NHL legend Ted Lindsay has passed away

Ted Lindsay, former NHL player, Hall of Famer and league labor pioneer, has passed away at age 93.

On Monday morning, NHL legend Ted Lindsay passed away. He had been in hospice care as his life neared the end; he was 93 years old.

Lindsay had 379 goals and 851 points during a 17-year NHL playing career, 14 of those spent with the Detroit Red Wings and three with the Chicago Blackhawks. He made nine All-Star teams, won one scoring title (78 points in 1949-50) and won four Stanley Cups with the Red Wings. In 133 career playoff games, he had 96 points.

Lindsay was one-third of Detroit’s legendary “Production Line”, as the left winger next to center Sid Abel and right winger Gordie Howe. Nicknamed “Terrible Ted”, the 5-foot-8 Lindsay played an aggressive style through his entire career. As evidence of that, he finished top-five in the league in penalty minutes 10 times and led the league with 184 penalty minutes at age 33 during the 1958-59 season.

Lindsay made a comeback with the Red Wings for the 1964-65 season, at the urging of Abel (who had become Detroit’s head coach), and had 173 penalty minutes (second-most in the league) as a 39-year old.

But Lindsay’s most lasting legacy came off the ice. In 1957, he and Montreal Canadiens great Doug Harvey were the most prominent players responsible for creating the first NHL Player’s Association. That effort created expected tension with management, as players fought for their rights in an unprecedented way, and Lindsay was subsequently traded to the Blackhawks as a measure of retaliation.

In 2010, the NHLPA’s MVP award was renamed the Ted Lindsay Award. As a peer-voted award, it’s considered the more meaningful MVP award.

Lindsay also started the tradition of lifting the Stanley Cup and skating it around the ice, which is now something players do then hand off to a teammate to follow suit after winning the Cup.

Lindsay was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1966. He came back to the Red Wings again as general manager in 1977 and became interim head coach briefly, overlapping the 1979-80 and 1980-81 seasons.