This freelance writer is a former Detroit News reporter.
By Paul Harris
Greatness led Detroit Red Wings star Ted Lindsay to excel in the National Hockey League and off the ice as well. On Monday, he died at age 93.
“Ted appreciated everybody. He had the ability to sit with a stranger and engage them almost immediately and be able to carry on a wonderful conversation with them,” his longtime friend, Lou Issel, told me Monday afternoon. “That meant he could also sort out the phonies. . . . He had a deep interest in everyone he spoke with.”
Issel covered women’s and girls hockey for Hockey Weekly – where I was editor for 19 years. Issel and Lindsay became acquainted through a shared interest in women’s and girls hockey.
Ted Lindsay: 1925-2019
(Photo: Ted Lindsay Foundation)
Lindsay helped pioneer what is now the Michigan Women’s Senior Hockey League by helping a friend and his wife organize and coach a group of women who wanted to learn how to play hockey at Livonia’s Eddie Edgar Arena in 1987. Lindsay continued to support the league over the years.
Only about 5-8 and 160 pounds, Lindsay played from 1944-45 to 1959-60 and 1964-65, all with the Red Wings with the exception of three seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks (1957-58, 1959-60). He amassed 379 goals and 472 assists for 851 points and 1,808 penalty minutes – a league record when he retired.
His toughness on the ice was evident.
'LIke to see them dead'
"My hatred was sincere," he said of his foes during an interview in 2016 with NHL.com. "I liked to see them dead. That was my problem, I guess. I understood people, understood human nature. I wasn't a psychologist or anything, but I knew people. You'd figure out who the chickens were on the other side, who the bulls were on the other side, (then) spend your time with the chickens and stay away from the bulls."
Former Red Wings player and coach Johnny Wilson confirmed that Lindsay had no friends on the ice, when I interviewed Wilson over 20 years ago. Wilson and Lindsay had been teammates for several seasons before Wilson, who died in 2011, was traded to Chicago in 1955.
During a game, Wilson recalled, Lindsay had gotten into a disagreement with a Blackhawks rookie and the two were stick fighting. Wilson said he skated up to the pair and told Lindsay: “Ted, leave him alone, he’s just a rookie.”
But Lindsay shot back: “Johnny! If you don’t get out of here, I’ll cut your head off.”
The response shocvked Wilson. “If he would say and do that to me, a guy who he had played with for so many years, just imagine what he would do to somebody who was just a player on another team.”
Lindsay used those same instincts to try and help create the original NHL Players Association in 1957. That didn't sit well with Detroit general manager Jack Adams, who stripped Lindsay of his team captaincy during the 1956-57 season and ultimately traded him to Chicago during the summer of 1957. The organizing effort didn't work at the time.
While Lindsay was voted the fledgling union’s president and filed an anti-trust suit against the league, the first edition of the NHLPA collapsed in 1959. Also, Lindsay’s relationship with his once good friend Gordie Howe was forever altered. Howe failed to support the union when the backing of the game’s best player would have gone a long way towards giving the union more credibility with other players and owners.
But when asked by Adams where he stood on the matter – in the Red Wings dressing room at the old Olympia Stadium on Grand River in front of his teammates after a practice – Howe famously looked down at his shoes and answered, “All I want to do is play hockey.”
Lindsay and Howe, who died in June 2016, were then icy towards each other for many years, before they supposedly buried the hatchet sometime during the 1990s. But those close to both men say that it was more of an agreement to tolerate each other’s presence as they did autographs shows and sessions for lucrative amounts of money.
The current NHLPA recognized Lindsay a few years ago by changing the name of its honor for the league’s outstanding player, as voted by the other players, to the Ted Lindsay Award.
Return to Wings
Lindsay retired for the first time after the 1959-60 season and concentrated on his business interests. But he returned to the Red Wings for the 1964-65 season, and had an outstanding campaign for someone who hadn’t played in the NHL and was 39 years old: 14 goals, 28 points and 183 penalty minutes in 69 games.
The future legend as a young player.
But the lure of the Red Wings once again proved too strong and he returned to the franchise in 1977, this time as the team’s general manager. With the team slogan “Aggressive hockey is back in town” – which Lindsay created – the Red Wings reached the playoffs in 1977-78 for the first time in nine years and won a playoff round for the first time in 12 years. Lindsay won the NHL’s “Executive of the Year” Award.
Lindsay named himself coach late in 1979-80 but was fired after the Red Wings began 1980-81 with a 3-14-3 record The Wings retired Lindsay’s No. 7, on Nov. 10, 1991.
Lindsay was also active with the Red Wings Alumni Association, particularly in its work to benefit charities and through his Ted Lindsay Foundation raised over $ 3 million for autism research and educational programs.
He remained incredibly fit and active even into his 10th decade, working out regularly.
Lindsay had also continued to play hockey – with the Red Wings Alumni, in men’s leagues and fundraisers - regularly at least into the mid-90’s.
One of those fundraisers came during the 1994-95 season at Waterford Township’s Lakeland Arena, which featured an annual game between the Lakeland Hockey Association’s coaches and a team made up of the area’s former NHL players, and “celebrities” that benefited the LHA.
As a local media member who also played hockey, I qualified as one of those “celebrities.”
Lindsay also played and, despite being almost 70 years old at the time, he was in far better physical condition than just about all of the much younger men in the locker room.
Lindsay’s hate was not evident at that time, as it was back in the day, but I’m positive he immediately realized that he was a rare bull among a bunch of chickens.
