June 16, 2025
Photo by: Jerry Click
How Houston Aeros pulled a fast one on hockey world and got Gordie Howe to come out of retirement
The 1973 World Hockey Association draft should have been fairly unremarkable as the Houston Aeros and the 11 other teams in the fledgling league picked among a pool of players mostly passed over in the NHL draft that took place three days earlier.
Then, the Aeros pulled a shocker that left the rest of the league steaming.
With his first pick, Aeros president and general manager Jim Smith selected 17-year-old Mark Howe, son of Hockey Hall of Famer Gordie Howe.
Usually drafting someone like Mark would be a no-brainer. He projected to be a lot like his dad, leading his junior team, the Toronto Marlboros in the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, to a championship the week before the draft while being named the Ontario Hockey Association's Most Valuable Player.
Of course, perhaps more importantly for a franchise seeking to create some buzz, having Mark Howe on the team would put a huge carrot in front of 45-year-old Gordie Howe, who had retired just two years earlier and always longed to play alongside his sons, like Ken Griffey Sr., would do with Junior nearly 20 years later and like LeBron James and Bronny did 34 years after that.
For good measure, the Aeros drafted 19-year-old Marty Howe, the eldest son of "Mr. Hockey," in the 14th round of the same draft.
It wasn't like the Aeros were the only ones thinking of the Gordie Howe angle. They were just the only ones with a notion that drafting the Howe brothers would even be allowed.
The Howes weren't selected in the NHL draft because the league had an agreement at the time that it wouldn't go after junior players until they turned 20.
The rest of the WHA thought it was abiding by the same rules, but Smith argued it didn't apply to the Howes because although they were playing in Canadian Juniors, they were American citizens getting paid a stipend, making them professionals in the eyes of the NCAA, which wouldn't allow the Howes to play college hockey.
"Marty and Mark are Americans who went to Canada expressly to play hockey for $60 a week, and that clearly made them professionals," Smith told Sports Illustrated a month after the draft.
Almost no one else saw it the same way.
The Winnipeg Jets were part of a large group of WHA teams that immediately protested the results of the draft, demanding the selections of Mark and Marty be thrown out since no other team believed them to be eligible. Bobby Hull, who was serving as player/coach for the Jets, said of the Howes, "We'd all like to have them."
Jets president Ben Hatskin didn't know exactly what to say when he talked to The Calgary Albertan, telling the paper, "They sure pulled a surprise, and I am speechless at the moment. Maybe they are right. Maybe they are smarter than I am."
Gary Davidson, who was co-founder and president of the league, stood up to the owners and stood by the bold Aeros.
"I've seen drafts where teams have taken girl pole vaulters. They are allowed to draft anyone they like," Davidson told The Albertan.
The Aeros' move and Davidson's decision to back them shook the hockey world.
Even NHL teams took notice with the Detroit Red Wings, where Gordie Howe played for 25 years and was working in the team's front office at the time, petitioning the NHL to change its age-limit rules so the Howe brothers could play with their father in Detroit.
Not looking to do the Red Wings any favors, the NHL shot down that idea.
After the kerfuffle died down, the Howe brothers each signed four-year contracts with the Aeros worth a total of $1 million with Mark getting about $140,000 a year while Marty was paid about $110,000 annually.
Then, it came time for what everyone was here for: What's it going to be, Mr. Hockey? After the entire family was courted on a trip to Houston, Gordie eventually agreed to a four-year, $1 million deal for himself.
It was quite a coup for the second-year franchise, but also for the man who had to work a second job even while he was the best player in the NHL in the 1950s and never even made $100,000 in a year until his final season with the Red Wings.
Who is Gordie Howe?
Wayne Gretzky is known as "The Great One," but he wore No. 99 as a tribute to Howe, who made No. 9 legendary in hockey. Howe held NHL records with 801 goals and 1,850 points until Gretzky came along, but even Gretzky later admitted to being "embarrassed" that he broke his idol's records.
Alex Ovechkin passed Gretzky as the NHL's all-time goals leader earlier this year, but Gretzky still holds the record for career hat tricks.
Howe was so iconic, he authored what is known as the "Gordie Howe Hat Trick," which is a goal, assist and a fight in one game.
Howe, who is still is the only player with 22 consecutive 20-goal seasons in the NHL, played 25 years for the Detroit Red Wings, winning four Stanley Cups, six scoring titles and six MVP awards.
