Gordie Howe's Son by Mark Howe

Author:Mark Howe [Howe, Mark; Greenberg, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443423519
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

The Two-Minute-and-26-Second Lifetime

As I watched rookie goalie Ron Hextall firing pucks out of his zone during the exhibition games that preceded our 1986–87 season, I figured that this kid would eventually save me some energy and hits in the back. I didn’t realize he would begin to do it as soon as opening night.

A surprise starter in goal against the Oilers at the Spectrum, Hextall was scored on two minutes into the game by Jari Kurri. But when he dragged his pad to stop a Gretzky breakaway, the Spectrum crowd roared.

“Who the hell are you?” Gretzky asked Hextall.

“Who the hell are you?” Hextall asked Gretzky.

We got third-period goals by Ron Sutter and Peter Zezel to win 2–1. Hextall got the next start and was in the net for 18 of our first 20. He didn’t just stop pucks; he cleared them. Instead of merely defying shooters, he would punish them with whacks to the leg and bait them using a cadence he’d perform with his stick against the posts before every defensive-zone draw.

Mike Keenan’s pain from our first-round loss to the Rangers in 1986 had been eased watching Hextall carry the Hershey Bears to the American Hockey League final. Basically, he had won the number-one job from Bob Froese even before going unbeaten in the exhibition season. Our sixth-round draft pick in 1982 was innovative, fundamentally sound and ultracompetitive, a gift sent from the hockey gods as compensation for our tragic loss of Pelle Lindbergh.

To our trademark penalty-killing—we had compiled 62 shorthanded goals in the previous three seasons—Hextall added an unprecedented puck-handling component. Often, on opposition power plays, there was at least one lazy guy who wouldn’t hustle back after a turnover, so I would give a quick yell and either Dave Poulin or Brian Propp would drive the defenseman back by going wide, enabling me to fill the slot. Sometimes Brad McCrimmon would do it, too.

We all read each other so well. Poulin had great speed and excellent vision; Propp was an all-around good player. No one was out there merely to kill two minutes. Hextall had the same mentality and was learning to use us better. Ninety-seven per cent of the time, he was going to throw the puck up the left-wing boards, so I knew if we had Propp or Poulin confronting a guy there, I could get to a good support position 20 feet away and kick the puck out for a two-on-one.

We were so good at killing penalties, leading the league in 1984–85 and coming in second and third the following two seasons, that my advice to Kjell Samuelsson—the six-foot, six-inch defenseman we acquired in December from the Rangers for Froese—was to take a penalty or two to stand up for himself. In his first few games with us, Samuelsson must have had his nose broken three times.

“Kjell, just put your stick through somebody’s face,” I said. “We’ll kill the penalty, and sooner or later, they’ll quit running you.”

Can’t say the big guy wasn’t

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