Red Wings Set in Goal With the Late-Blooming Howard

The most celebrated goaltender in Red Wings history—indeed, maybe in NHL history—was a tormented man. It’s been said that you have to be a little off your rocker to want to throw yourself into the path of vulcanized rubber discs for a living. Terry Sawchuk may not have been crazy, but he wasn’t happy.

It’s been documented—by his teammates, by his son, by those who covered him. Sawchuk, the Hall of Famer who did three stints with the Red Wings from 1949 to 1969, was a tragically sad man, for the most part.

Sawchuk was like the comedian who makes your sides burst with laughter, but who himself is devoid of joy. Kind of like the troubled Lenny Bruce, who, like Sawchuk, was dead by age 40.

Sawchuk dominated NHL shooters in his day, racking up 103 shutouts (a record long considered unbreakable until New Jersey’s Marty Brodeur proved otherwise) and guarding the Detroit goal like an Irish beat cop in the Bowery.

He gave Red Wings fans much joy—and helped lead his teammates to three Stanley Cups—but Sawchuk was joyless in the process. He was afflicted with untreated depression, and nearly had a nervous breakdown in 1957 while playing for Boston.

It should be noted that Sawchuk, at age 37, led the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Stanley Cup in 1967. The Leafs haven’t really come close to winning it since.

Yet even the great Terry Sawchuk was dispatched out of Detroit because there was someone else to take his place. It happened in 1955, when the Red Wings, fresh off another Stanley Cup victory, dealt Sawchuk to Boston to make room for youngster Glenn Hall.

It was like trading Sinatra to make room for a young Perry Como.

The two-headed goalie in Detroit has been a monster seen all too often in the Motor City. The parallel between the Red Wings goalie situations and those of the Lions’ quarterbacks are eerily similar.

Both teams can point to the mid-to-late-1950s as to when the two-headed monsters made their debut.

On the gridiron we had Layne and Rote then Plum and Sweetan then Munson and Landry then…well, you don’t really want me to go on, do you?

On the ice it hasn’t been all that different.

Sawchuk gave way to Hall, then the Red Wings brought Sawchuk back and got rid of Hall, who is a Hall of Famer in his own right.

Sawchuk was with the Red Wings until 1964, then the merry-go-round in the Detroit net really began.

It hasn’t mattered if the Red Wings were atrocious, as they were for most of the 1970s until the late-1980s, or if they were annual Cup contenders, as they have been for the past 20 years.

The two-headed goalie monster has reared its head often, regardless.

Remember the two heads of Glen Hanlon and Greg Stefan? They led the Red Wings to the NHL’s version of the Final Four in 1987 and ’88.

How about Mike Vernon and Chris Osgood? They presided over a 62-win season in 1996, then took turns leading the Red Wings to the Cup—Vernon in 1997 and Osgood in 1998.

Dominik Hasek. Curtis Joseph. Manny Legace. Hasek again. Osgood again. Hasek again. Osgood again.

The Red Wings, with their two-headed monster between the pipes, won four Stanley Cups in an 11-year stretch.

The goalie controversies have been much kinder to the Red Wings than the QB ones have been to the Lions.

But you can say goodbye to both two-headed monsters—the one on the football field, and the one on the ice rink.

The Lions, with the young gunslinger Matthew Stafford, are set at quarterback for the next 10 years, his recent interception fetish notwithstanding.

And the Red Wings have no more worries in goal—provided they can keep Jimmy Howard shackled to a contract befitting his skills.

Howard, from the University of Maine, was the only Red Wing earning his paycheck for the first month of this season. And those are some big paychecks we’re talking about.

Howard is pretty much established now as one of the upper echelon goalies in the NHL. So say I.
He’s in his third full season, a late bloomer of sorts.

Howard is 27, and will be 28 in March. He didn’t become the Red Wings starting goalie until 2009, a full six years after being drafted in the second round.

He’s proving to be worth the wait.

Howard is no Sawchuk, and I mean that in a good way.

Jimmy Howard isn’t tormented. He isn’t in a dark place mentally. He hasn’t had to miss a half season at age 27 from mental exhaustion, as Sawchuk did back in 1957, when the media and fans in Boston rode him mercilessly.

And it’s not like Howard is playing incognito.

You can’t hide in Detroit if you’re a goalie. Or if you’re a quarterback. It’s not unlike other pro sports burgs that have NHL and NFL teams.

Goalie and quarterback, in most towns, are not positions for the faint of heart or weak of character.

Howard took over goaltending duties in 2009, somewhat shoving out the veteran Osgood, the starter for two of those four Cups between ’97 and ’08. There was some concern about Howard’s status come playoff time. Folks wondered aloud if the kid had what it takes to navigate through the choppy playoff waters.

Good thing the water is frozen in hockey, eh?

Howard acquitted himself well in the 2010 post-season, and even more so in 2011, even though the Red Wings didn’t make it out of the second round in either spring.

Now he’s got a stranglehold on the starting job, with only 35-year-old Ty Conklin around to back him up. Conklin will be lucky to appear in 20 games this season.

It took Jimmy Howard a wee bit longer than most NHL goalies to emerge and stake his claim to being the No. 1 guy in net.

Now all the Red Wings have to do is keep him signed and happy.

The happy part shouldn’t be a problem.

Howard is no Sawchuk, after all.

As Playoffs Approach, Time to Worry About Red Wings Goaltending (Again)

The most recent men who’ve tended goal for the Detroit Red Wings and led them to the Stanley Cup don’t have much in common except for being stark raving mad.

I’ve always felt that way about hockey goalies.

Terry Sawchuk was the maddest of them all (he played mostly without a mask), and the most tormented.

It reminds me of the great comedians throughout history—the men and women who’ve made us laugh so hard but who themselves were among the saddest of folks.

Sawchuk, the legendary netminder and Hall of Famer of the 1950s and ‘60s, was the best goalie the NHL has ever seen, but if they gave out awards for self-fulfillment, old Terry would have come away empty-handed.

Sawchuk rarely smiled, and when he did, it was brief and forced. He was almost a goaltending savant who didn’t really like what he did, but he did it because he had to.

His teammates on the Red Wings tried to get close to him, tried to engage him, tried to get him to lighten up. But Terry always seemed so sad, which in turn saddened them. How much more enjoyable the Red Wings' Stanley Cups of the 1950s would have been, had Sawchuk only been able to relax.

Sawchuk was dead by age 40, after a tragic bout of rough-housing with New York Rangers teammate and roommate Ron Stewart over some unpaid apartment bills.

Sawchuk’s brief life, in my opinion, was among the saddest in all of sports.

It was 42 years after Sawchuk and the Red Wings raised the Cup when the team finally did it again in 1997, behind the clutch goaltending of veteran Mike Vernon.

Vernon was a Cup winner once already, leading the Calgary Flames over the tradition-rich Montreal Canadiens in 1989.

In 1996, you could have driven Vernon off the Ambassador Bridge and no Red Wings fan would have trolled for his remains.

After a brilliant 62-13-7 regular season in 1995-96, Vernon and Chris Osgood’s shaky play against the Colorado Avalanche in the Western Conference Finals helped drum the Red Wings out in six games.

The Cup-less stretch reached 41 years, and counting.

But one year later, as the confetti flew inside Joe Louis Arena and the Red Wings skated around the ice with hockey’s silver chalice in tow, Mike Vernon was back in the city’s good graces.

Some fan had made a sign out of poster board and pressed it against the glass.

It read, “Vernie: I’m sorry!”

In a postgame interview on the ice, Vernon was asked about the sign.

He chuckled sheepishly and said, “What can I say? Apology accepted, I guess!”

A year after that, with Vernon banished to the San Jose Sharks, it was Chris Osgood’s turn to be the madman in goal who’d lead the Wings to another Stanley Cup.

It was a playoff run with more twists and turns than a corkscrew, and with surprise endings to games that would have made O. Henry proud.

Osgood caused almost as much anguish as he provided joy, making things more interesting than they should have been, usually due to his penchant for failing to stop shots fired from beyond the blue line.

Three times Osgood surrendered goals that came off shots originating in Timbuktu. All three times, the shots either tied the game late or won it.

But Ozzie persevered, and as the champagne flowed in the Red Wings dressing room in Washington following the Cup clincher, Osgood’s mother found him and hugged her drenched son.

“You did it, Chris! You did it, baby!” she cried.

In 2002, the Red Wings goalie was another savant, the 36-year-old Dominik Hasek, the human Slinky.

Hasek was an amazing netminder but a baffling person. You could say that he marched to the beat of a different drummer, except that it was a drummer no one could hear but him.

The Red Wings of 2001-02 were teeming with future Hall of Famers, and Hasek tended goal in the playoffs with a pure brilliance befitting the team’s roster of greatness.

As the final horn sounded on the season, the Red Wings had captured another Stanley Cup, with another goalie.

Six years later, Osgood did it again, rescuing the Wings when the 43-year-old Hasek faltered in the first round. Another Cup won.

And in 2011?

It’s getting closer to playoff time, which means it’s time to trot out the usual blather about the Red Wings goaltending situation heading into the postseason.

The doubters are out, once again.

Other than Sawchuk, who was born to win Stanley Cups, the Cup-winning goalies for the Red Wings all beat back the doubters.

Vernon, despite a resume that had “Stanley Cup Champion” on it, had to win back the fans after the disappointment of 1996.

Osgood alternately made friends and enemies in Detroit in 1998, sometimes shift by shift.

In 2002, Hasek had to overcome an 0-2 hole in the first round against Vancouver, when the fans were about to declare him a fraud in pads.

And Osgood was a 35-year-old backup when he replaced Hasek after four games of the first round in 2008. You could cut the doubt with a knife.

Currently, Jimmy Howard’s ability to lead the Red Wings to the promised land is being seriously questioned, and not just by the hockey denizens around town.

