Why would a hockey player who has been dead more than half a century still generate enough interest to have a seventh book written about him? Either he was the Greatest Of All Time, or he was forever mysterious.
Terry Sawchuk may have been both.
“The Sawchuk Diaries: An Oral History Of Terry Sawchuk” was written by Ty Dilello, as prolific an author of Manitoba hockey books as you’ll find. It’ll never be a best-seller because Dilello is printing only 103 copies and selling them for $50 each. That’s one for each of Sawchuk’s shutouts from 21 years with five National Hockey League teams.
From an era of fewer games and fewer goalies (like six), this record lasted four decades — Martin Brodeur blew past it to finish with 125 shutouts. Sawchuk’s 103 is still second, with nobody else close. The nearest active goalie is Jonathan Quick of the New York Rangers, with 64. Quick turns 40 next month.
The GOAT?
Many hockey people who coached Sawchuk (Emil Francis), played with him (Glenn Hall, another goalie) or watched him through expert eyes (Dick Irvin and Don Cherry) have said so. Too many now-retired goalies to list said they grew up “being Terry Sawchuk” whenever they played, on the streets or in the arenas.
Why do they all regard Sawchuk so holistically?
Start with the Detroit Red Wings, his first team. Sawchuk is still the only goalie with a goals-against average below 2.00 in every one of his first five NHL seasons. He won the Calder Trophy, as rookie of the year. One night, at Montreal, the Canadiens outshot Detroit 48-12 and Sawchuk won 3-1. He backstopped the Wings to three Stanley Cups, the first with four shutouts in eight games, a goals-against average of 0.63 and a save percentage of 98 per cent. The Wings won the Cup 8-0.
Sawchuk won the Vezina Trophy four times. In one playoff, he checked himself out of hospital long enough to shut out Chicago 4-0, then checked back into the hospital. In his 17th of 21 seasons with 400 stitches in his mostly maskless face, he and Johnny Bower led Toronto to its last Stanley Cup.
Mysterious?
Surly and moody, at times with everybody, Sawchuk’s career is often referenced starting and ending with tragedy. At 10, he inherited goalie pads after his brother Mike died from a heart murmur at 17. By the time Terry was 17, he was playing pro.
His last team was the New York Rangers, as the back-up to Ed Giacomin. Just 52 days after the Rangers were eliminated from the playoffs, Sawchuk died, at 40. He’d been in a “scuffle” with his teammate and housemate Ron Stewart, after a night at the bar. Sawchuk fell, suffering abdominal injuries, and died after two surgeries and three weeks in hospital. His heart gave out. After an investigation, Stewart was never charged.
Emil Francis, his old boss, often recalled having to identify Sawchuk’s body among 30 at a New York morgue, and finding the late Sawchuk’s head protruding from a bag like the ones used for carrying sticks, a tag around his neck. Francis didn’t say so, but he may have thought,
Here lies hockey’s greatest goalie.
