NHL Hall, Red Wings legend dead at 93
Longtime Detroit Red Wings forward and Hockey Hall of Famer Ted Lindsay died on March 4, the NHL Players’ Association announced.
He was 93.
Lindsay left behind a legacy of being a game changer on and off the ice. He started the players’ union, and on April 23, 1950, he began the tradition of carrying the Stanley Cup around the ice.
“I knew who paid our salaries,” Lindsay told USA TODAY years ago. “It wasn’t the owners. It was the people. I just wanted them to have a closer look.”
Nicknamed “Terrible Ted,” Lindsay spent 14 seasons with the Red Wings and three with the Chicago Blackhawks, making nine all-star appearances and winning four Stanley Cup titles over a career that spanned parts of three decades.
Lindsay had not planned to carry the Stanley Cup around the ice. It just occurred to him after Pete Babando scored in double-overtime to secure a Game 7 Stanley Cup win over the New York Rangers. When the photographer stopped snapping pictures when the Cup was presented to Lindsay, Lindsay grabbed it off the table and carried it around the rink.
“This situation was what we dream about, maybe from the time we are born,” Lindsay said. “I wanted to share it with fans.”
The rink was surrounded by chicken wire, not Plexiglass, in those days so fans could put their fingers through it and touch the Cup.
“(My teammates) probably thought there goes that idiot Lindsay off on another tangent,” Lindsay said.
The Ontario native racked up 379 goals and 472 assists over 1,068 career regular-season games, starring on the Red Wings’ famous “Production Line” that also featured Hall of Famers Gordie Howe and Sid Abel.
The late Max McNab once told that he filled in briefly for an injured Abel “and I just watched the puck fly across my nose and Gordie and Ted passed back and forth.”
Lindsay was inducted into the Hall of Fame himself in 1966.
Despite his diminutive size — he was listed at 5-8, 163 pounds — Lindsay became known for his brash, physical style of play. He spent more than 30 hours (1,808 minutes) in the penalty box over the course of his career.
“I hated everybody I played against, and they hated me,” Lindsay would say, according to the Detroit Free Press. “That’s the way hockey should be played.”
Lindsay also became a thorn in the side of Red Wings management and then-NHL president Clarence Campbell. He filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league and helped spearhead the creation of the NHL players’ union.
“When I did it, the NHL was a dictatorship,” Lindsay said in the book “Net Worth.” “I just wanted to give us a voice. We had no voice.”
Former Red Wings general manager Jack Adams, whom Lindsay was critical of for breaking up the Red Wings’ 1955 title team, traded Lindsay to the Blackhawks in 1957, mostly because of his efforts to launch a union.
Lindsay was bitter about the trade, but that dissipated over time.
During the 1990s, Lindsay would regularly pop by the locker room at Joe Louis Arena. The Red Wings kept a stall with his name on it. He watched firsthand DAVID GURALNICK/AP as the Wings regained glory under Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidstrom, winning back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1997 and 1998.
Lidstrom said the Hall of Famer once came to his house to autograph a photo of Lindsay holding his hockey stick like a rifle.
“When he signed the picture, he told me the story about him receiving death threats in Toronto during the playoffs and after they won the game at Maple Leaf Gardens, he came up with the idea of turning his stick over and aiming it at the fans,” Lidstrom said. “He was a true gentleman and really stood up for his beliefs.”
Lindsay, who went on to briefly coach the Red Wings, was named one of the 100 greatest players in NHL history by a league panel in 2017.
In 2010, the NHLPA renamed the Lester Pearson Award the Ted Lindsay Award. It is the league MVP, voted on by the players.
Detroit retired his jersey number, No. 7, in 1991 and unveiled a statue of him in 2008 outside Joe Louis Arena.
“Ted is one of the top 10 players for the Red Wings franchise,” Wings senior vice president Jimmy Devellano said. “Top 10. He is a little guy but a tough, hard-nosed, son of a gun who had ability. His sweater has long been retired and deservedly so.”