Red Wing Nation: Detroit's Greatest Players Talk About Red Wings Hockey
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Red Wing Nation: Detroit's Greatest Players Talk About Red Wings Hockey
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Overview
The most outstanding voices of the Detroit Red Wings hockey tradition come together in this decade-by-decade collection of more than 40 stories. Wings fans will relish the intimate stories told by Steve Yzerman, Niklas Lindstrom, Ted Lindsay, and other figures they have come to cherish. One phrase, one season, or one particular game cannot capture the spirit of the Red Wings; instead, the players and managers who made the magic happen over the decades blend their experiences to capture the true essence of their beloved team.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781633194052 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Triumph Books |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2015 |
| Series: | Nation |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 608,709 |
| File size: | 16 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Red Wing Nation
Detroit's Greatest Players Talk About Red Wings Hockey
By Kevin Allen, Art Regner
Triumph Books
Copyright © 2015 Kevin Allen and Art RegnerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63319-405-2
CHAPTER 1
The Forties
Ted Lindsay | Left Wing | 1944–1957 • 1964–1965
Sid Abel was the perfect center for Gordie Howe and me when we were young: Gordie had to be pumped up, and I had to be calmed down. And Sid could do that. He was a father figure. We spent a lot of time at his house. His wife, Gloria, was a wonderful Italian lady, and she used to make good pasta meals for a couple of hungry hockey players.
A lot of people said anybody could play hockey with those two guys. One day they put a rocking chair at center ice, and Gordie and I stood on each side of Sid in the rocking chair. We all had a good laugh. Sid was the catalyst that kept us together.
We had great players with great talent on those Red Wings teams in the 1950s. We won four Stanley Cup championships, and we would have won more if General Manager Jack Adams hadn't torn apart the team.
After we won in 1955, Adams traded away eight players from our team. In those days, 18 players made up a roster: you had one goaltender, five defensemen, three forward lines, and two extra players. Adams traded away almost half of our team. He didn't want to trade Terry Sawchuk to Montreal because he thought he would make the Canadiens too strong, so he traded him to Boston. He traded other players to Chicago. We ended up with some guys who were good hockey players, but they weren't winners. We lost our chemistry. We were a machine that was running efficiently, and Adams disrupted everything. The only weakness we could see is that Bob Goldham would probably be retiring in two more years. And we could have received a doggone good defenseman from Montreal for Sawchuk, if Adams would have been willing to trade Sawchuk there.
Maybe Montreal may have given up Tom Johnson or even Doug Harvey for Sawchuk at that point in their careers.
I still believe to this day that the five Stanley Cups that Montreal won [from 1956 to 1960] should have been ours. At worst, we should have won three of the five. We had the team. We had the talent. We had the chemistry.
Although I know I was the first one to lift the Stanley Cup over my head, I'm the wrong guy to ask when it was. I didn't plan it. I just did it for the fans.
My feelings were that the fans paid my salary, not the management. We didn't have glass or screens back then. The only place we had chicken wire was at the end of the rink where the high glass is now. Along the boards, the people who had season tickets had their elbows up there when you came by. They would move back when we went down into the corner. They would have to put their head out to see what's going on in the corner.
I just decided to show it to the fans who were just as important as the players. I'm sure when I picked up the Stanley Cup, Adams must have said, "What's the idiot Lindsay gonna do now?"
But that's what I did. I can't say whether it was 1955 or before then.
When I was traded to Chicago by Adams, my heart was still with the Red Wings. That's why I retired in 1960 [at 34]. I was still a Red Wing. I had it tattooed on my chest, and on my forehead, and on my backside. That's why I quit. I didn't quit because I believed I was finished. I quit because I was just existing. I wasn't living.
I stayed retired until Sid Abel took over the Red Wings and talked me out of retirement. I wanted to become the color analyst on television. I just wanted to end up a Red Wing. Then Sid changed things up.
"I think you can help us if you come back and play," he said.
After I decided to do it, NHL President Clarence Campbell said it was "the blackest day in the history of hockey" because a 39-year-old player thought he could play after being retired for four years. He called it a disgrace to hockey.
That season I scored 14 goals. In the six-team NHL, a 15-goal scorer was like being a .315 to .325 hitter in baseball. That was before expansion.
Two months into the season, Campbell apologized about what he said about my comeback.
Ted Lindsay's Career Highlights
• Leading all scorers with five goals and seven points to help the Red Wings win the 1952 Stanley Cup championship.
• Winning the 1949–1950 Art Ross trophy as NHL scoring champion with league-leading 78 points.
• Being selected eight times as a first-team NHL All-Star.
• Serving as captain of the 1954 and 1955 Red Wings Stanley Cup championship squads. The consensus seems to be that Lindsay raised the Cup for fans in 1955.
• Being able to still play organized men's league hockey into his late seventies. "That's the wonderful thing about hockey," he said. "Many of the players will continue to play into their fifties, sixties, even their seventies. You can go into Canada and find players in their eighties."
Leo Reise | Defenseman | 1946–1952
When I scored two overtime goals in the 1950 semifinals against Toronto, I'm sure I shot the puck so fast that goaltender Turk Broda couldn't see it. I was renowned for a hard shot.
