We lost a legend yesterday....
Ted Lindsay, Detroit star and NHLPA founder, dead at 93
Ted Lindsay, one of the most feared players in NHL history, a four time Stanley Cup winner with Detroit and a driving force in the formation of the Players Association, has passed away at 93.
Reports say he died in hospice care in suburban Detroit overnight.
Lindsay was born in Renfrew, Ont.
His father Bert was a goalie and played for the Toronto Arenas in their second NHL year of 1918-19.
Though Ted trained in Toronto with St. Michael’s College, he signed with Detroit — enraging Leafs owner Conn Smythe long before they crossed swords again in the formative days of the players union.
In 1944, Lindsay played for the Memorial Cup champion Oshawa Generals. That earned him a tryout n Detroit and an NHL debut at 19 with so many older players away serving in World War II.
Detroit Red Wings star Ted Lindsay at the Montreal Forum in 1996 John Mahoney / Canadian Press file photo
On left wing with centre Sid Abel and right winger Gordie Howe — the famed ‘Production Line’ in the American automakers hub — Lindsay thrived, playing much taller than his 5-foot-8 frame.
He is ‘credited’ with the league initiating penalties for elbowing and kneeing.
But Lindsay also won the Art Ross Trophy with 78 points in 1949-50 as Detroit’s Cup dynasty began.
He appeared with Howe on the cover of Sports Illustrated in March of 1957 and was said to be the first Cup champion to lift the trophy at the presentation ceremony and skate around the rink.
He was an eight-time, first-team all star with 851 points and 1,808 penalty minutes.
Of his “Terrible Ted” nickname, he shrugged.
“I’m such a nice person. I guess I got rough because I hated to lose. It took me some time to learn the art of losing gracefully,” he said.
Lindsay, whose name is now on the NHLPA trophy for the most valuable player as voted by the players, recalled to author Chris McDonnell that in the summer of 1956, “there were too many things that just weren’t right” in the six-team NHL ownership dominance of players.
The group objected to common problems low pensions, minor league demotions on a whim, having to pick up moving costs of a trade and pay for homes in two cities.
Sitting in with meetings on other major sports unions, he realized hockey players badly lagged behind. NHL stars of the 1950s only earned about $25,000 a year.
“There was a dictatorship. (But) they had a big weapon over us; we loved the game and were blinded by that love.”
Though the bitter rivalries of the old franchises made unifying off the ice very hard.
And most of the NHLPA’s founders; such as Lindsay, Toronto’s Tod Sloan and Dollard St. Laurent of the Canadiens were traded by their spiteful managers, Lindsay first stripped of his captaincy, then shipped away in a heartbreaking move to Chicago.
But the certified union eventually became a force in the game, soon after Lindsay was elected to the Hockey Hall Of Fame in 1966. In 1995, the CBC movie
Net Worth examined Lindsay’s fight for player rights.
When inducted to the Hall himself, former Red Wing Chris Chelios took time to recognize PA influencers Lindsay and Carl Brewer who “sacrificed a lot to make it good for us.”
Lindsay was GM of the Wings in the late ‘70s and won NHL executive of the year. His No. 7 is retired in Detroit and there is statue of him among other team greats at Little Caesars Arena. The Ted Lindsay Foundation was created in 2001 to fund research into a cure for autism. He was elected to Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2002.
Lindsay remained close to the Wings organization his entire life, such as Howe and Alex Delvecchio.
“They were always humble, respectful and polite,” said Wins’ great Steve Yzerman.
“You’d bump into them and you wouldn’t know if they were the hot dog vendor or a Zamboni driver. They were from a different era.”
