Feat of 'Terrible Ted' gained share of NHL record that still stands 70 years later
© Macdonald Stewart/Hockey Hall of Fame; Windsor Star via newspapers.com
You’ll find Ted Lindsay’s name in the Stanley Cup Final record book twice, for one explosive game 70 years ago.
The late Detroit Red Wings legend is tied with four other players for most goals in one game (four), and with seven others for most goals scored in a single period (three). His prodigious output came on April 5, 1955, in Game 2 of the Final against the Montreal Canadiens, a 7-1 victory at Olympia Stadium.
Lindsay woke up simmering on any game day, his focus sharpening and intensity growing as face-off approached. By the time the puck hit the ice, “Terrible Ted” was on full boil, taking no prisoners, his favorite part of the rink being the corners where he separated, he would say, “the men from the chickens.”
So it’s remarkable that with the Stanley Cup on the line, the Red Wings defending their 1954 championship against their most rugged, bitter opponent, it wasn’t Lindsay who cooled his heels in the penalty box when things got rough.
© Montreal Gazette via newspapers.com
Part of the Montreal Gazette’s coverage of Ted Lindsay’s four-goal night in Game 2 of the 1955 Stanley Cup Final.
It was the Canadiens’ Dickie Moore, not a shrinking violet himself, who nearly lost his mind that night as Lindsay filled the Canadiens net, going after any opponent who moved and even a Red Wings fan before he was escorted by Detroit police to his dressing room.
Lindsay was assessed a two-minute high-sticking minor by referee Red Storey at 1:58 of the first period, but the tone of the game was promptly set when Marcel Pronovost beat Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante shorthanded 17 seconds later.
With Montreal trailing the series 1-0 and quickly behind in Game 2, and powder-keg forward Maurice Richard suspended for the playoffs for his role in a March brawl in Boston, coach Dick Irvin Sr. pulled Plante and replaced him with Charlie Hodge for the rest of the first period.
The latter faced 10 shots, with goals by Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio and Gordie Howe sending the home team into the first intermission with a 4-0 lead.
© Le Studio du Hockey/Hockey Hall of Fame
Detroit Red Wings goalie Terry Sawchuk in a 1957 Olympia Stadium portrait. Sawchuk was beaten just once in Game 2 of the 1955 Stanley Cup Final.
Unmasked Terry Sawchuk was enjoying a 3-0 lead from the Red Wings net until he was nicked by a stick during a goalmouth scramble, the game held up until he returned from the clinic with five fresh stitches over an eye.
Plante returned to the Canadiens goal to start the second, going the rest of the way. The game by then was pretty much out of hand, even before Lindsay scored a natural hat trick in the second period.
With Detroit up 5-0, Canadiens defenseman Tom Johnson vehemently disputed a tripping penalty called on Montreal’s Dollard St. Laurent. Already serving a tripping minor and a misconduct of his own, Johnson’s argument to Storey was met with the referee’s question, “Do you want to watch the rest of this game on television?”
Johnson and St. Laurent quietly stewed as Lindsay scored his third of the game with a two-man advantage.
© Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame
Charlie Hodge, here in the early 1950s with the Junior Canadiens, would be beaten three times in the first period by Detroit as a temporary replacement for Jacques Plante.
Only Ken Mosdell would beat Sawchuk, spoiling the shutout at 12:32 of the third period.
But the joyful crowd didn’t much care about that, still worked up over a melee eight minutes earlier that saw Moore assessed with 22 penalty minutes, never even getting into the penalty box before Storey sent him to the showers with a misconduct and game misconduct tagged onto his slashing minor.
The brilliant report of Bob Latshaw in the next morning’s Detroit Free Press captured the majesty of it all.
“Montreal doesn’t have the hot-tempered Maurice Richard these days, but the Canadiens left are definitely not pantywaists,” Latshaw wrote.
“Dick Moore, who flares up easier than the terrible tempered Mr. Bang, put on a display of fireworks in the third period that for the most part overshadowed the fiasco that was billed as a hockey game.”
© Ted Lindsay collection; Le Studio du Hockey/Hockey Hall of Fame
Ted Lindsay in a dressing room photo, and with the Stanley Cup, which he won four times in the 1950s.
Moore’s slash of Lindsay at 4:21 of the third period sent him to the penalty box for two minutes.
