Terry Sawchuk

Lore & Background

Sawchuk was born in the North End of Winnipeg and raised there until his family moved to Bowman Avenue in East Kildonan, a working-class, formerly Ukrainian section of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was the third of four sons and one adopted daughter of Louis Sawchuk, a tinsmith who had immigrated to Canada as a boy from Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine), and his wife Anne (nee Maslak), a homemaker. The second son died young from scarlet fever and the oldest, an aspiring hockey goaltender whom Terry idolized, died suddenly of a heart attack at age seventeen.

At age twelve, Sawchuk injured his right elbow playing rugby and, not wanting to be punished by his parents, hid the injury, preventing the dislocation from properly healing. Thus, the injury left his right arm with limited mobility and was now also several inches shorter than the left, which bothered him for his entire athletic career. After inheriting his good friend's goalie equipment, Sawchuk began playing ice hockey in a local league and worked for a sheet-metal company installing vents over bakery ovens.

His goaltending talent was so evident that at age fourteen a local scout for the Detroit Red Wings had him work out with the team, who later signed him to an amateur contract and sent him to play for their junior team in Galt, Ontario, in 1946, where he also finished the eleventh grade but most likely did not graduate from high school. He excelled in many sports. He played baseball for a number of years for the Elmwood Giants first in the Manitoba Senior AA League starting in 1948, when he won the league's batting title, and then in Mandak League. He played in both the infield and the outfield.

Reader's Guide

The Red Wings signed Sawchuk to a professional contract in 1947, and he quickly progressed through their developmental system, winning honours as the Rookie of the Year in both the U.S. and American Hockey Leagues. Sawchuk also filled in for seven games when the Detroit goalie Harry Lumley was injured in January 1950. Sawchuk showed such promise that the Red Wings traded Lumley to the Chicago Black Hawks, though he had just led the team to the 1950 Stanley Cup.

Nicknamed "Ukey" or "The Uke" by his teammates because of his Ukrainian ancestry, Sawchuk led the Red Wings to three Stanley Cup wins in five years, winning the Calder Memorial Trophy as the top rookie and three Vezina Trophies for the fewest goals allowed (he missed out the other two years by one goal). He was selected as an All-Star five times in his first five years in the NHL, had fifty-six shutouts, and his goals-against average (GAA) remained under 2.00.

In the 1951–52 playoffs, the Red Wings swept both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens, with Sawchuk surrendering five goals in eight games (for a 0.625 GAA), with four shutouts. During the last of these eight games, the Legend of the Octopus began as the first of the eight-limbed molluscs was hurled onto the ice from the stands. Sawchuk was ordered by Detroit general manager Jack Adams to lose weight before the 1951–52 season. After his weight loss, his personality seemed to change and he became sullen and withdrawn.

He became increasingly surly with reporters and fans, preferring to do crossword puzzles than give interviews. He also struggled for years to regain the weight. Also contributing to his moodiness and self-doubt was the pressure of playing every day despite repeated injuries — there were no backup goaltenders. He frequently played through pain, and during his career he had three operations on his right elbow, an appendectomy, countless cuts and bruises, a broken foot, a collapsed lung, ruptured discs in his back, and severed tendons in his hand.

A standup goaltender, he adopted a crouching stance to see through the legs of skaters. Years of crouching in the net caused Sawchuk to walk with a permanent stoop and resulted in lordosis (swayback), which prevented him from sleeping for more than two hours at a time.