Back from retirement, Gordie Howe helped credibility of World Hockey Association

One of Gordie Howe's many lasting impacts on the hockey world was giving credibility and star power to the fledgling World Hockey Association.

The upstart league had already secured Bobby Hull for its inaugural 1972-73 season. The next year, the Houston Aeros coaxed Howe out of his retirement from the NHL with a million-dollar contract and the offer to play alongside his sons Mark and Marty — something Howe described as a dream.

Howe's arrival bumped up fan interest across the league. And even though he was in his mid-40s, he could still excel.

"When you have these marquee players coming to that league at that time ... it brought a lot of legitimacy," Mario Siciliano, president of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, recalled Friday. Howe was inducted in the Calgary-based hall in 1975 and is featured prominently.

Howe was named the league's most valuable player in his first year and helped lead Houston to two consecutive WHA championships.

He continued to be an imposing figure with a reputation for scoring ability, grit and toughness.

Timothy Gassen, president of the World Hockey Association Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minn., remembers seeing Howe while attending his first pro hockey game as a boy. It was October 1974 and the Aeros were visiting the Indianapolis Racers.

"This guy in his 40s would go into the corner after the puck and none of my hometown Indianapolis Racers would come within five feet of him."

WHA teams would come and go as the league faced ongoing difficulties. But Howe was a constant, even as he turned 50. He would average more than a point per game throughout his WHA career — with the Aeros and later the New England Whalers — and almost as many penalty minutes.

In the league's final year, he was named to the all-star team along with, among others, a young Wayne Gretzky, who idolized Howe.

When the WHA dissolved in 1979, Howe would play one more year in the NHL with the renamed Hartford Whalers, scoring a final goal in a playoff game against the Montreal Canadiens.

Howe was inducted into the WHA Hall of Fame in a ceremony in Hartford in 2010, along with his sons and his late wife Colleen. Some 5,000 people turned out to pay tribute to the legend.

In 2014, Howe visited the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and saw, for the first time, the exhibit that pays tribute to him. Gretzky was on hand as well.

"At one point, Gretzky said to him 'Mr. Howe, would you honour me by signing this wall mural that has my picture on it' .. and he said 'Oh, for sure'," Siciliano recalled. "They went over and they had Sharpie pens and they both signed the wall, which of course now we have sealed under a glass and a frame, because I don't know that their two signatures appear together very often."