Apr. 9, 1964 - The Detroit Red Wings paralyzed the Black Hawks in the first period tonight and then held on against the opposition’s roughhouse play to smash the Hawks, 4-2, at Chicago Stadium and advance to the Stanley Cup finals.
Floyd Smith, Gordie Howe (left), Alex Delvecchio, and Parker MacDonald did the scoring for the Wings, who picked up where they left off when they routed the Hawks, 7-2, in Detroit Tuesday.
The Wings outshot Chicago, 39-21, to end another year of frustration for the Hawks which ended with the crowd of 16,543 jeering them.
Chicago could not get over the Wing blue line in the first 20 minutes, and Smith and Howe clicked for the Wings in the first six minutes, and Chicago just couldn’t catch up.
The Hawks, who finished in second place this season, 13 points ahead of fourth-place Detroit, roughed up the Wings, creaming goalie Terry Sawchuk, defenseman Marcel Pronovost, and forwards Bruce MacGregor and Larry Jeffrey. Sawchuk was knocked cold by Reggie Fleming, and Roger Crozier had to play the final period.
“Terry wanted to go the rest of the way,” Detroit coach Sid Abel (right) said afterward. “But he was having double vision, and we got him out of there.”
But the heavy work backfired. Chicago had to play the last four minutes and 53 seconds of the second period shorthanded, and MacDonald scored the clinching goal at 8:02 of the third period when Wayne Hillman was serving a major for deliberately ramming Jeffrey into the boards.
There was extra satisfaction for the Red Wings, more than they would try to admit in the dressing room deep in Chicago Stadium. They had survived what they considered an official’s robbery in Game 5, they had outlasted the goon tactics of the Hawks, and they had done it all with the odds against them. Only battle-scarred Bill Gadsby would come right out and say what everybody had to be thinking.
“Sure, we feel real good,” Gadsby said. “I know we got stuck the other night on that call.”
He was referring to the Sunday loss in Chicago, turned around by a disputed goal call by referee Frank Udvari that had resulted, among other things, in a $500 fine for coach Sid Abel for calling Udvari “gutless.”
But after tonight’s victory, Abel’s closest reference to the disputed affair was “we had bad breaks all the way through.”
“This one was real good,” Abel said. “We thought Chicago was the toughest team in the league.”
And Toronto, the opponent in the finals?
“They have had it over us all season,” said Sid. “If they keep giving us a chance, letting us get to the finals, one of these years we’re going to win it. We’ve been in the finals three of the last four years when nobody figured we would. One of these years we’re going to win it.”
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