I'm being facetious.
I didn't do too much shooting. All I did on those goals was shoot the puck from the blue line. I backhanded one, and the other one I forehanded. The first one in Toronto [scored 38 seconds into the second overtime] hit someone in front and went in. I don't think Broda saw it. [The goal gave Detroit a 2–1 win and evened the best-of-seven series at 2–2.]
In the seventh game, I took a shot that missed everyone and went into the corner at 8:39 of overtime to give us a 1–0 win.
Why did I seem to score more in the playoffs than I did in the regular season? In the months prior to the playoffs, I would say, Okay, I have to make sure I'm in real good shape. I made an effort in the last couple of weeks of the season to push myself harder. When the playoffs came, I was flying.
I don't have a favorite individual memory of being with the Red Wings. The memory I have is the camaraderie. Scoring goals and making the plays — that's all incidental. It's the fellowship of the Red Wings that I remember. The Red Wings were about being a team, not making individual plays. We could skate with any team in the league. We could outhit the other teams and we could outscore everyone. We shot the puck, passed the puck, and then got back where we belonged.
In 1951–1952 we had a powerhouse team. We only lost 14 games in the regular season and we won the Stanley Cup in eight straight games. Nobody could touch us. We just had a great team. It was the definition of what a team should be. When we went out after a game, we all went together. It was like a family. There was no bitching. No one was unhappy with each other. When you have a team like that, you can take a feeling of fellowship a long way.
I got along with everyone, including Adams. One time he said he was going to send me to the farm team in Indianapolis. "You aren't going to send me anywhere," I said. "I don't have to play hockey." I wouldn't let them push me around, and that was the end of that.
When you reached a certain salary level, they didn't want to keep you around too long if they could find a substitute. I believe I was moved out because I was among the team's highest paid players. In 1951–1952, Marcel Pronovost and Red Kelly were carrying the puck a lot, and I let them go ahead. I played back. I wasn't too effective from the scoring end. Maybe that was one of the reasons why they traded me. But at the time, I was one of the best defenseman in the country. So it was a bit of a shock to be traded.
After the 1952 playoffs, we were coming home on a train from Montreal, and I sat by Jack Adams and the team's publicity man, Fred Huber.
"I'm thinking about taking out my [immigration] papers and moving to the States," I said to them at one point. Huber and Adams each looked at each other. I thought, Uh-oh, I had better not do that because they are going to trade me.
Later in the summer I read in the newspaper that I had been traded to the New York Rangers for Reg Sinclair and John Morrison.
I go to American Hockey League Hamilton Bulldogs games now, and people there know that I played in the NHL. One guy came up to me and said, "You don't think of yourself as a New York Ranger, do you?"
When you consider how close we all were back then, it's hard not to think of myself as a Red Wing.
Leo Reise's Career Highlights
• Playing for two Stanley Cup championship teams in Detroit and scoring the two OT goals in 1950.
• Being named as second-team NHL All-Star in 1950 and 1951.
• Although not known as an offensive defenseman, stepping up his scoring in the playoffs. In 494 regular-season games, he netted 28 goals for an average of one goal every 17.6 games. In 52 playoff games, he scored eight goals for an average of one goal every 6.5 games.
• Having five points in six games in the 1951 NHL playoffs.
• Playing in the NHL with his father, Leo Sr., as one of the first father-son combinations. Lester Patrick had played one game for the New York Rangers as an emergency goalie in the 1928 Stanley Cup Finals. His sons, Lynn and Muzz, both were regulars for the New York Rangers in the mid- to late-1930s. Bert Lindsay and his son, Ted, were also ahead of the Reises. Bert Lindsay was a goalie for the Montreal Wanderers and Toronto Arenas from 1917 to 1919. Ted Lindsay came to the NHL in 1944, two seasons before Reise. The elder Reise had played for the Hamilton Tigers, New York Americans, and New York Rangers, in a career that lasted from 1920 to 1930. "For a long time I thought I was the first son of a former NHL regular to play in the NHL," Reise said. "It was even written up that way."
Red Kelly | Defenseman | 1947–1960
When you were a member of the Detroit Red Wings in the 1950s, you played at Olympia Stadium and you lived at Ma Shaw's rooming house.
Ma Shaw's place was about two blocks from Olympia Stadium. She had four rooms, and four players lived there at a time. Defenseman Jack Stewart stayed there before my time, along with Bill Quackenbush and Harry Lumley. Then the rooms were filled by Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, Marty Pavelich, and myself. After Lindsay was married, Metro Prystai moved in. Ma Shaw was a widow. We didn't have our meals there, but we had the run of the house. She had a piano, and we would fiddle around on that. When we went out, we took Ma Shaw with us, almost like a chaperone.
NHL scheduling was different in those days, too. Usually we'd play Saturday and Sunday night, and maybe Wednesday. We'd be off on Monday and Tuesday, and when we would be off, we'd all go out to dinner and one of the clubs might stay open for us because we liked to dance. We would go to the Grande or Graystone ballrooms or Baker's Lounge. Everyone would bring their wives, girlfriends, or dates, and we would all dance with everyone. It was usually all mixed up. Gordie, Marty, and I used to love to dance. But Ted wasn't so active on the dance floor.
