Alex Delvecchio dies at 93: Detroit Red Wings great had magic touch on the ice

Delvecchio’s mentor played in the first game at the Old Red Barn on Grand River and Delvecchio’s statue sparkles at the state-of-the-art arena on Woodward. He had ties to the earliest days of Detroit’s franchise, when it was owned by a grain and shipping magnate, and he relished its rebirth as Hockeytown, when it was owned by a pizza baron.

The last surviving star from Detroit’s greatest sports dynasty, Delvecchio, who died Tuesday, July 1, helped the Red Wings reach the pinnacle in the 1950s, struggled mightily as they hit bottom in the 1970s, and segued into an elder statesman with a retired number, a bronze statue and ceremonial roles celebrating the franchise’s renaissance in the 1990s.

Delvecchio's death came at age 93, surrounded in peace by his family, the team announced Tuesday. It was the end to a life that saw the humble Canadian native rise to glory among fans, players and press, universally heralded as one of the NHL’s 100 greatest players but always considered underrated by his peers

Delvecchio was a a three-time Lady Byng Trophy winner on the ice but a lifelong Lady Byng winner off the ice.

“The Detroit Red Wings organization is deeply saddened by the passing of Alex Delvecchio — a true Red Wings great whose contributions to our team, our city, and the game of hockey will never be forgotten,” Christopher Ilitch, Red Wings governor and CEO, said in a statement Tuesday. “Alex embodied what it means to be a Red Wing: loyalty, humility, and excellence on and off the ice. For over two decades, including 12 as captain of the Red Wings, Alex earned the reputation as one of the best two-way forwards in NHL history. Following his Hall of Fame career, he continued to represent the Red Wings with class and distinction as both an executive and ambassador. Our thoughts are with the Delvecchio family and all those who were fortunate enough to know and admire Alex. His legacy will forever be remembered as part of Red Wings history and Hockeytown.”

Indeed, if not for Gordie Howe, his legendary linemate known as Mr. Hockey, Delvecchio could have been Mr. Red Wing:

Only Howe played in Detroit longer than Delvecchio’s 24 seasons.

Only Steve Yzerman was a captain in Detroit longer than Delvecchio’s 12 seasons.

Only Nicklas Lidstrom played more games in a career spent with a single NHL franchise than Delvecchio’s 1,550.

Only Howe had more points in NHL history when Delvecchio retired in 1973.

And only Howe played in more Stanley Cup Finals for the Wings than Delvecchio’s eight.

“When you think of the Red Wings, you think of Howe,” future Hall of Fame center Phil Esposito told Sport magazine in 1971. “But Alex is the most underrated player in the game today — underrated by everyone but the players.”

Delvecchio was approaching his 40th birthday at time.

Late in the 1964-65 season, his 15th in the NHL, Delvecchio recorded a point in 17 consecutive games, a Wings record until Yzerman broke it 23 years later.

“He’s like a magician with the puck,” goaltender Eddie Giacomin said during a Hall of Fame career.

Delvecchio is survived by his wife, Judy; five children, Ken, Janice, Corrine, Alex Jr. and Lenny; 10 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

"Alex was more than a Hockey icon, he was a devoted husband, loving father, grandfather, great grandfather, cherished friend, and respected teammate to so many. While the world knew him as an incredible hockey player with numerous accomplishments on the ice, we knew him as someone whose humility, strength, competitiveness, kindness and heart were even greater than his professional achievements. For decades, your love and support meant everything to Alex and to all of us. We are deeply grateful and thankful to everyone."

A plaque of former Detroit Red Wings player Alex Delvecchio hangs in a hallway off of the players lounge area during a media tour of the Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit on Wednesday Sept. 6, 2017.

Early success, then an iron career

A left-handed shot, Delvecchio played on three Stanley Cup championship teams — all in his first four full seasons, all before he turned 24.

As a rookie in 1951-52, when the Wings swept Toronto and Montreal in the playoffs, Delvecchio centered the third line. In 1953-54, on a line with Howe and Ted Lindsay, Delvecchio’s nine points tied Howe for the Wings’ playoff scoring lead. In 1954-55, Delvecchio scored 15 points in 11 playoff games and the first and last goal in the Cup-clinching 3-1 victory over the Canadiens in Game 7.

“I felt proud to be among so many players that were true stars of the game,” Delvecchio said decades later.

After 1955, the Wings wouldn’t win another Stanley Cup for 42 years.

A dynamic skater, a gifted passer and frequently the center on the second iteration of the Production Line with Howe and Lindsay, Delvecchio also was an ironman in the NHL’s Original Six days. He never missed a game from age 25 until nearly 33. In 1956-57, his seventh season, a broken ankle sidelined him for 22 games; he then missed only 14 games the last 17 seasons of his career.

“You don’t get hurt in this game,” he once told Sport magazine, “if you keep your head up and watch what’s going on around you.”

In the 1950s and ’60s, players also lived in fear that in a six-team league, with jobs scarce, every injury jeopardized their careers. “You just didn’t want anybody to come in,” Delvecchio said, “because you’re gone if they shine.”

In 2012, former Free Press beat reporter Keith Gave sorted through more than 1,500 pages of notes from Dr. John Finley, the Wings’ physician from 1957 until 2003. The end result was Finley’s book “Hockeytown Doc,” a rare glimpse from inside the trainer’s room. He had a unique perspective on what made Delvecchio a Hall of Famer.

Finley wrote more than 14,000 words in his notes about Howe, detailing two dozen significant injuries. Finley wrote one 430-word paragraph on Delvecchio, mostly about the Wings’ off-season bowling league. Finley wrote that Delvecchio’s delivery was notable because it was completely silent. It spoke, he felt, to the athletic precision that was a hallmark of his hockey skills.

“There is no wasted motion,” center Garry Unger said in the 1960s. “I don’t think he even sweats out there.”

Unlike his Hall of Fame teammates from the 1950s — when the Wings finished atop the regular-season standings eight of nine years and won four Stanley Cups — Delvecchio wasn’t banished in an ill-conceived trade (like Sid Abel in 1952, Terry Sawchuk in 1955, Lindsay in 1957, Red Kelly in 1960 and Marcel Pronovost in 1965) or given a do-nothing front office title (like Howe in 1971).

From left: Former Red Wings stars Chris Osgood, Ted Lindsay, Alex Delvecchio, Darren McCarty and Tomas Holmstrom at the retirement ceremony for Nicklas Lidstrom before the Wings game against the Colorado Avalanche on March 6, 2014.

In the early 1970s, Delvecchio turned down a lucrative offer to join Howe with the Houston Aeros in the upstart World Hockey Association. “I’d spent my whole life with the Wings,” Delvecchio explained, “and, what the heck, I’d better finish with them.”

“He was a pure Red Wing, for sure,” said Jimmy Devellano, a Hall of Fame executive for the team. “Not only was he a great player, he never went anywhere else and managed and coached the team.”

Delvecchio did think he had been traded on Nov. 7, 1973, a few weeks before his 42nd birthday and the day after Coleman Young was elected Detroit’s first Black mayor. A distraught Delvecchio, coming off a stellar 71-point season, planned to retire on the spot. And he did retire that evening — because general manager Ned Harkness asked him to coach the Wings. Delvecchio agreed to take over a 2-9-1 team about to lose its top playmaker, whose skills stood out as much as he did on the ice with his salt-and-pepper hair in an era without helmets. Harkness also cut Delvecchio’s $125,000 salary.

