey.
Both on and off the ice, Howe encapsulated the traits and qualities that one admires in a professional hockey player, in a husband, in a father, in a man doing his best to make it in this world.
There will never be another Mr. Hockey.
Here's a small sampling how he's being remembered after passing away Friday at 88.
Michael Farber, Sports Illustrated:
Sure, vengeance might be His (Romans 12:19), but as the Creator vets His newest recruit - a powerful, stooped-shouldered man with an easy smile and old-fashioned values forged in Depression-era Saskatchewan - He would be well-advised to skim the Book of Gordie. Verse 1: Do not mess with Gordie Howe. Howe, who died on Friday at age 88, had a memory as long as his unparalleled career, which touched five decades and included seven MVP awards in two leagues. Heaven might be a swell place, full of cherubim and gaping five-holes, but if Mr. Hockey suspects that he was taken from us too soon, that he could have gotten yet another day out of his rich life ... well, the Supreme Being should start skating with his head up, you know?
George Vecsey, New York Times:
That is the highest praise a Canadian can lavish on a great athlete from the True North Strong and Free. Humble, appreciative and modest. Even if he played across the border in Detroit. The powerful man was one of the fastest skaters in the league, down the right wing. And he was a good guy. It's the legend of Gordie Howe.
Gordie Howe was more than one of the greatest players in NHL history. He was "Mr. Hockey."
He was an ambassador for the game, a man of the people. So many of us have Gordie stories whether family, friend, foe or fan: that time we met him at a game, an autograph signing or a charity event; that time he told a joke, crushed a handshake or posed for a picture, throwing up a mock elbow at the last second.
As a boy, I worshipped Howe. I bought True Line skates and gloves at Eaton's. I ordered Northland sticks, the ones Howe used. As a broadcaster, I worked so many events with Gordie and he never ceased to amaze with his grace.
On the ice he had the ferocity that is the life force of any athlete or artist, but he was first and foremost a sensitive, tender man.
His favorite saying was, "I believe in the turtle approach. Be hard on the outside, soft on the inside, and be willing to stick your neck out to get ahead."
Last week we lost Muhammad Ali, and now Gordie. "The Greatest" is a wonderful moniker, but in Canada, in sport, you could not be given a more important title than "Mr. Hockey."
Howe has long had a reputation as one of the NHL's top ambassadors. Mark Howe has often told the story of how he was able to hone his hockey skills by playing ball hockey after every Detroit home game, because he knew his father would always spend an hour signing autographs for every person who waited.
Kevin Paul Dupont, Boston Globe:
The more calculating Howe, deemed by many to be the perfect hockey player, saw defense and offense as an equal mission, grinding away at his craft with the single-mindedness of an automotive assembly line worker. In a town that built its reputation on producing Fords and Chevys, its population peaking at some 2 million not long after World War II, Detroit coveted Howe as one of its cherished brands.
Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail:
He played in, believe it, six decades, joining the Wings in the 1940s and playing a single shift for the Detroit Vipers in the 1990s when he was 69 years of age. Incredibly, he had almost been killed in 1950 when he fractured his skull in a horrible on-ice collision with Toronto’s Ted Kennedy. Doctors thought they would lose him in the emergency ward but he came back, played again, and ended up with six National Hockey League scoring championships, six Hart Trophies as the NHL’s best player and 21 All-Star selections.
Keith Olbermann, ESPN:
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