If we weren't dancing, we would be bowling at the Lucky Strike or over at someone's house. But we were usually all together, and that probably had a lot to do with our success. We were a close-knit team.
Probably the best team I played for was the 1951–1952 team. We had good teams throughout the years, and some were stronger in some areas than others and maybe weaker in other departments. But they all had that winning attitude. The '52 Detroit team was certainly one of the best of all time. No question. We were all about winning in those days. Everyone on that team lived and breathed hockey.
Tommy Ivan was a good coach. Jack Adams had a tendency to get down on players, and Tommy would build them up. He played me a lot of minutes. Guys used to say, "Tommy is going to wear you out." But it never worked out that way. Even as a defenseman, I carried the puck often. But I wouldn't hang around in the other end. I was in great shape. The only words I heard from Tommy about my style was, "Don't get caught. Don't hang around up there. You're not a forward." I'd make the offensive play and then get back in my defensive position.
I loved to play with Benny Woit. He wasn't necessarily the fastest or the best skater in the world, but he could skate and he could hit. And when Benny would hit them, they knew they were hit. He delivered solid checks. I would be carrying the puck, and Benny would be hitting, and we'd work well together. Benny always had a great attitude, but Jack Adams liked to ride him all of the time.
Jack always liked to pick on somebody one way or another, and Benny was a favorite target. After a game, Jack would come into the dressing room and head straight to Benny. Pigeon-toed Adams would stand in front of Benny chewing him out for something real or imagined. After this happened a few times, Benny figured out what to do. He would rush in, grab an orange or two, and then he would toss the peels on the floor. Now Jack would come flying toward Benny, and he would slip on the peels and forget what he was saying. Benny was quite a jokester.
Defenseman Bob Goldham was a great shot-blocker on our team. He wasn't the fastest skater, but he could weave. He was a good stick-handler.
The line of Lindsay, Sid Abel, and Howe was a great line, although Sid, or "Old Boot Nose" as we called him, had to remind Howe and Lindsay from time to time that he was on their line. Gordie and Ted were so close to each other, on and off the ice, that they would get in the habit of passing the puck across to each other.
"Hey," Sid would yell, "do I look like a statue out here?"
Sid was a great captain. Ted was feisty and he wanted to win. He was a great Red Wing and he wouldn't back off from anybody. He could score goals and was good around the net. He had great determination. Of course Gordie was a big, strong guy. He was always supportive of Lindsay. And of course Gordie could score goals; he was a solid skater and had hockey sense. He had a great elbow.
I had played against Terry Sawchuk when we were in junior hockey. I was at St. Mike's and he was at Galt. We beat him in the playoffs, but it was nip and tuck. Then I played with Sawchuk when I came up to Detroit, and I played against him when he was traded Boston. I played with him again in Detroit when he was traded back. I played with him in Toronto and I coached him in Los Angeles. I can say Ukey was a great goaltender. He had the crouch. He could be up on his feet and be crouching. I think it was the shape of his body. He was wide-bodied. And when he was in the net, you didn't see too much.
Lumley's nickname was "Apple Cheeks" because when he got scored on, his cheeks would get red. He was a good goaltender. I know that some players weren't as happy with Lum because they thought he blamed them for goals. I was a young guy playing defense, and he never blamed me for a goal. And I would apologize to him if I let a guy get away.
I enjoyed my time in Detroit. There were many heroes on that team, but you can't win unless you have a team. And we had that. I played there 13 seasons until an article by Toronto Globe and Mail writer Trent Frayne caused me to be traded to the New York Rangers on February 5, 1960.
There were several different stories about why I wouldn't report to the New York Rangers when I was traded there in 1960. It wasn't because my mother-in-law lived in New York, it was because they were saying we didn't make the playoffs for the first time in the 1958–1959 season because Kelly had a bad year.
Frayne had interviewed me at the Royal York Hotel, and he started asking me questions centered around the idea that I was playing better than I had the previous season.
"There were reports that your legs are going, and that you're on your way out," he said. "But you are having a better year. Why is that?"
"Well, I don't know, it's just one if those things, I guess," I said. "You have your ups and downs."
"Aw, c'mon," Frayne said. "There's got to be a reason."
Finally, I told him the truth. "There's no harm in telling you now, but I spent all summer running barefoot on the beach and using a tennis ball to try and get my ankle back into shape because I broke the ankle last year and the team was struggling a bit," I said. "We lost four games in a row on the road, and they came and asked if I could take the cast off and tape it up and if I could play, help the team out. And I said, 'I can try.'"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Red Wing Nation by Kevin Allen, Art Regner. Copyright © 2015 Kevin Allen and Art Regner. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Steve Yzerman,Acknowledgments,
Introduction by Mike and Marian Ilitch,
1. The Forties,
2. The Fifties,
3. The Sixties,
4. The Seventies,
5. The Eighties,
6. The Nineties,
7. The New Millennium,