Ted Talks

Here's how Ted Lindsay remembered the 1950 Stanley Cup championship, with a special memory of Black Jack Stewart, the hardest hitting defenseman of his era:

"It's funny about some Stanley Cup playoffs. One team might not even belong on the same rink. With another as far as talent is concerned, yet the weaker team can stretch out the series to seven games. That's what the Rangers did to us without having the talent we had. But they had played a positional style of hockey that our system didn't go too well against - they threw the puck around a lot - and maybe we took them too much for granted. They were always tough for us.

"Anyway, after we'd lost the fourth or fifth game, we were going back in our bus to Toledo where we stayed at a hotel. Jack Stewart stood up. He was near the end of his line and maybe figured this was the last time he'd be on a team that won the Cup. Jack said that if some of our guys didn't get going, he'd start body checking his own teammates, if that's what it took to get them going. Then he named three guys that he thought had to get going, and three of the names were Lindsay, Howe and Abel. We hadn't done that much. Jack told us that we had the better team and we just had to begin to put in the effort. Well, we were down three games to two, but we came back to win the sixth game and then we won the seventh on Babando's goal and Jack retired without having to hit anybody!"