Terrible Ted championed fairness for NHL players by helping create union
Long before there was a Colin Kaepernick, a Curt Flood or a Marvin Miller — or anything resembling free agency in sport — there was little Ted Lindsay, small of size, giant of heart, changing hockey forever.
It was such a different time when Lindsay gathered some of the finest players in the NHL together at the 1956 all-star Game — players who didn’t really know each other — to try to convince them they needed an association of some kind or organization to work together for the benefit of those playing the game.
Lindsay paid the ultimate price for his hockey politics. The Detroit Red Wings stripped him of his captaincy. He lost his friendship with his linemate and former business partner Gordie Howe. After finishing second in the NHL in scoring, Detroit traded him to Chicago. Unlike Kaepernick, he never took a knee and kept his job. But like Kaepernick, the rest of his playing career was essentially ruined by the close-minded hockey community of its day. Hockey has never been a sport for those who challenge authority. Of all the major sports, it has kept players in line better and more stringently than the others. But Lindsay, who died at age 93 on Monday, had a mind much like his legs coming down the left wing, a mind that wouldn’t quit. “I was led by a feeling of fairness,” Lindsay once said. “All of us who were involved in trying to establish the players association weren’t the ones who needed it. It was for the fringe players that were the worst off.
“When I got caught up in this, I was so grateful to the game for all it had done for me. But it was a dictatorship on the part of the owners, who didn’t realize any of us had a brain. There we were, sitting there in 1956, these dumb hockey players, and we were going to ruin their game.” Like so many villains of their time, Lindsay’s status grew as the years moved on.
The NHLPA was eventually formed in earnest in the 1960s after basketball and football had their unions and before baseball’s came to fruition. Lindsay was the scourge of NHL owners in the late 1950s, the man who undermined everything. Now, years later, maybe the best award in all of hockey is named after him.
Lindsay grew to become a revered figure, having the trophy for the best player in the game as voted by his peers adorned with his name.
That by itself was acceptance for Lindsay, who was not known for getting in line as a hockey person or player, the way the sport grooms its talents to be. Lindsay couldn’t help but be a pioneer.
When he was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1966, he did not attend his induction ceremony. The reason: women weren’t allowed to attend. He wanted his wife and family there. The Hall of Fame changed its rules because of Lindsay’s stance. He fought for what he believed in and he fought on the ice for everything he accomplished as one of the top 100 players of all-time as selected by the NHL a year ago.
He was also an eight-time first-team all-star, who had 1,808 career penalty minutes.
“If you took advantage of him, he’d make you pay,” said Scotty Bowman, the former Red Wings coach, who worked in the Montreal organization when Lindsay was at his best.
Lindsay was rightfully voted to three halls of fame — hockey, Canadian sports, Ontario sports — and his No. 7 jersey in Detroit has been retired, right there in the rafters with Howe on one side, Alex Delvecchio on the other.
Lindsay was part of the establishment at the end, yet fighting the establishment was so much of his legacy from his 1944-65 playing days.
The Ted Lindsay Award has been won by Sidney Crosby (three times), Alex Ovechkin (three), Connor McDavid (twice), Carey Price, Patrick Kane and Evgeni Malkin. It’s a veritable who’s who of the NHL.
And yet it all goes back to a meeting at the 1956 all-star game.
“It was a Monday night in New York,” Lindsay said in an NHLPA video. “We’re all in the room. Doug (Harvey) and I were there, Jimmy Thomson, Gus Mortson, Ferny Flaman. We’re all there. We have the meeting. We had to put $100 in because we had to pay the lawyers in New York. “All the fellas said, ‘Who is going to be the president?’ They said, ‘Well, it was Ted’s idea. We’ll make Ted the president,’ knowing darn well when we got back to our home bases on Tuesday morning for practice, somebody was going to get hung.
“I knew darn well when I got back to Olympia the Red Wings wouldn’t be getting dressed for practice. There would be a red-faced Mr. Jack Adams in the room and he was there. And he was ranting and raving.” Said the late Lindsay, never looking back with any regret, having not played in almost 60 years, but still relevant to his final day: “I’d do the same thing today.”