(Image: Screenshot/YouTube)
Hockey legend and Hall of Famer “Mr. Hockey” Gordie Howe died Friday at the age of 88.
Howe held pretty much every major statistical hockey record until Wayne Gretzky came around in the 1980s and changed the game.
Howe played 25 seasons with the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Detroit Red Wings and was a part of four Stanley Cup championship teams. He continued playing past his days with Red Wings, playing seven more seasons of professional hockey.
After his years in Detroit, Howe played four seasons for the World Hockey Association’s (WHA) Houston Aeros, two seasons with the New England Whalers and one more with the Whalers after the team transitioned to Hartford and joined the NHL. He played professionally from 1946 through the 1979-1980 season.
Howe still holds the NHL record for games played (1,767) and NHL seasons played (26). Despite not playing an official professional game since 1980, Howe is still in the top 10 in goals scored (801), assists (1,049) and overall points (1,850).
Howe even had a hockey term named after him. The “Gordie Howe hat trick” is when a player scores a goal, assists on a goal and gets into a fight in the same game.
According to ESPN, Howe had been experiencing dementia for years. He'd suffered two debilitating strokes in October of 2014, but it had been said that he somewhat recovered after “he underwent a stem-cell treatment as part of a clinical trial in Mexico.”
So long, Mr. Hockey.