Delvecchio later would call it “the most terrible job of my career.” He coached for parts of four seasons and was the general manager for most of three. A decade known by Wings fans as Darkness with Harkness turned even worse under Delvecchio’s watch. The U.S.-based franchise with the most Stanley Cups was derided as the Dead Wings.

After owner Bruce Norris fired Delvecchio and hired Lindsay in March 1977, Delvecchio was devastated, declared he was “ticked off” and decided “the hell with ’em.” That was harsh talk from a respected, classy and even-keeled hockey figure who three times won and three other times nearly won the Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct. 

The bad blood faded when Little Caesars founder Mike Ilitch purchased the franchise for a pittance from Norris five years later. Delvecchio spent time in the broadcast booth in the 1980s (sometimes subbing for an ailing Abel). His number was retired in the 1990s (in a dual ceremony with Lindsay). His statue was unveiled in the 2000s (two days before Lindsay’s). He was included in the festivities after teams captained by Yzerman or Lidstrom won four Stanley Cups (appearing with Howe and Lindsay).

“I am honored to have known our dear friend and Red Wings legend, Alex Delvecchio,” Marian Ilitch, Red Wings owner, said in a statement Tuesday. “Alex was a cherished part of the Red Wings family, and I’m grateful for the years my husband Mike and I shared with him, as well as the remarkable legacy he leaves behind — both in the rafters of the arena and in the hearts of Red Wings fans everywhere. My heartfelt condolences go out to the Delvecchio family during this time of loss.”

Delvecchio appreciated it all. When his No. 10 jersey was hung with Lindsay’s No. 7 from the Joe Louis Arena rafters before roaring fans in 1991 — joining Howe’s No. 9, retired in 1972 — Delvecchio declared: “I’ve been inducted into the Hall of Fame, I’ve won Stanley Cups, but this is better.”

Alex Delvecchio finished his 24-year Red Wings career with more than 1,200 points in 1,550 games.

From Thunder Bay to the Motor City

Alexander Peter Delvecchio was born Dec. 4, 1931, at Fort William, Ontario, near the immense Thunder Bay on the northwestern shores of Lake Superior. His father was a railroad engineer. According to the Hockey Hall of Fame’s official biography, Little Alex started skating as a 6-year-old on the bitterly cold outdoor rinks in his hometown but didn’t play on a team until joining the Knights of Columbus Canadiens, for 12- to 14-year-olds.

By the time Delvecchio turned 16, he was the Red Wings’ property, recommended to general manager Jack Adams by Lou Passador, a scout working the Lakehead region of northern Ontario. For the 1950-51 season, Delvecchio was sent to the Oshawa Generals, Detroit’s junior team in the Ontario Hockey Association. They were coached by Larry Aurie, a star from Detroit’s earliest days in the NHL in the late 1920s and 1930s, when the Red Wings were known as the Cougars and then the Falcons. Nicknamed The Little Rag Man for the way he could rag — or keep — the puck from opponents while killing penalties, Aurie was an all-star right wing for Detroit’s first Stanley Cup champions in 1936 and 1937. He also was a personal favorite of Adams and owner James Norris.

“We all looked up to him in awe,” Delvecchio reminisced in 1997. “No doubt that he had a lot of inspiration in my career.”

Aurie had been the first player Adams drafted from junior hockey. He played in the first game at Olympia Stadium in 1927. Norris gave personal orders in 1938, when Aurie retired, that his No. 6 jersey also be retired. (Over the decades, the Wings, though, came to consider Aurie’s jersey not so retired that it should be hung from the rafters, just kept out of circulation.)

Delvecchio, in his lone season with Aurie, learned a lifetime of lessons. “He emphasized to me the finesse of stickwork and playmaking,” Delvecchio told the Hall of Fame’s Kevin Shea in a 2005 interview. “I was a hothead then, getting too many penalties for fighting and popping off. Aurie smartened me up in a hurry.”

After Delvecchio’s 49 goals and 72 assists for the Generals, Adams summoned him to Detroit to play in the season’s final game. He was 19 years, three months and 21 days old. 

“I remember the first time I saw him on the ice,” said Jimmy Skinner, a Wings scout before and after coaching the 1955 Stanley Cup champions. “What I saw was a 17-year-old kid who had the instincts of a seasoned professional hockey player. … The best thing about him was his anticipation. He just had that sixth sense about where the puck would come out of the corner and where a man would come open for a pass.”

For 1951-52, Adams decided Delvecchio needed seasoning in the minor leagues. For all of six games. Three goals and six assists with the Indianapolis Capitals of the American Hockey League earned him plane fare to Detroit and Larry Wilson’s place on the third line between Johnny Wilson and Metro Prystai.

Not yet 20 years old, Delvecchio had arrived in the middle of a Red Wings dynasty and the best decade ever for a Detroit professional team.

Alex Delvecchio won three Lady Byng trophies in tribute to his sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct on the ice.

What's in a name?

Although a trim and fit 6 feet, 195 pounds during his long career, Alex Delvecchio was known affectionately as “Fats” or “Fatty.” His height and weight were big for his era. He said an uncle gave him the nickname when he was a plump youngster. Others said it stemmed from his round eastern European face (his mother was a Slovak, his father an Italian).

Delvecchio didn’t mind. Neither did his future wife, eventually. Nor did Lefty Wilson, the Wings’ longtime trainer. But Jack Adams did — and that made life miserable for his young centerman.

In 1973, Teresa Delvecchio recalled that she dated Alex for three weeks before knowing his real first name. “Can you imagine going with a fella and having to call him Fats?” she said. Instead, she called him Alek — yes, with a “K.”

Also in 1973, with Delvecchio nearing 42, Wilson said: “Fatty is not fat. He’s 6-foot and damn well-built. And I’d have to say he came into training camp this year in better shape than anybody on the team. And we’ve got a lot of kids.”

In 2013, for Richard Kincaide’s oral history compilation titled “Legends of the Detroit Red Wings,” Delvecchio riffed on the downside to his nickname:

“I’d swear I wasn’t overweight or anything, but that name, it stuck with me my whole career. But Adams, he’d hear them call you Fats and so he thinks I’m fat and he’d always have me to go there with these other four or five guys and ride 10 miles on the bike after practice. With all our gear still on except for your skates, after a practice that was two hours and 45 minutes long!

“I’d lose 10 pounds or whatever and my weight would wind up in the papers. So, since then, I’ve got buddies and all that who go on bicycle deals, marathons or whatever you call them, and I say you could do whatever you want, but I don’t want to bicycle. I don’t even want to look at one!”

Delvecchio always contended that as a rookie his line “didn’t hit the ice much unless we were way ahead or way behind” or at all in the third period. He was far too humble. In 65 games, he posted 15 goals and 22 assists, the sixth-leading scorer on the team. His linemate Metro Prystai scored 21 goals, third on the team.

The Wings’ decade of domination and Delvecchio’s destiny had their roots in 1947, when Adams stepped down as coach to concentrate on running the operation (and meddling with his coaches, some would argue). New coach Tommy Ivan put together a line with a 19-year-old right wing, Gordie Howe; a 22-year-old left wing, Ted Lindsay; and his 29-year-old captain, Sid Abel.

The Production Line, a nod to the Motor City’s auto industry and Henry Ford’s manufacturing innovation, ran roughshod over the NHL for five seasons and became the most fabled line in hockey history.

