Lochead’s Heroics 30 Years Ago Was It For Red Wings In ‘70s

Psst – don’t tell this to today’s Red Wings fans born after 1980, those spoiled whippersnappers that they are, but there was actually a time when their team didn’t compete for the Stanley Cup annually.

And if you’re one of those under-30s who’ve been used to nothing but fabulous regular seasons and the occasional long post-season run, topped off by three Cups, you people make me sick. I was in the war, cupcake. Otherwise known as the 1970s and half of the 1980s.

My fellow oldtimers are smirking and curling their lips up in disdain at those newbies with their Zetterberg and Datsyuk jerseys. You know whose jersey we would have been forced to wear – if they HAD jerseys for fans back then? Names like Bloom and Korney and Hogaboam and Bergeron. And no – there were no Scotty Bowmans or Mike Babcocks behind the bench. We’re talking Billy Dea and Larry Wilson and Ted Garvin.

Ahh, those were the days.

The Red Wings qualified for the playoffs after the 1969-70 season. Then they qualified again in 1984. In between, they had a Cinderella-ish year, in 1977-78. That’s 12 times missing the playoffs in 13 seasons, cupcake. And in many of those years, the NHL invited 16 of their 21 clubs into the playoff party. Yet the Red Wings constantly managed to be one of the 24% who missed the cut.

They were the days of Darkness With Harkness (named after the team’s inept GM of the early-‘70s, Ned Harkness) and when the team was known as the Dead Things.

But leave it to our old friend, the irascible Terrible Ted Lindsay, to provide a little spark.

It was late in the 1976-77 season, the Red Wings on their way to a 16-55-9 record, including an 0-18-1 finish. Did I just see one of the newbies dry heave? Anyhow, the team was awful, and ownership turned to Lindsay for help. It wasn’t the first time Teddy came out of retirement to help the club.

In 1964, needing another able body up front, GM-coach Sid Abel convinced his old linemate to get back into shape and help out, after four seasons out to pasture. So Teddy did, and the Wings made it all the way to the Cup Finals.

Now here came the Red Wings again, on their knees, pleading with Teddy.

Be our GM. Turn this thing around. Please.

So Lindsay settled his personal affairs and signed on. At his first game as GM, staring down from the press box at the mess below, it was reported that Lindsay simply shook his head in disgust, and left midway thru the third period.

All that changed shortly.

Lindsay hired a successful coach from the WHA, Bobby Kromm. He brought in gritty, unheralded players. He ushered in a new slogan, “Aggressive Hockey Is Back In Town.” They printed up t-shirts and bumper stickers with those words splayed on them. Then he drafted a kid center named Dale McCourt from the Ontario League.

All that, and it was still uncertain how improved Teddy’s new product would be.

Turns out, not too shabby.

The team won some games early, then slumped. Then Lindsay pulled another rabbit out of his hat, taking a cue from his own personal history, as he convinced former Blackhawks winger Dennis Hull to not retire and sign with Detroit instead. Hull did, and he contributed some more veteran leadership. By the end of the season, the Red Wings doubled their win total from the previous year, to 32, and made the playoffs.

Aggressive Hockey WAS Back In Town.

The NHL used to practice what the NBA originally made fashionable in their playoffs: the cute mini-series. They were best-of-three, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them affairs. And the Red Wings were matched up with the Atlanta (now Calgary) Flames, with Game 1 in Georgia. The Red Wings handled the Flames, and suddenly were on the verge of winning a playoff series, no matter how short and cute it was.

Bill Lochead (pronounced La-HEAD) was one of the players Lindsay craved: tough, grinding, and hungry. He was a forward whose blond locks curled from the bottom of his helmet. He wore no. 23, which I won’t forget. Even less chance of me forgetting is the goal he scored on April 13, 1978. Because until the Red Wings would make this town go wild, under Jacques Demers and Steve Yzerman some ten years later, Bill Lochead’s goal was the lone gem in the entire decade of the 1970s, and for most of the 1980s.

It didn’t take much to make us go crazy in 1978.

Bill Lochead

Late in Game 2, the score tied, the Red Wings dumped the puck into the Flames’ zone. Atlanta goalie Dan Bouchard, for whatever reason, was possessed to wander from the net to try to clear the disc, some 20 feet from the crease, near the boards. But Bouchard’s clearing try went off Lochead, who was blanketed by a Flames defenseman. The puck squirted into the corner. Lochead, his momentum increasing, managed to wrangle the puck, but by that time he was almost directly behind the net.

There’s no way, I thought, that Lochead can put that puck into the now-vacant goal.

Somehow, Lochead pushed the puck to his forehand, and as he was literally behind the net, he tucked it behind the goal line just before falling into the boards. There were maybe two minutes remaining.

You’d have thought the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. The Olympia Stadium crowd went berserk. The players streamed onto the ice, as if the goal had come in overtime. After surviving a Flames onslaught at the end, the Red Wings won, and had swept the mini-series.

They even managed to scare the mighty Montreal Canadiens in Round 2, splitting the first two games in the Forum before being bumped out in five games.

After that delightfully surprising season, the Red Wings went back to their old ways. A few years later, Lindsay had been fired and the team went up for sale. A pizza pie guy, Mike Ilitch, was the sucker who bought them.

So it was little-known Bill Lochead who turned Detroit on for the only time in about 20 years. Go figure.