Ted Lindsay, 93; Hockey Hall of Famer

Associated Press

DETROIT

Ted Lindsay lived to do what he thought was right.

He pioneered the first NHL players’ union despite intense opposition from team management, began the tradition of taking the Stanley Cup closer to fans by skating it around the ice and refused to attend his own Hall of Fame induction ceremony because only men were allowed.

“I was led by a feeling of fairness,” Lindsay once said.

Lindsay, the 5-foot-8, 160-pound tough guy who provided muscle and meanness on the Detroit Red Wings’ famed “Production Line” of the 1950s, died Monday at the age of 93 in his home in Michigan, according to Lew LaPaugh, his son-in-law and president of the Ted Lindsay Foundation, which raises money for autism research.

The player known as “Terrible Ted” was one of the game’s best left wings and an 11-time All-Star who played on four Stanley Cup winners in the early 1950s. Lindsay, Sid Abel and Gordie Howe formed an offensive juggernaut of a line that helped make Detroit one of the first of the NHL’s great postwar dynasties and they had a fitting nickname in the Motor City.

He finished his NHL career with 379 goals and 472 assists in 1,068 games with 14 of his 17 seasons with Detroit. With Howe and Lindsay centered first by Abel and then by Al Delvecchio, the Red Wings won Stanley Cups in 1950, 1952, 1954 and 1955. The Red Wings retired his No. 7 in 1991.

Lindsay is credited with beginning the ritual in which players skate around the rink holding the Stanley Cup they have just won.

“I saw it sitting there, and I thought, ‘I’ll just pick it up and I’ll take it over,’” Lindsay recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2013. “I just moved along the boards. I didn’t have it over my head. I had it so they could read it. I wasn’t starting a tradition. I was just taking care of my fans that paid our salary.”