In 1947-48, following a losing season and a .500 season, the Production Line led the Wings to a second-place finish and the Stanley Cup Finals before falling to Toronto in a sweep. In 1948-49, the Wings won the regular-season title for the first of seven straight seasons (but were swept again by the Maple Leafs in the finals).

In 1949-50, the Production Line finished 1-2-3 in scoring — Lindsay with 78 points, Abel with 69 and Howe with 68. The Wings won their fourth Stanley Cup — and first since 1943 — on Pete Babando’s goal in the second overtime of Game 7 against the New York Rangers.

In 1950-51, the Wings became the first franchise to top 100 points in a season, only to lose in the semifinals. In 1951-52, with Delvecchio onboard, the Wings went 44-14-12 for 100 points, 22 more than the second-place Canadiens.

Against the Canadiens for the Stanley Cup, the Wings won, 3-1 and 2-1, at the Montreal Forum. Then goalie Terry Sawchuk pitched a pair of 3-0 shutouts at Olympia for the NHL’s first eight-game sweep in the playoffs.

Adams called the Wings “the best-balanced team I’ve seen in my 35 years in hockey as a player, coach and manager.” He added: “Remember this: This club only averages 23½ in age. It is a young club and one that will get better.”

In Game 4, Delvecchio set up the Cup-winner, with Montreal’s Rocket Richard in the penalty box, by digging the puck out in a scramble behind the goal, putting a short pass on Prystai’s stick and celebrating after Prystai’s 15-footer beat Gerry McNeil at 6:50 of the first period.

“That team didn’t have a weakness,” Delvecchio said in “Legends.” “We didn’t give up a goal at home in those whole playoffs! …

“I figured this is heaven.”

It would get even better — until an old man, a boozing owner and favorite sons spoiled everything.

Retooling the Production Line

After the finals, Abel bought a Detroit tavern in preparation for retirement, but he expected to play one more season. Adams said it was Abel’s choice whether to play, retire or coach in the minors.

For the opener, Reg Sinclair, a two-year veteran acquired from the Rangers a few months earlier, centered the line. A parade of Wings followed, including Delvecchio and even Howe. In the playoffs, the job went to a left wing, Marty Pavelich. The Free Press wrote: “The right combination was never found.”

Before the 1953-54 season, Adams decreed that Howe and Lindsay would play with a rookie center, Earl (Dutch) Reibel. The Wings staged publicity shots heralding their newest Production Line. Delvecchio, again, stayed with Prystai and Johnny Wilson but produced only 29 points, the lowest total of his 22 full seasons.

Reibel played well until a late-season slump. Then, Delvecchio finally meshed with Howe and Lindsay. Regular-season champs yet again, the Wings advanced past Toronto in five games and beat Montreal for the Cup when Tony Leswick scored in overtime of Game 7 at Olympia. The stunned Canadiens shunned tradition by refusing to shake the Wings’ hands.

Delvecchio led the finals in scoring with six points. He tied with Howe for the team lead with nine playoffs points.

And despite a coaching change — Jimmy Skinner for Ivan — the line stayed together to start the 1954-55 season. But Reibel centered the line in the end. Skinner, however, liked to put Howe, Lindsay and Delvecchio on the ice together for power plays and penalty kills. Delvecchio even might have been the Wings’ best player in the playoffs. (The Conn Smythe Award for playoff MVP wouldn’t be instituted for another decade.)

The Wings had won their seventh straight regular-season title, by two points over the Canadiens, with both, the only teams in the league with winning records, breezing through the semifinals and playing to a Game 7 at Olympia.

Hockey historian Stan Fischler wrote in 2020 that “Delvecchio proved … he ranked with the premier clutch scorers of all-time.”

In the tightest of defensive struggles, Delvecchio beat Jacques Plante at 7:12 of the second period. The Free Press’ Marshall Dann described the drama:

“Delvecchio finally cracked the deadlock with one brilliant, abrupt play. Midway in the second period, he took a perfect pass from Red Kelly in the Montreal zone while three Canadien forwards were headed in the wrong direction.

“(Butch) Bouchard was the only man in his way so Alex took another route. He moved across the rink, about 20 feet out from the cage, and bypassed the aging Montreal captain.

“Then he flashed a backhander and Plante couldn’t block it.”

Early in the third period, Delvecchio delivered again.

“Two goals down,” Dann wrote, “the Canadiens … were on the attack when Don Marshall slid a pass toward Bouchard, who was moving in to shoot. Delvecchio moved in nimbly to intercept and had 130 feet of open ice ahead of him.

“With Bouchard in pursuit, Alex sped to 20-foot range before firing into the upper-right corner.

“Plante was beaten cleanly on both goals by the brush-cut Delvecchio.”

Former Red Wings and family with retired jerseys, from left, Gordie Howe, Alex Delvecchio, Ted Lindsay, Jerry Abel, son of Sid Abel, and Jonathan Sawchuk, grandson of Terry Sawchuk, during Steve Yzerman's jersey retirement ceremony on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007.

It was the Wings’ seventh Stanley Cup. Same as the Canadiens. No team had won more. This time, Montreal rushed to shake the Wings’ hands.

The Production Line of Howe-Reibel-Lindsay received all kinds of attention. It collected a record 51 points in the playoffs, three more than the Canadiens’ Punch Line of Toe Blake-Elmer Lach-Rocket Richard in 1944. Howe’s 20 points and Lindsay’s 19 bettered Blake’s 1944 playoff record of 18 points.

Without the benefit of playing alongside the league’s best left or right wing, Delvecchio produced 15 points (seven goals, eight assists) in 11 playoff games. In the finals, he led the Wings with six goals, including a pair on the power play.

After four full seasons and still not yet 24, Delvecchio had won three Stanley Cups, been a second-team All-Star and played with Howe and Lindsay.

“Not a bad start,” Delvecchio said decades later. Actually, it was an ending.

The end of a dynasty

Alex Delvecchio the teacher, at practce with Wings forward Red Berenson, who would go on to lead a men's hockey dynasty at the University of Michigan.

The Red Wings’ dynasty collapsed under the hubris of general manager Jack Adams and owner Bruce Norris. Great players such as Howe, Lindsay and Delvecchio were helpless bystanders.

In December 1952, when James Norris died, his will bequeathed control of the Wings to his youngest child, Marguerite. She was 25 years old, lived in New York and Chicago, and had never seen Olympia. An avid tennis player, golfer and yachtswoman, she moved to Detroit, left no doubt who was in charge and the players loved her for it. Sixteen months later, hers was the first female name inscribed on the Stanley Cup.

“I’m sure (Adams) wasn’t thrilled about a woman in her 20s handing down his marching orders,” Howe wrote in a memoir.

After the 1955 Cup, Bruce Norris wrested control of the franchise and Olympia, buying out his sister’s shares. “Bruce’s hockey acumen was no match for his sister’s,” Howe wrote, “which was good for Mr. Adams but bad for the rest of us.”

Two spring trades seven days apart altered the future of the franchise. Adams dealt the league’s best goalie, Terry Sawchuk, to Boston; at least he had Glenn Hall, a future Hall of Famer, in the wings. Adams also dealt Cup veterans Skov, Leswick, Wilson, Vic Stasiuk, Marcel Bonin and Benny Woit — all of whom played at least 59 games in 1954-55. In the Boston trade, the Wings received three players who combined for three goals in 42 games, a goalie who went 0-3, and Warren Godfrey, a steady but unspectacular defenseman.

