Terry Sawchuk

Terry Sawchuk was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on December 28, 1929, into a working-class family of Ukrainian descent. His oldest brother, an aspiring goaltender whom Sawchuk idolized, died of a heart ailment at seventeen. Sawchuk inherited a set of goalie equipment and began playing in a local league. As a boy, he injured his right elbow and hid the injury from his parents; it never healed properly, leaving that arm with limited mobility and shorter than the left for the rest of his life. While he was still a teenager, a local Detroit Red Wings scout had him work out with the team, and the organization signed him to an amateur contract, eventually sending him to play junior hockey in Galt, Ontario, in 1946.

Sawchuk moved through the Detroit system quickly. After junior stops in Galt and Windsor, he played for Omaha in the USHL, where he won the league's Rookie of the Year award in 1948. The following season, with Indianapolis in the AHL, he won the AHL's Rookie of the Year award. He appeared in seven NHL games for Detroit in 1949–50 while spending most of that season back in Indianapolis, and when Detroit goaltender Harry Lumley was traded to Chicago, the net in Detroit became Sawchuk's alone.

His first full NHL season, 1950–51, produced a Calder Memorial Trophy as the league's top rookie, along with a 44–13–13 record and a 1.97 goals-against average with 11 shutouts in 70 games. The following season brought a Vezina Trophy and a Stanley Cup: in the 1951–52 playoffs, Detroit swept both Toronto and Montreal, with Sawchuk allowing only five goals across eight games for a 0.63 goals-against average, recording four shutouts. He won the Vezina again in 1952–53, and Detroit captured the Stanley Cup in both 1953–54 and 1954–55, with Sawchuk adding a third Vezina in that final Cup season. Over his first five full seasons in Detroit, he recorded 56 shutouts and his goals-against average never rose above 2.00.

Detroit general manager Jack Adams had ordered Sawchuk to lose weight early in his Detroit career, and those around him noted a change in his demeanour afterward — he became withdrawn and difficult with reporters and fans, preferring crossword puzzles to interviews. He played through a long accumulation of physical damage: operations on his right elbow, an appendectomy, a broken foot, a collapsed lung, ruptured discs in his back, severed tendons in his hand, and approximately 400 stitches to his face, including three in his right eyeball, before he adopted a protective mask in 1962. He was a standup goaltender who developed a crouching stance to see through skaters' legs; years of that posture caused a permanent stoop and lordosis.

On June 3, 1955, Detroit traded Sawchuk to the Boston Bruins to make room for a younger goaltender in their system. In his second season in Boston, he was diagnosed with mononucleosis. Physically weakened, he announced his retirement in early 1957. Detroit reacquired him on June 10, 1957, sending forward Johnny Bucyk to Boston in exchange. Sawchuk spent the next seven seasons back in Detroit.

After Detroit developed another young goaltender ready for the NHL, Sawchuk was left unprotected in the 1964 NHL Intra-League Draft and was claimed by the Toronto Maple Leafs on June 10, 1964. Sharing duties with Johnny Bower, the pair won the 1964–65 Vezina Trophy — Sawchuk's fourth — and in 1966–67 the two helped Toronto to a Stanley Cup championship. In the Cup-clinching game six against Montreal, Sawchuk stopped 40 of 41 shots in a 3–1 victory. That Cup was his fourth.

Left unprotected in the June 1967 expansion draft, Sawchuk was the first player selected, taken by the Los Angeles Kings. He played one season in Los Angeles before being traded back to Detroit, where he appeared in 13 games in 1968–69. In June 1969, Detroit traded Sawchuk and Sandy Snow to the New York Rangers for Larry Jeffrey.

With New York, Sawchuk appeared in only eight regular-season games. On February 1, 1970, in his fourth start of the season, he shut out the Pittsburgh Penguins 6–0 — the 103rd and final shutout of his NHL career, and his last NHL win. His final regular-season start came on March 14, 1970. He made his last NHL appearance on April 14, 1970, in a playoff series against Boston.

Over 971 regular-season NHL games, Sawchuk finished with 445 wins, 336 losses, 171 ties, a 2.50 goals-against average, and 103 shutouts. In 106 playoff games, he went 54–47 with a 2.53 goals-against average and 12 shutouts. At the time of his death, he held the NHL record for career wins and career shutouts among goaltenders.

On April 29, 1970, after the season ended, Sawchuk was involved in a physical altercation with Rangers teammate Ron Stewart at the house they shared on Long Island, New York. Sawchuk suffered severe internal injuries. He underwent multiple operations — including removal of his gallbladder and surgery on his liver — but never recovered. He died on May 31, 1970, from a pulmonary embolism, at the age of 40. A Nassau County grand jury exonerated Stewart and ruled the death accidental.

In 1971, Sawchuk was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame — one of ten players for whom the standard three-year waiting period was waived — and was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy that same year. The Detroit Red Wings retired his number 1 on March 6, 1994.

Sources: NHL.com and Hockey-Reference (statistics); NHL.com's 100 Greatest NHL Players profile; the Hockey Hall of Fame; the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame.