Moore On The 50's Habs/Wings Rivalry

Here's Dickie Moore's recollection of the bitter rivalry between two dynasties in the 1950s - the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Canadiens.

"There was a tremendous rivalry between Montreal and Detroit. The rivalry between Montreal and Boston was more a physical one - the Big, Bad, Bruins, they were rougher. Detroit was a better skating team. They had been the champions for two straight years. They were always beating us, while we could always beat Toronto and Boston. They had the big guns - Howe and Lindsay. And they had been lucky two years earlier when Tony Leswick's shot went over Harvey's arm.

"We had a lot of stars - Beliveau, the Rocket, Harvey, Johnson, Henri Richard. But when you come down to the finals of the Stanley Cup, hockey is a team game. You got to work together. We did, and I think that 1956 team was the best team I ever played on. And beating Detroit, the team that embarrassed us so often, it was a big moment for us.

"It might be hard for people to imagine how big the rivalry was in those days between teams. Like, I'm from Montreal, most of our players were, and even those who were not from Montreal, they lived there during the off-season. We had this close-ness. We were the Montreal team. If you met a player from another team on the street, you would never say more than hello. We would never - NEVER - have a conversation."