Over 36 Years Later, Gadsby Still Doesn't Know Why He Was Fired

Say your boss comes up to you one day, puts his arms around you, and says, "(Insert your name here), you've really been doing a good job." Spirits seldom have seemed higher.

Now imagine the very same boss calling you into his office - the very next day.

"I'm relieving you of your duties," he says.

You feel slugged in the gut.

The above is what happened to former Red Wings coach Bill Gadsby. And after over 36 years, he still doesn't know why.

In 1968, Gadsby, after a Hall of Fame playing career as a defenseman - the last five seasons of which were spent in Detroit as a Red Wing - took the reins of the team as coach. In his first season behind the bench, the Wings finished 33-31-12, slumping badly at the end - going 0-6-2 in the final eight games - and missed the playoffs by seven points.


Gadsby finished his Hall of Fame playing career with five seasons in Detroit (1961-66)


"I thought we had the makings of a pretty good hockey club," Gadsby told me over the phone earlier this week. He spoke to me for the regular "Where Are They Now?" feature for Motor City Sports Magazine - May issue (available at Barnes and Noble, Kroger's, and other local newsstands - hint, hint). "The first year, we missed the playoffs, but that happens.

"The second season..." His voice trailed off.

In October 1969, the Red Wings jumped out of the gate 2-0 - winning at home against Toronto and beating the Blackhawks in Chicago. It was in the dressing room in the bowels of old, creaky Chicago Stadium where team owner Bruce Norris wrapped Gadsby up in his arms and said, "Well, Bill, you've really got these guys going." The words are recalled today by Gadsby as if they'd been uttered by Norris yesterday. And indeed, the Red Wings - with players such as Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio, Frank Mahovlich, Garry Unger, and Normie Ullman - were a talented team that had the potential of winning a lot of games.

But the next day, the heavy-drinking Norris - a martini in front of him, Gadsby said - sat across from his coach and delivered the news: He was giving him the "ziggy" - that Detroit word for a coach getting fired.

"I tell ya, it was the biggest shock of my life," Gadsby told me. "This was the day after he threw his arms around me in Chicago and told me how good of a job I was doing. Now, figure that one out! I bet that must be some sort of record: Getting fired after two games, both of them wins."

It might indeed be a record. The only other instance that I can think of that's as similar was when the Los Angeles Rams fired coach George Allen after two games in 1978 - in the exhibition season. But Allen was divisive and managed to incur the wrath of both his players and his bosses. So his cashiering was a preemptive strike.

What's worse, Gadsby says he never did find out why he was let go.

"I went down to the dressing room and confronted [GM] Sid Abel and {assistant GM] Baz Bastien, and they both threw their arms up and said, 'We don't know what the hell is going on.' Then I saw him [Norris] down in Florida a few months later, and he said, 'I don't want to talk about it, blah-blah.' It really stuck in my craw for six, eight months, but I got over it."

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"His friends didn't know a damn thing about the game, yet they'd call and say, 'Why is [Gary] Bergman out there, or why does Bill have so-and-so's line on the ice?' Finally I ripped the damn thing out of the wall."
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Abel, the former coach and current GM, was once again made the coach - just over a year after passing the torch to Gadsby for what he figured would be a longer run than one season and two games. Sid finished out the '69-'70 season before giving way to Ned Harkness, who is an entire column in of himself.

I advanced a theory to Gadsby, one that had been bantied about in Detroit hockey circles for years: That Norris, not one given to self-discipline when it came to the liquor, gave Gadsby the ziggy after having one too many martinis.

"I don't know about that," Gadsby said. "He seemed fine to me. He had a martini in front of him, but he was fine. I got the message - I'll tell you that!"


Bruce Norris: Two-fisted drinking owner of the Red Wings, until selling to Mike Ilitch in 1982


Bruce Norris was, often-times, an absentee owner. He was given to spend a lot of the hockey season in the warmth of Florida, while his players and coaches labored in the icy weather of Detroit, or Chicago, or Toronto. But if Bill Gadsby had had his way, Norris would have spent the entire season down south.

"There was a phone he [Norris] had wired in behind the bench," Gadsby recalls. "He would sit in that suite he had built in Olympia, with his cronies, and they'd sit up there and drink and make calls."

During the game?

"Oh, hell yeah! His friends didn't know a damn thing about the game, yet they'd call and say, 'Why is [Gary] Bergman out there, or why does Bill have so-and-so's line on the ice?' Finally I ripped the damn thing out of the wall.

"Maybe that had something to do with [me getting fired]," he added with a chuckle.
Gadsby is 78 today and retired in Southfield ("I play golf," he says), and still follows the Red Wings.

"Oh, sure. All the time. And they always seem to find a way to win," he says.

So what would he do, I asked, if he had a $100 bill and had to place a bet on either today's Red Wings, or the great Detroit teams of the 1950's that he competed against?

He gave me a throaty laugh. "Ohhh, man! I'd have to go with today's group. They just seem a little more balanced and deep."

Gadsby never played on a Stanley Cup winner. He came close, though. The 1965-66 Red Wings that he played on made the Finals before losing to Montreal. No matter. A Cup-less career is not any less gratifying to him.

"I just loved the game so much," he says. "I even liked practice. I met so many good people and I really enjoyed the camaraderie amongst the guys. It was a great life. And you couldn't beat the hours, I tell ya."

After getting the ziggy in Detroit, Gadsby had a chance to coach again, in St. Louis. He turned it down.

"A friend of mine was one of the owners there [in St. Louis], and he wanted me to be the coach. But I was just so hurt from what happened to me in Detroit that I just said, 'The hell with it. This profession's got no stability.' So I got out of the game and did other things."

For over 15 years, Gadsby worked for Curran Crane, a construction company in Detroit that rents cranes.

"I had a helluva job," Gadsby says. "I made some phone calls, checked on clients, shot the bull. And I had a membership with the Birmingham Country Club, which was a very nice golf course. It was a helluva job.

"Then I ran a hockey school for about ten years. At one point I had about 11 hockey rinks in the Detroit area that I used for the school. I really enjoyed that, too."

But still, 36-and-a-half years later, Bill Gadsby has one unanswered question: Why did he get fired as Red Wings coach in 1969?

"Maybe [the late trainer] Lefty Wilson knows," he says with a chuckle.