Gordie Howe (left) and Clarence Campbell.
Not in 1946.
October 16, 1946: With the World Series having ended the day before, with the St. Louis Cardinals beating the Boston Red Sox in Game 7, there was only one sporting event on this day. And it is the NHL debut of Gordie Howe.
The 18-year-old native of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan wore Number 17, instead of the familiar 9 that he will start wearing the next season. The right wing scores against Turk Broda, and the Detroit Red Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 3-3 tie at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
The goal will be the 1st of 786 that the man who becomes known as Mr. Hockey will score for the Wings, going on to win 4 Stanley Cups and becoming the greatest player the game has ever known, and I don't want to hear about no Number 99: Gordie was better. We lost him in 2016, at the age of 88.
This new season was one of big changes in the NHL. Former player Red Dutton, who had been interim President of the League after the death of original President Frank Calder in 1943, was finally able to hand the office over to Calder's handpicked successor, Clarence Campbell, who had been away in the Canadian Army, even after World War II.
Campbell's experience in law and in hockey made him an ideal choice as President. Campbell hired Ken McKenzie, who would become the league's first publicity director, in September 1946, as his first hiring. McKenzie would go on to found The Hockey News and other publications, including the annual NHL Guide.
Campbell extended the regular season from 50 games to 60 games. Linesmen were now hired for each game from neutral cities. The NHL adopted the system of hand gestures to symbolize penalties, devised by the man then recognized as its best referee, Bill Chadwick.
(Chadwick was so well-regarded that, following his retirement as a referee and his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame, the New York Rangers hired him as a color commentator. "The Big Whistle" broadcast for the Broadway Blues from 1967 to 1981.)
Campbell presided over the NHL until 1977, including the expansions of 1967, 1970, 1972 and 1974, increasing the number of teams from 6 to 18. Except for Montreal Canadiens fans, still angry at his handling of a situation involving Maurice Richard in 1955 -- and, except for his mistake of showing up at the Forum for the next game, he handled it exactly right -- he was universally admired, for having grown the game tremendously.
Additionally, the league modified the captaincy rule, so that captains wore the letter "C" and alternate captains wore the letter "A" on the front of their jerseys. The rule was that only the Captain -- and thus whoever was on the ice wearing a C or an A -- can talk to the officials on behalf of their team, not any other player, not any of the coaches.
Frank Selke, released from the Toronto Maple Leafs, took over as the Montreal GM. The Canadiens were in financial trouble at this time, despite their winning team, and Selke would turn things around by buying up talent and keeping the cream of the crop, selling some players to teams that needed talent. He went on to build the greatest dynasty hockey ever knew in the late 1950s.
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October 16, 1946 was a Wednesday. Actress Suzanne Somers and English soccer goalkeeper Geoff Barnett were born.
Also on this day, 10 Nazi war criminals, convicted of crimes against humanity, are executed by hanging at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. They include Joachim von Ribbentrop, Adolf Hitler's Foreign Minister; Julius Streicher, Nazi Germany's top propaganda publisher; General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Armed Forces, who had signed the surrender papers on V-E Day; and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.
Not among the condemned, but scheduled to be so, was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, the highest-ranking Nazi official to have survived V-E Day. He had made an appeal, asking to be shot as a soldier instead of hanged as a common criminal, but the court refused. So he committed suicide with a potassium cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hanged.
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