The last surviving star from Detroit’s greatest sports dynasty, Alex Delvecchio 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.
Always popular among fans, players and press, universally heralded as one of the NHL’s 100 greatest players but always considered underrated by his peers, and a three-time Lady Byng winner on the ice but a lifelong Lady Byng winner off the ice, Delvecchio died Tuesday, July 1, surrounded by his family at age 93, the team announced Tuesday.
The team issued a statement from Delvecchio’s family on Tuesday:
«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.»
Delvecchio’s hockey story parallels the nearly 100-year story of the Red Wings franchise. 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.
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.
∎ And only Howe had more points in NHL history when Delvecchio retired in 1973.
“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.
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 for the Cup, 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. During a 12-year stretch, he played in 840 of 842 possible games. 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.”
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).
In the early 1970s, Delvecchio turned down a lucrative offer to join Howe and his teenaged sons Mark and Marty 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 he 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).
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.”
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.
Thunder Bay to the NHL
Alexander Peter Delvecchio was born Dec. 4, 1931, at Fort William, Ontario, near the immense Thunder Bay on the northwestern shore of Lake Superior. By the time Delvecchio turned 16, he was the Red Wings’ property.
For the 1950-51 season, after a two-year growth spurt, Delvecchio was sent to the Oshawa Generals, Detroit’s junior team in the Ontario Hockey Association. They were coached by Larry Aurie, an all-star right wing 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. Aurie played in the first game at Olympia Stadium in 1927.
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 Hockey Hall of Fame 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.”
In the NHL, Delvecchio would be whistled for only 383 penalty minutes — an average of 14.8 seconds a game in the sin bin. Linemate Lindsay, who retired as the league’s all-time leader with 1,808 penalty minutes, averaged 1 minute, 42 seconds.
After Delvecchio’s 49 goals and 72 assists for Oshawa, general manager Jack Adams summoned him to Detroit to play in the season’s final game. He was 19 years, three months and three 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. “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.
The cruelest of nicknames
Although a trim and fit 6 feet, 195 pounds, Alex Delvecchio was known affectionately as «Fats» or «Fatty.» 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.
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.»
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!”
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, on the receiving end of his passes, 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. 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 1948-49, the Wings won the regular-season title for the first of seven straight seasons, only to be swept for the second straight year by Toronto in the Stanley Cup 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. They only got better in the playoffs.
Against Toronto in the semifinals, Terry Sawchuk posted shutouts in Games 1 and 2 at Detroit’s Olympia Stadium. Then 6-2 and 3-1 victories at Maple Leaf Gardens closed out the sweep.
Against the Canadiens for the Stanley Cup, the Wings won, 3-1 and 2-1, at the Montreal Forum. Then Sawchuk pitched a pair of 3-0 shutouts at Olympia for the NHL’s first eight-game sweep in the playoffs. In Game 4, Prystai scored twice, and the rookie 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.
The Production Line’s retool
According to hockey lore, Adams didn’t hesitate to trade Abel, his now 34-year-old captain and middle man in the Production Line, after winning the 1952 Stanley Cup because Delvecchio was waiting in the wings. Not quite.
Adams said it was Abel’s choice whether to play, retire or coach in the minors. The Chicago Black Hawks, last for three straight seasons, wanted Abel as their coach, Abel couldn’t pass up a job in which he could bypass the minors and could continue playing, and Adams officially dealt him for cash.
A few months later, when the Wings reported to training camp in Sault Ste. Marie, the Free Press printed a big headline: “Hockey’s Best Spot — Between Howe, Lindsay — Thrown Open.” Not only wasn’t Delvecchio considered the heir apparent to center the Production Line, but coach Tommy Ivan didn’t even list him as a candidate.
For the opener, Reg Sinclair, a two-year veteran acquired from the Rangers a few months earlier, centered the line. When that didn’t pan out, Glen Skov, the previous second-line center, got his shot. A parade of centers 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.”
However, Howe still won the scoring title with 95 points and Ted Lindsay, the new captain, finished second with 71. Delvecchio, despite limited time with the Big Two, tied for fourth in the league with 59 points and was voted the second-team All-Star center.
Before the 1953-54 season, Adams decreed that Howe and Lindsay would play with a rookie center, Earl (Dutch) Reibel, and publicity shots heralded the newest Production Line. Reibel played extremely 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.
Delvecchio led the finals in scoring with six points. He tied with Howe for the team lead with nine playoffs points.
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.
Another Game 7 at Olympia decided the Stanley Cup. Hockey historian Stan Fischler wrote in 2020 that “Delvecchio proved … that 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. Then he intercepted a pass and went 130 feet to score on a breakaway in the third period.
Wings 3, Canadiens 1. It was the Wings’ seventh Stanley Cup. Same as the Canadiens. No team had won more.
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.
A dynasty self-destructs
The Red Wings’ dynasty collapsed under the hubris of general manager Jack Adams and owner Bruce Norris.
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. 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.
