Sport: Out for the Record

The Detroit Red Wings' Gordie Howe speaks softly, almost inaudibly, but he carries a big stick—the biggest in the National Hockey League. At 24, when many players are just breaking into the big time, rangy (6 ft., 190 Ibs.) Gordie Howe has been league scoring champ two years in a row, and this year he is after an unprecedented triple. Moreover, he is taking dead aim on the record for goals in one season—50—set by Montreal's Maurice ("Rocket") Richard in 1944-45. In Chicago last week, the largest hockey crowd (16,518) in three years turned out to see Wingman Howe and the league-leading Red Wings do their work.

Always Make Sure. For the first minute or so of play, Chicago fans thought they had something to shout about: Chicago's Goalie Al Rollins twice stopped Howe cold. Moments later, Howe and Detroit Captain Ted Lindsay broke out of a melee and headed up the ice with the puck in their famed "crisscross" play.

The Chicago defensive pair divided as Lindsay crossed from right to left and Howe swung wide to the right. Quick as a flash, Lindsay backhanded a pass to Howe. Hardly checking his speed, Howe picked up the puck on his stick, whirled past the defenseman, feinted Goalie Rollins out of position, and fired a sizzling 20-footer into the net. Time & again the pair had worked this strategy. This one was a milestone: Howe's 200th goal in N.H.L. play, his 40th this season. In the third period, again with an assist from Captain Lindsay, Howe netted No. 41.

Unlike most star scorers, Howe "back-checks," i.e., turns to defensive play, with an amateur's enthusiasm. He is a team player, one who goes about his business so unobtrusively that admiring Coach Tommy Ivan admits that "there are times when he even fools me." Ivan likes to recall one tight game in which the Red Wings were trailing by one goal: "Howe gets the puck inside the blue line and I'm yelling at him to shoot. But Howe just takes his time, works his way toward the cage, and then finally lets go a perfect shot to tie things up for us. When he came back to the bench, I asked him why he had taken so much time. Howe tells me, in that drawl of his: 'Ah jes wanted to make sure.'" Adds Coach Ivan: "He usually does make sure, too."

Handle with Care. Howe's scoring prowess, by his own taciturn admission, stems partly from constant study of rival goalies' weaknesses: "You vary your shots with the goalie—high for McNeil of Montreal, on the ice against Henry of Boston." But Howe's main scoring assets are a pair of powerful wrists (strengthened by summertime golf and softball), an ability to shoot from either side, and the shifty knack of disguising his intentions. Charging into an opponent's zone, Howe has been known to ward off a defenseman with one elbow and still get off a blasting scoring shot, one-handed, past an astonished goalie. Measured speed of Howe's hottest shots: 120m.p.h.