“I don’t know whether he was just senile or just trying to show who is the boss,” Delvecchio said in “Legends of the Detroit Red Wings.” “You’re winning, what the hell are you changing? … No rhyme or reason to get rid of anybody he did.”

Howe wrote: “To this day, his reasons for blowing up our championship squad defy explanation. By the time the smoke cleared, Trader Jack had dealt away half our team.”

In a 2021 interview, Delvecchio recalled: “When the trades happened, I looked to see if my name was on the list. When I first came up, my goal was to play 10 years, because that’s when you got your full pension. I always rented a house because my teammates always said don’t get too tied up because you never knew what Adams might do. I don’t think I bought a home until 1964.”

In 1955-56, for the third year, Reibel played with Howe and Ted Lindsay; Delvecchio, though, still joined them for power plays and penalty kills. The Wings still were good, but the Canadiens were great, winning the regular season by 24 points. When the teams met in the finals for the third straight year, the Wings were underdogs in a series for the first time since 1949.

Montreal won handily in five games, the first of five straight Cups. Delvecchio led the Wings with seven playoff goals and three in the finals.

Coach Jimmy Skinner faced reality: “We have a lot of young fellows on our club, and I think they did as well as we could expect.”

Adams lived in the past: “The greatest team was our 1951-52 club.”

In 1956-57, in a final hurrah to their greatest decade, the Wings scratched out the regular-season title, six points ahead of Montreal. But they were eliminated in five games by Boston. Norm Ullman replaced Reibel on the Production Line, which finally ceased to exist the next summer when Adams dealt Lindsay to Chicago, at Norris’ insistence, for trying to organize a players union. Adams also badmouthed Lindsay to reporters and spread rumors he made double his $13,000 salary, which left "Terrible Ted" incensed and bitter.

In 1957-58, without Lindsay on the ice but with Sid Abel as the new coach, the Wings were only a .500 club and were swept in the semifinals by Montreal. In 1958-59, the Wings hit bottom — finishing last for the first time since 1937-38. Delvecchio, though, made second-team All-Star again — as a left wing, on a line with Howe and Ullman. He also won his first Lady Byng Trophy — with six penalty minutes in 70 games, along with 54 points. Plus, he played in his seventh straight All-Star Game.

“We could have won a few more Cups easily if we keep the same team,” Delvecchio said in “Legends.” “Adams broke us up. He traded a lot away. Like Teddy says, Montreal won seven (regular-season or playoff) championships in a row. We’d have done the same thing. Because we were right there until Adams traded half the team away.”

In the decade from 1947-48 to 1956-57, the Wings finished atop the standings eight times. They won four Stanley Cups (over six years). They lost in the finals three other times. Delvecchio was coming into his prime.

A dimming light in Detroit

Alex Delvecchio shoots on Al Rollins.

In the 1960s, Alex Delvecchio continued to rack up 20-goal and 40-assist seasons, Lady Byngs and All-Star Game appearances. He succeeded Gordie Howe as the Wings’ captain. But he didn’t skate with the Stanley Cup.

During the decade, the Wings were never really great and never really awful. They made the playoffs six times — five times as the fourth and final seed. But four of those times they reached the Stanley Cup Finals.

“Every time we get in,” Delvecchio said in “Legends,” “it was as the fourth-place team. Maybe that’s why we lost ’em all.”

In 1961, despite a losing record, the Wings took the Chicago Black Hawks with Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita to Game 6 of the finals. In 1963, the Wings lost in five games to the Maple Leafs. In 1966, the Wings won Games 1 and 2 at the Montreal Forum but lost the next four. (Delvecchio had 11 assists in 12 playoff games that year.)

In 1964, the Wings were one goal from their eighth Stanley Cup. Only 30-29-11 during the season, they built a three-games-to-two lead on the Maple Leafs, the two-time defending champions, with Game 6 at Olympia. Delvecchio set up Howe for a 3-2 lead late in the second period, but the Leafs tied it less than two minutes later.

In the scoreless third period, the Wings outshot the Leafs, 16-8, and hit a post during a power play.

With 6:45 to play, a Howe shot struck the ankle of Toronto’s Bob (Boomer) Baun, one of the league’s toughest defenseman (and a future Red Wing). He was carried off on a stretcher, one arm dangling lifeless over the side. “True to the code,” as the Free Press wrote, Baun returned to action before the third-period horn. And then, in overtime, Baun won the game — after Toronto’s Johnny Bower made a Cup-saving stop on Eddie Joyal — with the ultimate fluky goal after 103 seconds.

Baun smacked a rolling puck from the right point. It bounced about 25 feet from the goal, nicked the stick of defenseman Bill Gadsby and flew past Terry Sawchuk into the upper-right corner of the net. Baun jumped for joy on his bum ankle, which sportswriters speculated had been broken and numbed with an injection.

“Just a tough one,” said Sawchuk, in his second of three stints with the Wings.

“The shot was screened,” Gadsby said. “I didn’t see it until the last split second and couldn’t get my stick out of the way in time.”

Two nights later at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto won, 4-0, for its third straight title. Baun played in Game 7 — and afterward it was revealed his ankle, indeed, was broken.

Delvecchio reflected on the missed opportunities in the 1960s in “Legends:” “We felt we had a good team. And we did. We went along, but we just couldn’t finish. I think it was personnel. We didn’t always have a Ted Lindsay with us or somebody who was really a kind of leader.

“Gordie was a great hockey player and all that. … I don’t think he portrayed the type of fiery leadership of Lindsay.”

Neither did Delvecchio. His cover turn on Hockey Illustrated in March 1970 featured a quintessential headline:

Wings senior vice president Jimmy Devellano, who also spent years in the Tigers’ front office, compared Delvecchio to another Detroit sports legend from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, one who owned right field and collected 3,007 hits for the Tigers.

“He’s the exact comparison to Al Kaline,” Devellano said in a 2020 interview. “They are in Detroit forever. It’s the only team they ever worked for. They remained in Detroit. And both were very, very laid-back people. Neither one sought publicity. Neither one really craved the limelight. … It’s the personality we’re talking of both Alex and Al, who would prefer to be a little bit in the background.”

Asked by the Free Press in 2021 whether he minded playing in Howe’s shadow, Delvecchio’s response underscored Devellano’s comparison.

“When I gave Gordie, Ted and later Frank Mahovlich the puck and they scored,” Delvecchio said, “I recognized to myself that I did a lot of the work, and I let them finish the play. … I was never one to do a lot of the talking or bragging, and I enjoyed setting the other guys up for goals. To me, it was just like if I was the one scoring.”

In 1962, when the Wings missed the playoffs, owner Bruce Norris finally fired Jack Adams, ending his nearly four-decade association with the franchise. Sid Abel added Adams’ general manager duties to his coaching duties. Over the summer, Abel announced that Howe had been promoted from captain to a playing assistant coach and the "C" was added to Delvecchio’s sweater, where it would stay for the last 12 seasons of his career.

The Wings did finish atop the standings once in the 1960s — when Lindsay ended a three-year retirement in 1964-65 and, as a 39-year-old, played in 69 of 70 games, recorded 14 goals and 14 assists, and led the team with 173 penalty minutes, second-highest total in his career. At 40-23-7, the Wings edged Montreal by four points but were eliminated by Chicago in seven games. Lindsay contributed three playoff goals (and a series-high 34 penalty minutes).

