Detroit – As a hockey mom, Colleen Howe traveled early and far looking for ice for her boys.
Her husband, Gordie, had plenty of it at the Olympia. But she raised her oldest sons, Marty and Mark, at a time when hockey was still something folks in the United States mostly watched Canadians do.
Even in the Detroit area there wasn’t much ice indoors, in the early 1960s.
“The first year we played, you played outdoors at Butzel,” said Mark Howe, the director of pro scouting for the Red Wings and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.