Terry Sawchuk

Terrance Gordon Sawchuk (December 28, 1929 – May 31, 1970) was a Canadian professional ice hockey goaltender who played 21 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Detroit Red Wings, Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Los Angeles Kings, and New York Rangers between 1950 and 1970. He won the Calder Trophy, earned the Vezina Trophy four times, was a four-time Stanley Cup champion, and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame the year after his final season, one of 10 players for whom the three-year waiting period was waived.

At the time of his death, Sawchuk was the all-time leader among NHL goaltenders with 447 wins and with 103 shutouts. In the decades following his death, his NHL win record has been surpassed by eight goaltenders, and his NHL shutout record has been surpassed by one goaltender, though Sawchuk was the all-time leader in wins and shutouts by goaltenders who played in the Original Six era (1942–1967). In 2017, Sawchuk was named one of the "100 Greatest NHL Players".

Early life and playing career

Childhood and junior career

Sawchuk was born in the North End of Winnipeg

and raised there until his family moved to Bowman Avenue in East Kildonan, a working-class, formerly Ukrainian section of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was the third of four sons and one adopted daughter of Louis Sawchuk, a tinsmith who had immigrated to Canada as a boy from Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine), and his wife Anne (nee Maslak), a homemaker. The second son died young from scarlet fever and the oldest, an aspiring hockey goaltender whom Terry idolized, died suddenly of a heart attack at age seventeen. At age twelve, Sawchuk injured his right elbow playing rugby and, not wanting to be punished by his parents, hid the injury, preventing the dislocation from properly healing. Thus, the injury left his right arm with limited mobility and was now also several inches shorter than the left, which bothered him for his entire athletic career.