The decade ended with the strangest of seasons. In 1968-69, the second year since the league doubled from six to 12 teams, the Wings boasted what many dubbed the New Production Line. Delvecchio centered Howe on the right and Frank Mahovlich, obtained from Toronto, on the left. Although long in the tooth, the trio broke all kinds of NHL, team and personal records.

“When Frank played for Toronto,” Delvecchio reminisced in 2021, “the word was ‘don’t touch him, let him be and he won’t do any harm.’ If you hit him, it woke him up and he was a threat. It was the same thing in Detroit. Sometimes I would send him a sucker pass. He would get hit and hopefully it woke him up.

“We were a very well-balanced line and playing with them was a real joy. You could always give Gordie and Frank the puck and things would happen.”

The line combined for 118 goals — breaking the NHL record of 105 by Montreal’s Punch Line in 1944. (Of course, only 50 games were played in that war season; expansion led to a 76-game schedule for 1968-69.)

The line also tallied 264 points — breaking the NHL record of 226 by Howe-Ullman-Lindsay in 1956-57.

At 40, Howe (44 goals, 59 assists, 103 points) became the third player to reach 100 points in a season. At 31, Mahovlich (49 goals, 29 assists, 78 points) lived up to his nickname of The Big M and posted a career high in goals, which tied Howe’s club record. At 37, Delvecchio (25 goals, 58 assists, 83 points) posted career highs in assists, points and plus-minus rating (plus-42). He also won his third and final Lady Byng with only eight penalty minutes.

“When you have wingers like Howe and Mahovlich to work with, you can’t help but play well,” Delvecchio said at the time. “You have all the percentages on your side. We’ve always been strong on the right side, but this is the first time I have ever had a left winger like Mahovlich to work with.”

Howe wrote in a column for the Windsor Star: “I’ve played with Alex Delvecchio on a line season after season and he’s an outstanding player. I was fascinated by the way he skated. I could watch him skate all night. He dances on the toes of his skates and ducks and darts. A pretty skater, if there is such a term. Anyway, I get watching him at times and almost forget about the play.”

In “Legends,” Delvecchio said: Mahovlich “still talks about it. He wished he could have played with us his whole career. He said, ‘You’re the best team.’”

The “best team,” however, failed to make the playoffs. It finished 33-31-12, seven points out of fourth place in the East Division. Coach Bill Gadsby said Howe-Delvecchio-Mahovlich would be a one-hit wonder, broken up to give the Wings better balance with their lines in the future.

In January 1971, Mahovlich was dealt to Montreal, where he won his fifth and sixth Stanley Cups, for a package that included Mickey Redmond. In 1972-73, Delvecchio’s last full season, his passes helped Redmond become the first Red Wing with a 50-goal season.

“The thing that stands out about Alex is he was an unselfish player,” Redmond said at the unveiling of Delvecchio’s statue in 2008. “He made people around him better by the way he could pass the puck. Very few in the game could deliver the puck like Alex could.”

With the third iteration of the Production Line, Delvecchio recorded his 1,000th point, a feat accomplished only by Howe (in 1960) and by Montreal center Jean Beliveau (in 1968), who Delvecchio relished going against because “he’d talk to you, played clean, real gentleman-like.”

“And he paid me a great compliment, said I was the best passer he’d ever seen, which means a lot to me,” Delvecchio said in “Legends.”

One thousand was far from the only significant figure for No. 10.

The numbers don't lie

Detroit Red Wings stars Alex Delvecchio, right, and Gordie Howe.

If not for a fluke puck from a former teammate, Delvecchio could have been the Cal Ripken Jr. of hockey. As it was, he played in 548 straight games, a Wings record, bookended by injuries in Toronto.

Two games into the 1956-57 season, he suffered a broken ankle. He returned Dec. 13, 1956, and he didn’t miss another game until Nov. 14, 1964. Three days earlier in Toronto, he suffered a fractured jaw on a clearing shot by former teammate Red Kelly. He was 82 games shy of the ironman record held by Boston’s Andy Hebenton.

The jaw injury cost Delvecchio two games. He wore a “helmet-mask,” according to the Free Press’ description, and scored a goal in his return Nov. 17. He played in another 292 consecutive games until suffering badly bruised ribs in a collision with Rangers rookie Walt Tkaczuk.

“They hurt so much he hardly could get out of bed,” his first wife, Teresa, told the Free Press. “I asked him if he wanted me to help and he just said: ‘Don’t touch me!’” He missed a four-game road trip.

From Dec. 13, 1956-Dec. 5, 1968, Delvecchio played in 840 of 842 games. He was 25 years old at the start, 37 at the end.

“One time in Toronto I was slashed and broke my thumb,” Delvecchio recalled in 2021. “The following day in Detroit, I’m in the locker room for the next game and I have a cast on my hand. Jack Adams comes in and says, ‘Why the hell are you in and not warming up?’ I said, ‘I have a broken thumb.’ He said, ‘(Expletive!) Take that thing off.’ So, the trainer took pliers, cut the cast off and I played.

“Back then, you would play hurt because you didn’t want to lose your job.”

Behind the numbers

Detroit Red Wings legend Alex Delvecchio after his statue was unveiled on the Concourse at Joe Louis Arena before a Wings game Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008.

More amazing statistics from Delvecchio’s career:

∎ He played in 13 All-Star Games, but he never was a first-team All-Star at season's end. He made the second team twice in the 1950s.

∎ He never led the Wings in scoring. Gordie Howe was the big reason for that.

∎ He finished among the league’s top 10 scorers 11 times, scored at least 20 goals 13 times and posted at least 30 assists 17 times. Yet he never led the NHL in a major statistical category except games played.

∎ He assisted on 210 of Howe’s 786 goals with Detroit, more than anyone else, according to nhl.com. Ted Lindsay was next with 147.

∎ He received only 383 penalty minutes over his 24 seasons. Lindsay retired as the NHL’s penalty-minute leader with 1,808, in 482 fewer games. For perspective, Delvecchio averaged 14.8 seconds a game in the penalty box; Lindsay averaged 1 minute, 42 seconds.

∎ He ranked second behind Howe in goals (456), assists (825) and points (1,281) when he retired in 1973.

∎ He ranked second behind Howe in points (104) and assists (69) and third behind Howe and Lindsay in goals (35) in 121 playoff games.

∎ He had his two most productive seasons — with 83 points and 71 points — after turning 37.

Delvecchio was nearly as effective with 68 points in 1969-70, when coach Bill Gadsby was fired for mysterious reasons after two games — each a victory — and interim coach Sid Abel, also the GM, kept the Howe-Delvecchio-Frank Mahovlich line together after all. The trio combined for 90 goals, and the Wings finished 40-21-15 for 95 points, only four points behind Chicago and Boston.

The Wings, though, were swept by the Black Hawks. In their final playoff series with the Wings, Howe had two goals and Delvecchio had two assists.

During that series, while his GM was busy behind the bench, owner Bruce Norris offered Cornell’s coach the chance to lead the Wings.

No one envisioned the doom ahead: Detroit would miss the playoffs the next seven seasons and 12 of the next 13 seasons. Dysfunction would rule the decade. And Delvecchio would be kicked around before being kicked aside.

The age of the "Dead Wings"

Alex Delvecchio starred on the ice for the Red Wings but couldn't find nearly as much success as a coach or general manager.