After the 1955 Cup, Norris wrested control of the franchise and Olympia, buying out sister Marguerite’s shares. “Bruce’s hockey acumen was no match for his sister’s,” Gordie Howe wrote in a memoir, “which was good for Mr. Adams but bad for the rest 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 Glen Skov, Tony Leswick, Johnny Wilson, Vic Stasiuk, Marcel Bonin and Benny Woit — all of whom played at least 59 games in 1954-55.
“I don’t know whether he was just senile or just trying to show who is the boss,” Alex Delvecchio said in “Legends of the Detroit Red Wings.” “You’re winning, what the hell are you changing?”
In 1955-56, for the third year, Dutch 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.
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.
In 1958-59, the Wings hit bottom — finishing last for the first time since 1938-39. 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.” “Like Teddy says, Montreal won seven (regular-season or playoff) championships in a row. We’d have done the same thing.”
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.
The decades of decline
In the 1960s, Delvecchio continued to rack up 20-goal and 40-assist seasons, Lady Byngs and All-Star Games. He succeeded Howe as the Wings’ captain. But he didn’t skate with the Stanley Cup.
During the decade, the Wings were never really very good and never really that bad. 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.
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: “Alex Delvecchio: Quiet, But Great.”
Devellano, a longtime Wings senior vice president who also spent years in the Tigers’ front office, compared Delvecchio to another legend from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, one who owned rightfield and collected 3,007 hits.
“He’s the exact comparison to Al Kaline,” Devellano said in a 2020 interview. “Exactly. They came from another place. 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.”
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 — but missed the playoffs by seven points. 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.
The line combined for 118 goals — breaking the NHL record of 105 by Montreal’s Punch Line in 1944. (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, spending only eight minutes in the penalty box.
No one could have foreseen the dumpster fire ahead: Detroit would miss the playoffs the next seven seasons and 12 of the next 13 seasons. Dysfunction would rule the 1970s and early 1980s. And Delvecchio would be kicked around before being kicked aside.
‘Darkness’ and the ‘Dead Wings’
Ned Harkness was a legendary college coach at Cornell and RPI, so much so that he was inducted into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. But his rise to power — first as a terrible coach and then an even worse general manger — only underscored Bruce Norris’ knack for making bad decision after bad decision.
“Harkness began his NHL coaching career by forgetting he wasn’t still coaching kids,” said Tom Henderson, the Free Press’ beat reporter during 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 1970-71, the Wings finished 22-45-11 in last place in the East Division — incredibly behind two expansion teams, Buffalo and Vancouver.
Delvecchio, who contemplated retiring the previous summer, managed 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. Howe held the do-nothing title of executive vice president for public relations for two years until jumping to the WHA with his sons.
On Nov. 6, 1973, with the Wings at 2-8-1 and in full munity against coach Ted Garvin, Harkness traded longtime defenseman and assistant captain Gary Bergman to Minnesota — his 21st trade in 34 months. Some players called it “the last damned straw.” Delvecchio, almost as critical, 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.”
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.
In February 1974, Norris dismissed Harkness. 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:
“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!”
In parts of four seasons, Delvecchio officially coached 245 games, winning just 82, losing 131 and tying 32 (for a .400 winning percentage). 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). Doug Barkley, a former Wing, started 1975-76, Delvecchio took the reins for nine games, and Billy Dea, another former Wing, closed it out (26-44-10 for 62 points).
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.
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.”
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).
“I was ticked off,” Delvecchio said after a month of silence. “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.”
Four decades later, in an interview with the Free Press, Devellano said “I’m gonna take Alex off the hook,” and argued he was set up to fail because he had no experience while inheriting a lousy team, the same with his successor, Ted Lindsay, and placed blame “at the feet of Bruce Norris.”
“You’re hiring wonderful names from the Red Wings’ past,” Devellano said, “but, in effect, none of them had ever managed or coached. So, they were learning on the job and the team was in shambles.”
Nothing clicked until the sale of the franchise by 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 — Abel, Howe, Lindsay and Delvecchio — enjoyed a Red Wings renaissance that they couldn’t deliver.
A life well lived
Even before he retired, Delvecchio started receiving lifetime achievement awards. They continued for more than four decades.
In November 1991, in a 20-minute ceremony at Joe Louis Arena, Jimmy Carson, a Grosse Pointe Woods native, presented his No. 10 sweater to Delvecchio and captain Steve Yzerman presented a No. 7 to Ted Lindsay. 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.”
In 2017, the NHL commemorated its 100th anniversary by commissioning a panel of executives, media and alumni to select — but not rank — the league’s 100 greatest players. The first 33, representing the league’s first half-century, featured six Detroit Hall of Famers from the early 1950s: Delvecchio, Lindsay, Sid Abel, Gordie Howe, Red Kelly and Terry Sawchuk.
The essence of Delvecchio’s Lady Byng-like life played out Oct. 16, 2008, when his statue was unveiled at The Joe.
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.
