Seattle Right Place, Right Time For Howie Hughes

A linemate from when Seattle Totems winger Howie Hughes personally clinched this city’s second minor professional championship in 1967 feels his later-life community contributions reverberated as thoroughly as his on-ice feats.

And longtime Magnolia and Everett resident Hughes, who died of congestive heart failure Wednesday at age 85, had plenty of on-ice exploits: Scoring the go-ahead goal late in Game 4 of that Western Hockey League final and then an empty netter in a 3-1 Totems victory over the Vancouver Canucks that sealed a sweep and title. Hughes the following season would score the first goal for the NHL expansion Los Angeles Kings in their new home at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. ahead of eventually returning to the Totems years later and retiring in 1975 after playing in the franchise’s final season.

But British Columbia resident Larry Lund, 84, who played center that Totems championship season on a line with right wing Hughes and left-wing Bill Dineen, said the decades following Hughes’ pro hockey retirement are what most impressed him. Hughes coached the Lynwood-based junior hockey Seattle Ironmen and prior Northwest Americans incarnation for roughly 30 years, as well as local Babe Ruth baseball while umpiring softball so well he ultimately landed in the Washington Slowpitch Hall of Fame in 2000.

“The one thing that really stood out in my mind after his career was that he was really dedicated and spent a lot of time with youth hockey in Seattle – which was really admirable,” Lund said. “You know, a lot of guys retire and that’s it. They don’t give back. But Howie, he’s amazing the amount of time he spent with youth hockey in Seattle. So, that’s something that really impressed me.”

And Lund speaks from experience, having himself founded the world’s largest youth hockey school in his Penticton, B.C. hometown back in 1963 while a minor pro player and continuing after his major pro career in the upstart World Hockey Association.

Hughes was such a popular hockey figure locally while coaching that he and a group of his former players arranged a meet-up together in Las Vegas for the Kraken franchise’s inaugural game against the Golden Knights in October 2021.

His health starting to fade back then, Hughes nevertheless insisted on going, accompanied throughout the trip by his daughter, Gayleen.

“He wanted to see that game and he wanted to be with his kids – his kids that played for him,” Hughes’ 67-year-old son, also named Howie, said over the weekend. “They’re not kids anymore but he definitely wanted to see them and did not want to skip that game.”

The elder Hughes also attended a handful of Kraken games at Climate Pledge Arena, including in April 2022 when he was surprised by his former players renting a suite to celebrate his 83rd birthday. He was shown on the twin scoreboards during the game and play-by-play man John Forslund paid tribute to him on the television broadcast.

“He was always watching hockey on TV whenever he could,” his son said. “It didn’t matter what game it was. Anytime the Kraken were on TV, he’d watch them. And then we didn’t have cable, so he couldn’t get the Saturday night games in Canada, but he’d watch ESPN on Saturday or Sunday mornings whenever that was on.”

His son said Hughes, born in the Winnipeg suburb of St. Boniface, Manitoba and raised in nearby Transcona, “fell in love with Seattle and everything about it” while living in Magnolia alongside Totems greats like defenseman Don Ward and goalie Charlie Holmes that 1967 championship season. A talented baseball and football player as well – inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 1995 -- Hughes had played junior hockey for his hometown Memorial Cup champion Winnipeg Braves in 1959.

“The guy was an amazing, multisport athlete,” his son said. “I’m fortunate in that I’m only 19 years younger than he is, so I got to play hockey for him. I got to play baseball for him. I got to play hockey with him in the men’s league over at Highland (arena) and I got to play softball with him after I got out of school.”

Hughes began playing pro hockey in Minnesota at age 19 before briefly joining the Totems in 1961-62 for his first of four separate tours with them over the franchise’s remaining duration.

Even while finally getting an NHL shot at age 27 with the expansion Kings their first three seasons, Hughes kept his Seattle home and had his family join him in Los Angeles to see him play alongside Hall of Famers Terry Sawchuk and another in head coach Red Kelly.

Another Kings teammate, forward Lowell MacDonald, is the grandfather of current Kraken draft pick Ben MacDonald, selected in the third round in 2022 and now with Harvard University.

The Kings’ first six home games were played at a temporary arena in Long Beach, Calif. ahead of moving to their newly built Forum home. They got shut out in their first game there, but the second one, on January 11, 1968, saw Hughes open the scoring against St. Louis Blues netminder Seth Martin for the first Kings goal of thousands to come in their longtime home of 32 seasons.

Hughes’ son was in the stands for that game, a 2-2 tie, as well as countless others throughout his dad’s pro career.

His earliest memories were of running around the Totems’ locker room the prior year, celebrating the team’s championship win over Vancouver alongside the sons of his dad’s linemate, Bill Dineen. Years later, Bill Dineen, as amateur scouting director of the Hartford Whalers, would draft current Kraken general manager Ron Francis in the first round.

Francis would go on to play in the NHL with two of Dineen’s sons, first with Kevin Dineen for years in Hartford, then briefly with Gord Dineen in Pittsburgh.

“We were good friends with the Dineens,” Hughes’ son said. “So, (future minor league pro) Shawn Dineen was my age and Gord and (future NHL journeyman) Peter, we were all in the dressing room together celebrating. Those were just great times for our families.”

The Totems by 1966-67 had gone nearly a decade since their first and only prior title and were coming off a losing season. But former longtime Totems star Guyle Fielder remembered Hughes injecting the team with needed offensive punch.

While Fielder led the Totems with 91 points, Hughes, Lund and Dineen amassed 208 between them – just more than a third of the squad’s total.

“He was an excellent skater and he had a good shot,” said Fielder, 94. “He also loved to play the game and was a great guy too.”

Hughes remained based in Magnolia throughout his three NHL seasons with the Kings and continued living there summers while playing with minor pro teams in Denver, San Diego, Portland and twice more with the Totems. He stayed in Magnolia in retirement through his coaching and umpiring days before finally moving to Everett a few years after the sudden passing of his wife, Betty, in 2004.

“I’m going to remember his smile,” his son said. “And the fact that his children and grandchildren were the most important things in his life. I don’t think he missed a game of any sport that other one of my kids played or my sister’s girls. He was there for everything.”

A private graveside funeral is being held for family only, but a larger memorial is planned for later this spring. Among the many expected to attend: Kraken Hockey Network graphics editor Stu Vitue, 56, a former Northwest Americans forward who went on to play for the University of Alabama Huntsville – where he still shares the school record for points in a game with seven.

“Howie was probably the guy in hockey I looked up to most in my career,” Vitue said. “He had a huge impact on me and a lot of others.”

Former Totems linemate Lund said Hughes also had an impact on the pro players around him that lone championship season they teamed with the Totems. Hughes had come over in a trade from Vancouver the prior summer, a move the Canucks would live to regret as he led the league in playoff scoring and tallied the title-clinching goals.

“I was a puck handler and controlled the play more, but Howie, he had speed,” Lund said. “He was a great skater. So, that really complimented my style. And with Bill (Dineen) we developed some really big chemistry.”

On his championship winning goal, Hughes had pounced on a loose puck and slid it along the ice through a small, short-side opening in behind goalie Al Smith. “I don’t know how it went in – I just shot it, man,” Hughes would later tell reporters.

It helped that teammate Lund had been jostling with Canucks player Ken Block right in right of Smith, causing a distraction just as Hughes fired the puck.

“We were all in the right place at the right time,” Lund said.

Just as Hughes and this city were for one another at key career moments and a lifetime extending well beyond the rink.