Ned Harkness was a legendary college coach, so much so that he was inducted into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. But in Detroit, his name lives on in infamy for ushering in the "Darkness with Harkness" era, with horrible teams that had little chance to make the playoffs and a fan base so disgruntled that even season-ticket holders stopped showing up.

But Harkness’ rise to power only underscored owner Bruce Norris’ knack for making bad decision after bad decision after bad decision.

Some of his worst involved Alex Delvecchio, Bill Gadsby, Sid Abel, Ted Lindsay and Gordie Howe — all Red Wings Hall of Famers.

In the late 1960s, Norris brought in a young, successful Canadian lacrosse coach named Jim Bishop with the title of executive director and with the directive to coordinate all management within the Wings and Olympia. In turn, Bishop was called a “superspy” and a “hatchet man” for Norris.

The Free Press wrote that Bishop was “an advocate of new coaching concepts and a devotee of Vince Lombardi and Paul Brown, among others.” When Gadsby was fired two games into the 1969-70 season, he bemoaned: “I heard so much Lombardi I thought he was going to be the coach.”

Rumors swirled for years that Gadsby had been angered by something Norris said or did while drunk — an all-too-common state for the Wings’ owner — and had snapped at him and had been fired as a result. Norris said publicly that Gadsby couldn’t change with the times and “just wasn’t fitting the pattern we all agreed to.” “Coaching isn’t what it used to be,” Norris said. “It’s very sophisticated.”

Norris turned to Abel, his general manager, an old warhorse and hardly a devotee of new coaching concepts, as interim coach and turned to Bishop to conduct a coast-to-coast search. Abel didn’t want to return to the bench, where he had spent two seasons with the Black Hawks and 11 with the Wings, but he led Detroit to third place in the East Division and 95 points.

As the Black Hawks swept the Wings in the playoffs, Bishop — and Norris — convinced Harkness to leave Cornell, which just had become the first unbeaten national champion. He earlier had won national championships in 1967, with Ken Dryden between the pipes, and in 1952, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He also won a lacrosse championship at RPI in the ’50s.

Bishop knew Harkness well from lacrosse circles, and other NHL teams had tried unsuccessfully to lure him from the college ranks. “I feel there are three things involved in coaching: 1) adrenalin, 2) teaching and 3) psychology,” Bishop said at the time. “Ned has all three of them.”

A 50-year-old native of Ottawa and a glib talker in public, Harkness staged a series of meetings with Delvecchio, at times including Howe, and convinced him not to retire. “He’s impressed me a great deal,” Delvecchio said that spring. “He’s willing to ask the players’ feelings on certain things.”

Then training camp started.

“Harkness began his NHL coaching career by forgetting he wasn’t still coaching kids,” said Tom Henderson, the Free Press’ beat reporter in the "Darkness with Harkness" aftermath. “He gave the veteran club loud rah-rah pep talks, punching a fist into his hand, before and during games. Delvecchio was ordered to quit smoking his trademark cigars in the locker room. Players chafed at rules he tried to establish for how they could drink on the road. He briefly wanted Howe to play defense instead of right wing.”

In a 2021 interview, Delvecchio said he “felt kind of sorry” for Harkness and “he should have stayed in college hockey.”

“Ned was out of his class trying to coach in the NHL,” Delvecchio said. “At our first practice, he told Gordie and me that he wanted us to skate over to him when he blew his whistle and for us to ask him some questions in front of the team. Gordie and I got together and said to hell with that.

“He blew his whistle, but we didn’t ask him any questions — and he gave us a few cuss words.”

On Jan. 2, 1971, as losers of seven of their last eight games and in sixth place at 11-20-4, the Wings traveled to Toronto for a “Hockey Night in Canada” telecast. Detroit was destroyed, 13-0, and all hell broke loose.

In an interview 40 years later, high-scoring center Garry Unger said he could never forget what Harkness did in the locker room before the third period, in which the Maple Leafs would score seven goals.

“In the first part of his talk, he was yelling at me for using hairspray,” Unger recalled, “and at the end of his speech he was down on his knees nearly in tears, pleading to the team, ‘Why won’t you play for me?’”

Abel joked that it would have been 14-0 but the Maple Leafs missed an extra point. He wasn’t joking when he decided soon after that Harkness had to go. When Abel realized he did not have that power, he resigned — and then held a scorched-earth news conference.  

Asked to assess Harkness as a coach, Abel shot back: “I can’t. I don’t think he is one. …

“I don’t think he knows how to change lines or do things that a coach has to do in this league to survive. But he can talk, though.”

Abel piled it on Harness: “Every time we lost, I got a list from Ned Harkness — get rid of Garry Unger, get rid of Bruce MacGregor, get rid of Wayne Connelly, get rid of Alex Delvecchio … and this has gone on almost every day, since we’ve been losing all the time.”

But Abel didn’t spare Norris’ executive director: “All our problems started just a year ago when Mr. Bishop arrived on the scene.”

Two days later, Norris doubled down with Harkness — and made him the new general manager. Harkness, though, declined an offer to coach and manage; instead, he brought up Doug Barkley from the Fort Worth, Texas, farm club to work behind the bench. Barkley was a talented Wings defenseman whose career ended when a stick blinded an eye. Harkness’ record went into the books as 12-22-4 with a team coming off a 95-point season.

With total authority, Harkness didn’t hesitate to trade the players he thought wouldn’t play for him, including Unger, whom he had called untouchable, and Frank Mahovlich, the only Wing with a positive plus-minus rating. The Wings finished 22-45-11 in last place — incredibly behind two expansion teams, Buffalo and Vancouver.

Delvecchio managed only 55 points. Howe, bothered by an arthritic left wrist, missed 15 games and scratched out 52 points. Howe elected to retire at 43; Delvecchio didn’t at 39.

In retirement, the Washington Post wrote as Mr. Hockey approached his 50th birthdate playing in the WHA, Howe “had hoped to become a manager, scout, coach, PR man or combination of these, but was little more than a ceremonial glad-hander, expected to lie to the press and public for a bumbling management.” He held the title of executive vice president for public relations.

After Howe’s death in 2016, Bill McGraw wrote in his Free Press obituary: “Howe chafed at the do-nothing role the Wings assigned him, reportedly calling it the ‘mushroom treatment’ in which they keep you in the dark and occasionally throw manure on you. When Howe told the story, he used an earthier word than manure — and always got a laugh.”

After two years, Howe jumped at the chance to play with his teenage sons Mark and Marty for Houston in the WHA. He was 45 years old.

Harkness jettisoned his chosen coach 11 games into the 1971-72 season, the Wings’ first without Howe since 1946-47. Johnny Wilson, Delvecchio’s old linemate, righted the Titanic and nearly led the Wings to the playoffs, their 33-35-10 record four points shy of a berth. Delvecchio bounced back with 65 points.

In 1972-73, he was even better: 71 points on 18 goals and 53 assists.

Mickey Redmond scored 52 goals, Marcel Dionne added 40.

The Wings’ 37-29-2 record missed the playoffs by two points — yet Wilson still got the ax.

“Everything happens on Friday the 13th,” said Wilson, who felt aggrieved.

To replace Wilson, Harkness selected Ted Garvin, coach of the Port Huron farm club.