A couple weeks ago, the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports, ESPN, splashed on its website that the Red Wings were in big trouble and delusional if they expected the second-year goalie Howard to make like Sawchuk, Vernon, Osgood and Hasek.

The talking heads pointed to the numbers, which place Howard toward the bottom of the league in things like save percentage.

Apparently ESPN.com, allegedly so wise, has forgotten that the NHL has two distinct seasons: the regular one in the fall and winter, and the other one in the spring.

Like it or not, Howard will be the target of the springtime doubters, for as long as he shall live—in the playoffs.

It’s understandable, really.

Howard won a playoff series and lost one last year, his rookie campaign. In real plain terms, he hasn’t won diddlysquat for the Red Wings.

So naturally, people are going to say that he can’t. Until he does.

Because this is Detroit, and these are the Red Wings, a premier hockey team that has been typecast as one that has to win championships in spite of its goaltending, not because of it.

History doesn’t really bear that out, but why let facts ruin a good myth?

Sculptor Amrany Has One More Red Wing (At Least) To Capture

How wonderful it is that Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, and Alex Delvecchio are still in our midst.

I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm pretty confident that no other Original Six team still has an entire forward line of the magnitude of those guys alive and kicking, and with their faculties. We're talking 50 years ago when nos. 7, 9, and 10 were doing their thing.

The Red Wings, as an organization, has done its part in recognizing this treasure trove of old school talent. Numbers have been retired and lifted to the rafters. Special nights have been held throughout the past 20 years or so. And Howe (age 80), Lindsay (83) and Delvecchio (76) are always included when the Red Wings celebrate a team banner-raising ceremony. It's great that that trio has received all the accolades and honors while they were still alive to see it.

The two most recent instances have occurred over the past couple of weeks, with the unveiling of statues bearing the likenesses of Lindsay and Delvecchio, similar to the one honoring Howe, which was dedicated in April 2007. All three statues were created by Chicago-based artist Omri Amrany. And, all three are scattered in the Joe Louis Arena concourse.

"One thing I love about my statue, it's indoors," Lindsay said. "The pigeons are not going to get a chance to get at it."

Well, that's ONE way to look at it, Terrible Ted.

I hope Amrany won't mind if I commission him for one more statue. Maybe he needs the money. You know, starving artists and all.

Sadly, it won't be one attended by the subject, but I don't know how you can get into statue-unveiling mode and not have one of Terry Sawchuk greeting JLA visitors. Even the kiddie Red Wings fans who've only known success by this franchise are aware of the exploits of Howe, Lindsay, and Delvecchio -- largely because they're semi-regulars at JLA and around the team in general. I wonder how many of them, though, have any idea what goalie Sawchuk did for their team, back in the day.



Terry Sawchuk, whose career record of 103 shutouts is only now being threatened (New Jersey's Martin Brodeur has 96), and he played his last game 38 years ago. Terry Sawchuck, who put on a display of goaltending in the Stanley Cup playoffs of 1952 so dominating it almost doesn't seem true (8-0, four shutouts, 0.63 GAA). Terry Sawchuk, who barely lived to see the end of his career, let alone any post-retirement honors that would have come his way.

Ask just about any Red Wing from those glory days of the 1950s, and Sawchuk will be one of the first teammates they talk about in terms of contributing to the success the Wings enjoyed. The Red Wings were a marvelous team, no doubt, but it was still left to Sawchuk to stone the opposition and steal two points on many a night. It's not a fit of homerism to declare him the best goaltender of all time.

He didn't just play for the Red Wings, though he did play for them on three different occasions. Sawchuk was, at various times, a Boston Bruin, a New York Ranger, a Toronto Maple Leaf, and a Los Angeles King. But he played most of his 971 games with the Red Wings, by far.

His no. 1 jersey is hanging alongside 7, 9, 10, 12, and 19 near the girders at JLA, and that's very nice. But now that we're erecting statues of the forwards, may as well include one for the goalie, too.

I think it's appropriate that fans get hit between the eyes with a larger-than-life, 3-D display of Sawchuk making a save as they enter the Joe -- and the new arena, whenever that may be. And make it of him maskless, as he spent most of his career.

We've had some fine netminders in Detroit: Glenn Hall; Roger Crozier; Roy Edwards; Dominik Hasek; Chris Osgood. But none, with the exception of maybe Hasek in his prime, can touch Sawchuk. And they'd all agree.

So sorry, Mr. Amrany -- but I don't think your work is done. Let me work on the Ilitches for you. Meanwhile, keep your chisel handy. And don't forget Steve Yzerman, who's going to be due for a statue, too -- but I think that one can wait till the Red Wings christen their new arena.

Sawchuck, who died tragically at age 40 in 1970 after some horseplay with Rangers teammate Ron Stewart led to internal bleeding and infection, won't be able to see it, but his family can. It's great that the Red Wings honor the living legends among us, but let them not forget about the goalie who died young who backstopped them to glory. Just because he's not around doesn't mean he should be left out of the statue party.