“Moore, however, had other ideas,” Latshaw wrote. “He was reluctant to go to the box, preferring to try to fight his way through linesmen, referee and assorted players to get at Lindsay.”
A misconduct promptly followed, which sent Moore off the deep end. Breaking loose from linesmen George Hayes and Doug Davies, he sprinted toward the Red Wings bench, challenging everyone.
“There he threw a glove at Gordie Howe,” Latshaw continued. “Howe jabbed at Moore with his stick in retaliation, which sent Howe to the box for two minutes for spearing.”
By then Storey had tossed Moore with a game misconduct, but the Canadiens forward still wasn’t off the Olympia ice. He finally was corralled and ushered off, heckled by Red Wings fans.
Moore went after one of them before he was bulldogged by two Detroit policemen, herded to the dressing room.
No stranger to shenanigans like these, Lindsay laughed it all off postgame, saying of his four goals, “When you get hot, you can’t do anything wrong.”
© Imperial Oil-Turofsky/Hockey Hall of Fame
Canadiens forward Dickie Moore was assessed 22 penalty minutes in a wild night at Olympia Stadium.
And Lindsay wondered aloud how it was that Howe could have been assessed a spearing penalty for harpooning an opponent who’d already been given a game misconduct.
Details, details …
The Red Wings took their 2-0 series lead to Montreal, quietly confident that series would be over more quickly than the seven games it took them to defeat the Canadiens for the Stanley Cup the previous season.
But Montreal rallied with 4-2 and 5-3 wins at the Forum, sending the series back to Detroit. The Red Wings scored an easy 5-1 Game 5 victory, and the Canadiens pushed it to the limit with a 6-3 home-ice win in Game 6.
Two goals by Delvecchio and one by Howe gave Detroit a Cup-clinching 3-1 victory at home in Game 7, their second straight championship and fourth in six seasons.
The Red Wings, however, were soon to be dismantled by coach and GM Jack Adams.
For his role in trying to establish the NHL Players’ Association, Lindsay was traded to the lowly Chicago Black Hawks on July 23, 1957, with goalie Glenn Hall, in exchange for Bill Preston, Hank Bassen, Forbes Kennedy and Johnny Wilson. Other confounding trades would follow.
© Detroit Free Press via newspapers.com
The Red Wings’ 7-1 drubbing of the Canadiens was front page news in the Detroit Free Press on April 6, 1955.
The Canadiens, meanwhile, would begin their unprecedented run of five consecutive championships in 1956. They added 12 more titles — 1965, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1976-79, 1986 and 1993 — before the Red Wings won their next Stanley Cup in 1997.
None of that mattered on April 14, 1955, Lindsay having scored seven goals with 12 assists in 11 playoff games, with just 12 penalty minutes, to earn the right to squire the trophy around Olympia ice.
Wrote Montreal Star sports editor Baz O’Meara: “Wings were highly elated as Ted Lindsay accepted the Stanley Cup after he had shaken hands all around with Habs, an unusual action for him because he has so often shaken his fists at them.”
Lindsay’s four-goal record was equaled by Richard two years later in Game 1 of the 1957 Cup Final against the Boston Bruins. They joined Newsy Lalonde of the Canadiens and Frank Foyston of the Seattle Metropolitans, who did it in Games 2 and 3, respectively, when the two teams met in 1919, and Babe Dye of the Toronto St. Patricks, who did it against the Vancouver Millionaires in Game 5 of the 1922 Final.
Lindsay, Richard and six others share the NHL record with three goals in a single period of a Cup Final game: Foyston in 1919, Jack Darragh of the original Ottawa Senators in 1920, Busher Jackson of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1932, Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers in 1985, Dirk Graham of the Blackhawks in 1992 and Peter Forsberg of the Colorado Avalanche in 1996.
Dismissed sarcastically midseason by Montreal sportswriters, no matter that they would be the NHL’s regular-season champions, two points better than the Canadiens, the Red Wings were glowing in victory.
Terrible Ted, with a grin, couldn’t help himself.
“Not bad for a bunch of bums,” he said. “Now, where’s the beer?”
The brew was nowhere to be found, but there was plenty of Champagne to go around the victors’ dressing room.
Top photo: Ted Lindsay in a Detroit Red Wings portrait, and the Windsor Star of April 6, 1955 reports on Lindsay’s four goals in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final.