At 50, short and stocky, Garvin was described in the Free Press as a miniature Jackie Gleason, sans any humor. A few months later, the Free Press wrote “everybody in and around the Red Wings clubhouse ranked (Garvin) as a Harkness stooge.” The team was in full mutiny. “Garvin and Harkness are the same kind of coaches,” forward Nick Libbett said. “They don’t know a damn thing about handling men in the National Hockey League.”

On Nov. 6, 1973, with the Wings at 2-8-1, Harkness traded longtime defenseman and assistant captain Gary Bergman to Minnesota — his 21st trade in 34 months. Bergman called it “a relief to be getting away from all the turmoil.” Some players called it “the last damned straw.” Delvecchio was almost as critical. Like his teammates, Delvecchio thought Bergman had been traded for constantly popping off to the press. For doing the same, Delvecchio worried about his fate.

The next day, as Delvecchio was at his West Bloomfield home resting for that night’s game, Harkness called and asked him to drive to Olympia for a conference.

“When he called,” Delvecchio said later that day, “I didn’t know if I was going to Minnesota with Bergie.

“I was shaky and nervous when I walked into his office. He asked me if I would become coach and I said yes. It was as simple as that.”

After a 4-1 loss to Philadelphia, during which Delvecchio paced behind the arena, Harkness held a 30-minute news conference in the cramped front office to announce Delvecchio’s new assignment. Delvecchio, standing alongside Harkness, said “it’s the greatest thing that has happened to me.”

Norris stood in a corner and made only one comment. When a reporter asked the Wings’ biggest need, before Delvecchio could answer, Norris called out: “A few wins.”

Delvecchio took over with no coaching experience. With no system. (“Hockey is too fluid a game to burden with a system,” he said.) With discord and distrust all around.

He put down the player revolt in part by using his reputation as being a good guy and a great teammate and by deciding not to dictate hairstyles or dress codes or unnecessary conditioning.

“I feel that when a guy gets to the National Hockey League, he’s a man,” Delvecchio said in November 1973. “I’m not here to blow their noses and teach school.”

The Wings won seven of their first nine games under Delvecchio. Fans got excited.

The good times didn’t last.

An 0-5-1 streak started December. An 0-8-1 skid started February. An 2-5-0 stretch ended the season.

The season’s 29-39-10 record — good for 68 points — left the Wings sixth in an eight-team division, 18 points from the playoffs. It would be the high-water mark of Delvecchio’s tenure. The team had missed the playoffs four straight years and seven times in the last eight years.

In February 1974, Norris fired Harkness. “If I had known what I was getting myself into,” he said, “I swear I never would have come to Detroit.” Fans wished for a time machine. In May 1974, Norris handed the GM duties to Delvecchio.

In “Legends of the Detroit Red Wings,” Delvecchio lamented his years behind the bench and in the front office:

Alex Delvecchio, in press box perch, phoning the Red Wings bench.

“Truthfully, I did it because Norris and them said, ‘Will you do it?’ But Norris was terrible. He was upstairs there in his office there in the suite drinking, him and the broads who used to be there, and you had to go and talk to him after every game. And it’s like you’re on trial. And he’s got the broads there and he’s showing, Norris is showing off like he is the judge: ‘Why? Why are you teaching them to miss the net?’ And you want to say, ‘Are you an idiot?’ I mean, Jesus Christ. They don’t want to miss the net on purpose! …

“So, after a while I hired Doug Barkley to coach and we stayed on as general manager, but that was just as bad with the phone calls and the visits to the suite and all of it.”

In parts of four seasons, Delvecchio officially coached 245 games, winning just 82, losing 131 and tying 32 (.400). It was a weird series of tours of duty. After adding the GM duties, he coached all of 1974-75 (23-45-12 for 58 points). Barkley started 1975-76, Delvecchio took the reins for nine games, and Billy Dea, another former Wing from the 1950s, closed it out, although Delvecchio officially was the coach (26-44-10 for 62 points).

Part of the time, Dea ran the team behind the bench while Delvecchio watched from the press box and communicated via walkie-talkie. “When he wanted a special line out there,” Dea said, “he told me.” When Dea became an interim coach again in March 1982, he admitted: “I have a good knowledge of the game, but I don’t profess to be a National Hockey League coach.”

The 1976-77 season — Delvecchio’s last — was the strangest and saddest of all. Over the summer, Delvecchio announced he had lined up a mystery coach, but he would not be available until the 1977-78 season. (It turned out to be Bobby Kromm, who was under contract with the WHA’s Winnipeg Jets.) Instead, Dea was pegged to be a season-long interim coach, the ultimate placeholder, although Delvecchio officially was listed as the coach.

“This person demands respect and the obedience from players,” Delvecchio said of his mystery coach. “Not that Billy doesn’t get it; he does get it, but a coach has to have a hell of a lot more flair with the press and the media and we just don’t have that much, Billy and myself. You’ve got your Freddy Sheros and your Scotty Bowmans and they’re great coaches and the person we have is as great as they are.” (Kromm won the WHA’s Avco Cup in 1976 and lost in the 1977 finals. With the Wings, he would go 79-111-41 over three seasons.)

In October 1976, in a reflective moment, Delvecchio unintentionally summed up one of Norris’ biggest mistakes that had led to the Dead Wings:

“We’ve had coaches here in the past and I think they’ve been sentimental, maybe, choices. Even myself. You know, just because I played doesn’t mean I’m a great coach.”

Tom Henderson, who went from the Freep's Wings beat writer to be a finance and technology reporter for Crain’s Detroit Business and an author of true crime books, looked back in 2020 on Delvecchio’s tenure:

“Olympia had a capacity of about 15,000. Its nickname was the Old Red Barn and the atmosphere for games then was like an old empty red barn. They’d get maybe 2,000 for home games, the upper bowl virtually empty.

“It was no fun for anyone. Growing up in Detroit, a kid who listened to every game on the radio in the basement so as not to bother my parents, I never imaged being the team’s beat reporter could be so dreary. The players hated the team they were on, many of them hated the reporters and made themselves hard to approach.

“But through it all, Delvecchio was friendly, never snapped, always polite, always happy to give one more interview and talk yet again about what went wrong that night. I got the sense he had no idea what he was doing, a gifted player the game came easy to who didn’t have a clue about how to manage.

“I thought at the time that he’d never wanted to coach, never wanted to be a GM. The team was his family. After he was done playing, it was his duty to do what was asked of him.”

In 1976-77, the Wings were so terrible under Dea that Delvecchio fully retook the reins in December, as the season’s second interim coach. Two weeks later, he replaced himself with yet another interim coach, Larry Wilson, Johnny’s brother and the third-line center whose role went to Delvecchio the rookie in 1951. Under Wilson’s watch, the Wings won only three of their last 36 games.

During that season, Free Press columnist Joe Falls, with a heavy heart, wrote: “It is never nice, nor popular, to criticize an old hero. … Delvecchio’s strongest forte is that he is such a decent guy nobody ever wants to get on him, and so the Red Wings are taking advantage of everyone’s sentiments and buying some cheap (and unfair) time by keeping him in command. It may take them years and years to overcome the damage being done.”

Norris fired Delvecchio in March 1977, mercifully 11 games before the Wings finished with the league’s worst record (16-55-9 for 41 points).

(Another old linemate took Delvecchio’s place, Ted Lindsay, who brutally assessed the franchise: “Everybody says they’re one or two players away from being a good club. Well, we’re half a club away from being a good team. … We have a condition where a lot of guys are stealing money.”)