At 41 years old and battling a chronic wrist injury, Howe announced his retirement in 1971. He took a job in the Red Wings front office and watched as his No. 9 was raised to the rafters. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972, with the mandatory three-year waiting period waived.
But, then the Houston Aeros came calling…
How Gordie Howe defines Houston sports
The Aeros pulled out all the stops when it came to wooing the Howes. In 1973, Sports Illustrated wrote:
They flew first-class jet, and when they arrived, a limousine chauffeured them to the Sonesta Hotel, where the palatial Texas Suite was reserved for them. There was a shiny brass plate on the door that read: "Mr. and Mrs. Gordie Howe." That night Howe took his family to the Astrodome to see the baseball game and, as any kid might, 12-year-old Murray Howe got lost for five innings. Midway through the game the big board in center field flashed a greeting: "Welcome Gordie Howe and Family in Sky Boxes." On the way back to the hotel the Howes were welcomed to "Howes-ton" by the neon message board atop a downtown building.
The high-class treatment got everyone to sign on the dotted line and then it paid off on the ice.
Playing at Sam Houston Coliseum initially, Gordie Howe being a part of the Aeros at his advanced age wasn't just some spectacle. He was good. Really good. He scored 100 points in his first season in Houston, leading the Aeros to the WHA title, known as the Avco World Trophy.
The Aeros repeated the next season with Howe scoring 99 points. The Aeros moved into the Summit in 1975 and Howe scored 102 points, the second-highest mark of his career, but the Aeros fell in the championship series.
Age finally began to catch up to him in his final year in Houston as the 48-year-old missed some time with injury. In four years with the Aeros, Howe had 369 points (121 goals, 248 assists) and 263 penalty minutes in 285 games before he and his sons left the financially faltering Aeros franchise to sign with the New England Whalers.
Gordie Howe's backstory
In a 1973 New York Times story, esteemed sports columnist Dave Anderson recounted a Gordie Howe story with Marty Howe coming home from the first grade and running up to his father.
"Why didn't you tell me?," he said.
"Tell you what?," his father asked
"That you're a big hockey star."
Howe never carried himself as a hockey icon. When he retired for the first time, two years before signing with the Houston Aeros, the Detroit Free Press was filled with letters to the editor of tales about various times Howe stopped to help them on the side of the road or visited their kid in the hospital without anyone else knowing.
Howe got that kind of value system when he grew up in Saskatoon working construction with his father during the Depression. He took up hockey at 8 and was good enough to get signed by the Detroit Red Wings and assigned to their junior team at just 16 years old.
Howe made his NHL debut in 1946 at 18 and quickly became Mr. Hockey, possessing a rare combination of goal-scoring, passing and a willingness to fight.
Twenty-seven years later, Howe would continue showing those traits while playing alongside his teenage sons in Houston.
Gordie Howe's legacy
Gordie Howe left his mark wherever he played hockey, but he made the winter sport cool in Houston. Every time the city gets mentioned in talks for an NHL team, Howe and his time with the Aeros is sure to be mentioned. And with good reason.
In the Howes' first three seasons in Houston, the Aeros averaged more fans than the Houston Rockets, averaging 9,180 fans per game in the 1975-76 season in the same building Calvin Murphy, Rudy Tomjanovich and the Rockets were averaging fewer than 7,000 fans a night.
After decades of being celebrated in Canada and in hockey-crazed parts of the United States, Howe became a hero in Houston.
Although some worried that Howe coming back to play in Houston and then two more seasons with the New England Whalers would damage his legacy in Detroit and throughout the NHL, it didn't leave any such stain on his remarkable career.
"A lot of the people are saying I'm turning my back on the NHL," Howe told the Detroit Free Press in1973. "I hoped they wouldn't take that attitude. I hoped they would see it as a fine opportunity for my boys and me. The chance to play on a team with my boys would be a dream come true. I gave my entire career to the NHL, and they were good to me. But now it's just like the cows … going to where the pasture is greener."
Before he died in 2016 at 88 years old, Howe talked with his youngest son Murray about what might be said at his funeral.
"He said, 'Say this: Finally, the end of the third period.' Then he added, 'I hope there's a good hockey team in heaven,'" Murray said during his dad's service. "Dad, all I can say is, once you join the team, they won't just be good, they'll be great."
 | Matt Young, trending sports reporter |
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