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Howie Young
One of hockey’s most rambunctious was former Hamilton Tiger Cub “Young gets $100 fine or 10 days.” As noted by these newspaper accounts, Howie Young was perhaps the most notorious player in the National Hockey League in the 1960s. A former Hamilton player, Young had a turbulent career both on and off the ice due to substance abuse issues. Born in Toronto in 1937, Young earned a reputation as one of the toughest and most promising hockey players, but one that was also plagued with an undisciplined nature that was exasperating for his coaches. His hell-raising started early. Young started his Junior career with the Kitchener Canucks in 1954, and then went to play with the Hamilton Tiger Cubs in 1956. He was fired from the Tiger Cubs before the team reached the playoffs in 1958. He played with the Rochester Americans and the Hershey Bears of the AHL after that, and then went to the Detroit Red Wings for the 1960-61 season. His promising play as a defenseman was duly noted. “One who really appears to be coming of age is Howie Young,” wrote Montreal Gazette reporter Dink Carroll in February of 1961. “The Wings’ rookie rearguard has impressed virturally everbody, not excluding Jack Adams, the team’s general manager. Although exuberant in his play, Red Wings coach Sid Abel did defend the young player at the time: “He’s a marked man,” Able said. “He has a reputation as a rough player, so the referees watch him for things they would miss in another player.” Young came to the Red Wing organization with a reputation for being a tough guy. He amassed 180 minutes in penalties in 50 games with the Rochester team, and 158 minutes in only 33 games with Hershey, earning him the AHL’s “bad man” title. He continued to rack up the penalties with Detroit.
After 20 games with the Red Wings he had tied Pete Grogan for penalty honors with Detroit, 68 minutes. Grogan had the same time, but he had taken 58 games to earn the dubious distinction. By 1963 Coach Able was getting impatient. Detroit owner Bruce Norris suspended Young for an indefinite time after he failed to show up for a players’ meeting, something that had happened on previous occasions. This new suspension was just after a three-day vacation slapped on his by the NHL. “We bent over backwards to help Young many times, but he has not shown any desire to help either the club or himself,” Able said. Perhaps Young’s most infamous incident was when he was charged with assult in May of 1962 for causing bodily harm to a police officer during a Memorial Cup game between the Hamilton Red Wings and the Edmonton Oil Kings in Kitchener. Young, drunk, was leading the Edmonton fans, and approached the Hamilton bench during the game. Young got into a tussle with Hamilton Coach Eddie Bush and the police officer intervened, who was thrown to the floor and punched. For the next few years, Young made sporadic trips to the NHL with Detroit and the Chicago Black Hawks, along with the Los Angeles Blades of the WHL. By 1965 he began his trip on the road to recovery. “I discovered I was an alcoholic,” Young said in an August 1965 report. “And alcoholics die or go crazy. All through my career I couldn’t figure out why everybody thought I was so different. I thought I was going to die a couple of times. I didn’t think I was going to live past 30.” Young joined Alcoholics Anonymous while living in Chicago, got married, and began a new career in an automobile agency. He returned to the sport, playing not only with the Black Hawks, but with Vancouver, Phoenix, and San Diego of the WHL before signing on in 1974 with the Phoenix Roadrunners and the Winnipeg Jets of the new World Hockey Association. He was very popular with the fans in Phoenix and in Winnipeg, where he played for one season. He returned to Phoenix in 1976 for his last season in the majors. Young had some playing time over the next several years in the late 1970s with teams on the Pacific Coast League. Away from hockey for several years, a now-sober Young tried a comeback in 1985 with the Flint Spirits of the International Hockey League. Although he didn’t make the team, at 48 years of age he was willing to try. “I wanted to play again,” he said in a November 1985 interview. “I was out of the game long enough to start missing it. So, I decided why not?” Young’s NHL record had big
numbers, but on the wrong side of the ledger. In his 10 years and
336 games, he scored 12 goals, had 62 assists, and 851 penalty
minutes. In his WHA playing, he scored 17 goals in 98 games, had
25 assists, and 109 penalty minutes. In January of 1999 it was reported that one of hockey’s
most colorful and talented players died. He was 63.
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