Norris said from his New York offices: “It was a difficult thing to do. Alex has been a very loyal guy for 20-some years with the organization. … But he was very understanding. … He was gracious, he was 100-plus sort of guy about it.”

Delvecchio didn’t say anything for nearly month. Then he candidly and quietly opened up to Henderson about the trauma of his dismissal.

He had been working at his business, selling tchotchkes from a small office building in the suburbs.

“If someone was putting on a charity golf tournament and wanted to give participants knickknacks or souvenirs,” Henderson recalled, “Delvecchio would sell them.”

“I was ticked off,” Delvecchio said. “I was just 16 when I first signed with the organization. And I was — what, 45? — 45 when I left. That’s 29 years. That’s a long time. And then just to be told that you’re relieved, that they don’t need you anymore. …

“And just to be let go like that, to be told they have no use for you after all that time … so I just said the hell with ’em.”

He argued that he wasn’t given enough time, that he really had only two summers to make moves.

In a 2021 interview with the Free Press, Delvecchio offered a much more philosophical view of his time in management.

“I was given the opportunity and gave it a try,” he said, “but not everyone is built to be a coach or a general manager. Apparently, I wasn’t it. …

“We had a lot of interference from Bruce Norris and (team attorney) John Zielger, and they made a lot of calls. Bruce would be up in his box half-hammered and would phone down to the bench and say things like, ‘Don’t play that guy anymore.’ How in the hell are you going to coach or manage with that kind of interference? It was very frustrating, but I’m not blaming them. They did give me a chance, it never panned out, and that’s the way it goes.”

Four decades later, also in an interview with the Free Press, Hall of Fame Wings executive Jimmy Devellano said “I’m gonna take Alex off the hook,” arguing he was set up to fail because he had no experience while inheriting a lousy team, and placed blame “at the feet of Bruce Norris.”

“To be very fair to Alex, he never coached and he never managed,” Devellano said. “So, you’re bringing in a rookie. Now, you let Alex go and you hire Ted Lindsay. Guess what? He was a rookie, too. Nobody talks about these things.

“You’re hiring wonderful names from the Red Wings’ past, but, in effect, none of them had ever managed or coached. So, they were learning on the job and the team was in shambles. …

“If you think you’re gonna turn it around in two to three years, you’re whistling "Dixie." … How do you change a coach and a manager every two years? And why were they hired with no previous experience? … It doesn’t work, and it didn’t work.”

Devellano theorized what Norris, Harkness and Bishop must have been thinking when they turned to Delvecchio:

“‘Alex is about at the end of his career. He’s a good guy, he’s popular. Let’s make him the coach. That’ll give us good PR.’ That’s exactly what would have happened at the ownership level. ‘What can we do to get some good PR now? We’re getting blasted here. We’ll hire Alex Delvecchio. Everybody will like that. He’s been here for 24 years.’”

Devellano said he always thought that if Delvecchio went elsewhere after his firing, with experience gained the hard way, he “would have done significantly better.”

But in Detroit, Delvecchio couldn’t restore the glory days in his four seasons. Nor could Abel in 21 as coach or general manager. Lindsay would fare as poorly as Delvecchio in four seasons mixing coach and GM duties.

Nothing clicked until the sale of the franchise by Bruce Norris, who finally did it after fans booed during a celebration of 50 years of Norris family ownership. Then, the men who made the Production Line famous enjoyed a Red Wings renaissance that they couldn’t deliver.

Finally, in the rafters ... and in bronze

A statue of former Detroit Red Wings player Alex Delvecchio is seen on display in the concourse of the Little Caesars Arena in downtown Detroit on Wednesday Sept. 6, 2017.

In the 1975 “Official NHL Guide and Record Book,” three numbers were listed as retired by the Red Wings: Larry Aurie’s No. 6, Howe’s No. 9 and Delvecchio’s No. 10.

In June 1977, three months after his dismissal, Delvecchio was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, the sixth player from the great Wings teams of the early 1950s. The order: Lindsay (1966), Abel and Kelly (1969), Sawchuk (1971), Howe (1972) and Delvecchio (1977). Marcel Pronovost was inducted seventh in 1978.

Also in June 1977, the Wings used the top pick in the draft — earned by the awfulness of Delvecchio’s final team — to select Dale McCourt, a center who'd been courted by the rival WHA and who revealed he had an unwritten agreement with the team to wear No. 10.

A rookie wearing No. 10 didn’t sit very well with everyone.

Free Press columnist Joe Falls reflected that sentiment: “Some things ought to be sacred. … The Wings say they got Alex’s approval to give his number away. But what did they expect the guy to say? They asked him a question which could have only one answer.”

McCourt averaged 30 goals for four seasons before Lindsay dealt him to Buffalo in December 1981. The No. 10 then was passed around like a hot potato. Forward Mark Lofthouse wore it the rest of the season, followed by Claude Loiselle (1982-83), Ron Duguay (1983-86) and Joe Murphy (1986-89).

In November 1989, the Wings traded Murphy to Edmonton for Jimmy Carson, a Grosse Pointe Woods native, who then donned No. 10.

Soon after, Devellano and owners Mike and Marian Ilitch decided to honor “the greatest of the greats.”

“We didn’t want to be like a lot of other teams,” Devellano said in 2020, “just retire a sweater so you have a night and fill the house. We only wanted to retire the great, great, great Red Wings.”

They started with Delvecchio and Lindsay. (Later, they added Sawchuk, Abel and, a few months before his death in 2019, Kelly.)

Steve Yzerman, and Jimmy Carson congratulate Ted Lindsay, and Alex Delvecchio before Sunday's game, when the uniform jerseys of the logntime Wings stars were retired and hung from the Joe Louis Arena rafters.

On Nov. 10, 1991, in a 20-minute ceremony at Joe Louis Arena, Carson, switching to No. 12, presented a No. 10 sweater to Delvecchio and captain Steve Yzerman presented a No. 7 sweater to Lindsay. Then banners bearing their names and numbers were unveiled and raised alongside Howe’s No. 9. The Free Press called it “an eye-dabbing double hanging.”

“This is a tremendous honor,” Delvecchio said at the podium with his family.

“What really counts,” Lindsay said, “is who we’re hung with — the greatest athlete in any sport that I’ve ever seen.”

The essence of Delvecchio’s Lady Byng-like life played out on Oct. 16, 2008, when his statue was unveiled at Joe Louis Arena.

Two nights later, when Lindsay’s statue was revealed, the colorful character known as Terrible Ted was front and center with statements like: “The one thing I love about my statue, it’s indoors. The pigeons are not going to get a chance to get at it.”

The even-keel, nice guy known as "Fats," surrounded by family, friends and former teammates, said in a humble, straightforward fashion: “I had a lot of help from Gordie and Teddy. Get the puck to them and they’ll get the job done.”

He relished the work created by Israeli-born artist Omri Amrany, who also did the Tigers’ statues at Comerica Park and Michael Jordan’s in Chicago.

“Looks great,” Delvecchio said. “He did a hell of a job. Just to be here — doesn’t matter if it looks like anything.

“But it does look good.”

Gene Myers, who retired in 2015 after 22½ years as sports editor at the Free Press, wrote Alex Delvecchio’s obituary in 2021. Special writer Bill Dow contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Alex Delvecchio dies at 93: Detroit Red Wings great had magic touch on the ice