HOCKEY LEGEND LINDSAY DIES
Hall of Famer linked to Windsor
Hockey legend Ted Lindsay made a name for himself in the NHL with the Detroit Red Wings but he was quite a familiar face around Windsor, too.
For more than two decades, Lindsay was a regular guest at the celebrity golf tournament hosted by former NHL goalie and Windsor native Eddie Mio and businessman Dave Batten.
“I don’t know how many but he made just about all of them,” Mio said Monday of the charity tournaments for the Sunshine Foundation. “He never golfed, but he’d stop by the tournament and then have dinner with all of us.” Mio and Batten remained close to Lindsay, who died in his sleep overnight Sunday at his home in Oakland, Mich.
Lindsay, a four-time Stanley Cup winner and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, was 93. “Today came as quite a shock,” said Batten who regularly went to lunch with Lindsay, Mio and Batten’s sons Jarrod and Jordan. The last time they all went out for Lindsay’s beloved Italian food was last October.
“He could just sit there and tell story after story. You weren’t in and out in half an hour. He actually held court. His mind was like a steel box,” Batten said. Lindsay played 17 seasons in the NHL, 14 of them with the Red Wings on hockey’s famous Production Line, with Sid Abel and Gordie Howe.
He was only five-foot-eight and barely 170 pounds but he was absolutely fearless on the ice, earning the nickname “Terrible Ted” and eventually “Scarface” for the lifelong traces of having taken some 600 stitches.
“He was an amazing individual,” said Windsor realtor Lou Bendo, who is part of an iconic photo with Lindsay taken at Windsor Arena. On April 26, 1963, Bendo and the Windsor Bulldogs had just captured the Allan Cup and with it the Canadian Senior A hockey championship following a 3-2 win over Winnipeg at Windsor Arena. In the bedlam that ensued as fans swarmed the ice, Lindsay beckoned Bendo, the team’s captain, to join him on the Zamboni for a television interview. Lindsay had a radio show with CKLW and was doing some TV work on the Allan Cup. “There were so many people on the ice we couldn’t get together for the interview,” Bendo recalled. “He was up on the Zamboni so I went up there too.”
Bendo played with Lindsay at a number of old-timers’ charity games and in 1965, a 40-year-old Lindsay played for the Bendo Blazers in a local men’s league. “He won rookie of the year,” Bendo said with a laugh.
As tough as he was on skates “he was the most caring person off the ice,” recalled Bendo. “He was always stopping in to see someone wherever he travelled.” He attended Bendo’s induction ceremony into the Windsor-Essex Sports Hall of Fame and he was at Assumption Church for the funeral of Windsor’s Reno Bertoia, a former Detroit Tiger. “Every memory of him is a good one,” Mio said.
“I will always remember the kindness, the generosity and the character.”
Bendo tells the story of Lindsay heading to Montreal to offer support and sympathy to Canadiens’ legend Maurice Richard upon receiving a cancer diagnosis. Richard and Lindsay despised each other in a bitter Original Six rivalry that stretched years into their retirement from the game. “All the problems he had with Rocket and as soon as he heard about the cancer he went to Montreal,” Bendo said. “He was a good, good guy.” Lindsay and his late wife Joanne started the Ted Lindsay Foundation in 2001 to help families of children with autism. Lindsay was the first player to try to organize a players’ coalition against NHL owners. For his efforts, he was stripped of his captaincy with the Red Wings and traded to the lowly Chicago Blackhawks.
He retired in 1960 but came back for one final season with the Red Wings in 1964 at the enticement of Abel who by then was Detroit’s coach and general manager. Lindsay boycotted his own Hall of Fame induction in 1966 because the ceremonial luncheon was a men-only affair that didn’t allow wives or children to attend. The Hall changed that policy the very next year.
In an earlier trail-blazing moment, he started the tradition of carrying the Stanley Cup around the ice after the Red Wings’ emotional Game 7 overtime win over the New York Rangers in 1950. “He was a man of many firsts,” said a statement from his family. “Ted was a persistent, courageous and determined man both on and off the ice.” Lindsay is survived by three children and a stepdaughter.
Every memory of him is a good one. I will always remember the kindness, the generosity and the character.