Marty Howe, like most of the men in his family, says little most of the time and less if possible. But there’s a wry sense of humour that emerges from the muttering and mumbling, produces a quip that’s easy to miss, then disappears again.

There’s just a way the Howe men talk. You’ve got to listen. You’ll learn something if you do.

So you ask Marty what it’s been like, living and playing the sport of hockey in the shadow of his famous father, the illustrious Gordie, and also alongside his more successful younger brother, Mark, and you get a response of feigned annoyance from Marty.

“Well, it’s gettin’ harder now,” says Marty. “It was a lot easier before this year.”

This year, you see, is the year Mark enters the Hockey Hall of Fame, joining his dad, leaving Marty behind with the rest of us mere mortals.

The three once played together briefly on a line in the WHA with Houston for promotional purposes, although Marty was a defenceman and, back then, Mark was a winger. Gordie was Gordie, still a force then at 45 years of age. Between the brothers, well, there was a noticeable difference. Marty was a little more hot-headed, by his own description, but the better athlete, although he loved football more than hockey.

Mark, on the other hand, was the son who did all his homework at school so he could race home and spend the rest of the day playing on the backyard rink until mother Colleen ordered him in for dinner.

“Look at any picture of Mark on the ice,” says Marty. “He’s never smiling. He’ll have a bit of a wrinkled forehead because he was always thinking about something out there. Gordie was even worse that way than Mark, although at least Gordie would smile sometimes.”

Maybe it was that singular focus that will land Mark alongside Gordie as an honoured member on Monday night, the same evening Ed Belfour, Doug Gilmour and Joe Nieuwendyk will be inducted.

Mark, now 56, had to wait 13 years after becoming eligible to get the call from the Hall, absurd for anyone who watched him play or carefully considered his remarkable career, spent first as a scoring forward but most impressively as one of the most complete defencemen of his era. Broadcaster Mike Emrick, a member of the Hall’s induction panel, was relentless in his drive to get Mark elected.

“The last couple of years, people would tell me I was getting close, and I’d get my hopes up thinking about what an honour it would be, but then I wouldn’t get the call,” said Mark, who played 22 seasons in the WHA and NHL. “The next day I’d be dejected, and then one day later, life would go on.”

He ended his career with Detroit in 1995, playing until his battered back would allow no more, getting a few seasons with the famed winged wheel on his chest that his father had worn for 25 years. Marty had wanted the same distinction, and in 1984, with his career winding down with the Hartford Whalers, he approached GM Emile Francis with a request to be moved to Detroit so he could play one game with the club.

The next day, he showed up to find his equipment gone from his dressing room stall. The trainer had been told to put it in the referee’s room because Marty had a “bad attitude.”

Before the season was over, he was in the minors, then retired.

“Playing one game in Detroit was just a wish I had, a goal,” he said. “But it never happened.”

Both boys have warm memories of spending time with Gordie during the 1960s when he had a deal with Eaton’s that had him visiting stores across the country every summer. He would start in Newfoundland and his sons would join him partway, maybe in Winnipeg, and would be by his side during the days and then sit and watch as he signed hundreds of cards at the hotel in the evening.

They’d squeeze in some golf and fishing along the way, wonderful times, in Mark’s memory, for boys to spend time with their famous dad during the years in which many superstar athletes often look back and regret time spent away from family.

“It was a nice bonding thing,” says Mark. “I did a lot of things with my father that a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to do with their dads.”

By the time Marty had quit the NHL, Mark was just getting rolling. Whalers coach Don Blackburn had switched him from the wing to defence, and after being traded to Philadelphia, he fell under the wing of retired Flyer blueliner Ed Van Impe.

“He had to play the game a certain way, and he told me how he thought the game,’ said Mark, a brilliant skater. “I started to think the game a little better. I’d ... study the games when they were being replayed late at night, watch to see the mistakes I’d made.

“As a young kid being compared to my father, it was a no-win situation. My mother taught me how to set my own standards. Eventually, my goal became to play a perfect game every night.”

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In his partnership with Brad McCrimmon, he often did. Mark was plus-85 one year, plus-349 over a decade. He and McCrimmon spent three of those seasons together, and the loss of McCrimmon in the Yaroslavl plane disaster this summer hit Mark hard.

“He was the best partner I ever had, and the best friend I ever had,” he says. “The best chemistry I ever had was on a line with my dad. Next to that, it was playing with Brad.

“The last time we talked, he apologized because he wouldn’t be able to make the Hall of Fame induction ceremony. With Brad, we talked hockey a lot, looked to each other for advice. That’s what I miss the most.”

Colleen Howe had died in 2009 after battling with dementia for years, leaving his father a little lost, his short-term memory fading. Mark would visit his dad at his Detroit-area home and see him forlornly looking at old Detroit team pictures.

“He would say, “So-and-so is dead, and that guy’s dead, and I should be dead,’” recalls Mark.

The family would hear that lament, and worry.

“I hated when he’d say that stuff,” said Marty. “I’d tell him, ‘Stay on the green side, Dad. It’s better than the alternative.’”

Along with brother Murray and sister Cathy, it was decided that Gordie shouldn’t live on his own anymore. So these days, he splits time between the four children, often in the fall with Cathy in her new Texas home, usually the holidays with Murray, the winters with Marty near Hartford and much of the summer down on the Jersey shore with Mark on his boat.

Gordie, 83, still does appearances, with Marty handling his business affairs. Otherwise, he coddles and spoils his teacup poodle Rocket, named after you-know-who.

“Basically, that dog is Velcro-ed to my dad’s forearm,” says Mark.

The Howes have been a family story for decades, always a little bit about all of them, and they remain that way as Mark, father to three of his own, is ushered into the famed hockey hall 39 years after it welcomed Gordie. Mark’s first request upon being informed by Hall chairman Bill Hay that he was to enshrined was to be able to tell his dad. He located him in Toronto at a golf event, with Marty by his side.

Mark’s had his acceptance speech written for more than a month, and now just frets about delivering it correctly. Marty’s sure his brother will hit all the right notes, and all of the family will shed a tear, wishing Colleen was able to be there.

For the boys, it’s never been simple to be the hockey-playing sons of Mr. Hockey. How could it have been? But it hasn’t turned out too badly, either. They’ve known and loved their dad, treasuring the times they’ve had and the time they have left. Together.