from Alex Prewitt of Sports Illustrated,

This is a time for mourning and sadness but also for stories, and few figures in the NHL tell those better than executive Brian Burke. Currently the president of hockey operations for the Flames, formerly of Hartford, Vancouver, Anaheim, Toronto and the league’s front office, Burke spoke with SI for an unrelated topic Saturday afternoon and agreed to share some memories about the late Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe.

- “And he’s telling me about growing up on the farm. There’s a great story in his book, about how his dad got him a job about the concrete plant. And the guy told Gordie, ‘Alright move these 50-pound bags of concrete, and stack them over here.’ About 10 minutes later, Gordie came up and said, ‘Alright, what do I do now?’ And the guy said, ‘No, I said stack them all.’ Each guy would struggle with a 50--pound bag of cement. Gordie picked up one in each hand. And if you’ve ever picked up a bag of concrete, it’s impossible to grip it, unless you have a bone-crushing grip. It’s impossible to grab a bag of concrete by the side and carry two at once and that’s what he did.

- Ted Lindsay told me one. Gordie, he blinked like every 10 seconds or so. He’d take a real deep blink, and it was from when he fractured his skull. When you first meet him, you’re like what is this? Then you realize it’s just this little affliction. So he blinked like once every 10 seconds. So Ted Lindsay told me this story, he said they were lining up for a faceoff against Chicago and they dropped the puck and Gordie speared the guy opposite him right in the groin, and they had to carry him off.

“And Teddy said to Gordie, ‘What the hell was that for?’

“Gordie said, ‘He was mocking me, he was blinking at me.’

“And Teddy says, ‘He’s got the same thing you do, you a—h---!’”

much more