Alex Delvecchio, the Hockey Hall of Fame center who played for 24 N.H.L. seasons with the Detroit Red Wings and teamed with Gordie Howe on three Stanley Cup championship squads of the 1950s, died on Tuesday. He was 93.
The Delvecchio family announced the death in a statement posted by the Red Wings on the team’s social media account. It did not say where he died.
Delvecchio was acclaimed for his brilliant stickhandling, skating skills and ability to put the puck in the net when we wasn’t setting up teammates for goals on some of the most brilliant line combinations in hockey history.
He appeared in 13 All-Star Games, scored 456 goals and won three Lady Byng trophies, given annually to an N.H.L. player for his clean play coupled with outstanding skills. When he retired as a player in November 1973, he was second to Howe in N.H.L. history for games played (1,549), assists (825) and points (1,281).
Delvecchio was one of hockey’s most durable players. He appeared in every game eight times when the N.H.L. had 70-game regular seasons. He missed 22 games in the 1956-57 season with a broken ankle but was seldom sidelined by injury beyond that.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977 and listed among the 100 greatest players in N.H.L. history when the league celebrated its centennial in 2017.
But Delvecchio was usually overshadowed by Howe, his right wing, who was perhaps the greatest all-around player in hockey history.
Howe, who played for the Red Wings from 1946 to 1971, was known as Mr. Hockey. Ted Lindsay, Delvecchio’s pugnacious left wing early in his career, was called Terrible Ted. Delvecchio’s nickname was decidedly underwhelming. From his earliest years with the Wings, teammates called him Fats, because of his round face and chubby cheeks.
“At only 19, Delvecchio took over as the baby of the team,” Howe recalled in his memoir, “Mr. Hockey” (2014). “You wouldn’t know by the way he handled the puck, though. He was magic.”
Phil Esposito, when he was the Boston Bruins’ star center, told Sport magazine in 1971, “When you think of the right wings, you think of Howe, but Alex is the most underrated player in the game today.”
Alexander Peter Delvecchio was born on Dec. 4, 1931, in Fort William, Ontario, now part of the city of Thunder Bay. His father was a railroad engineer.
He began playing organized hockey with a Knights of Columbus team at age 12, spent several seasons on junior teams affiliated with the Red Wings, and then played one game for Detroit in the 1950-51 season. Returning for the following season in full, he played on a Stanley Cup championship team.
When Sid Abel, the Wings’ star center, became the Chicago Black Hawks’ coach for the 1952-53 season, Delvecchio took over as the center for Howe and Lindsay on what the Wings called their Production Line.
The Red Wings dominated the N.H.L. in the first half of the 1950s with a host of future Hall of Famers: Howe, Delvecchio, Lindsay and Abel, together with Terry Sawchuk in goal and Red Kelly and Marcel Pronovost on defense.
They captured the Stanley Cup again in 1954 and then in 1955, when Delvecchio had seven goals and eight assists in their 11 playoff games, including a pair of goals in their victory over the Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 of the playoff finals.
Playing mostly at center but sometimes on left wing, Delvecchio scored at least 20 goals in 13 different seasons, though he especially savored setting up his wings, usually Howe, Lindsay and later Frank Mahovlich on versions of the Production Line.
Strategy outweighed speed, as Delvecchio saw it. “I don’t believe in moving across the ice too fast,” he said. “A lot of centers come flying across the line with speed, but all you get is bedlam.”
He was awarded the Lady Byng trophy in 1959, 1966 and 1969 and finished No. 2 in the balloting once and No. 3 twice.
Delvecchio was assessed only 383 penalty minutes in his career, although at 6 feet and 195 pounds — good size for a forward of his time — he was sturdy enough to dish out his share of punishment.
“I’ll trip a guy or hold him if he’s about to break away,” he told Sport. “But I don’t believe you win games by collecting foolish penalties.”
Delvecchio retired as a player when he was named the Red Wings’ coach in early November 1973, with the franchise in decline. He had two stints behind the bench and was also briefly general manager.
The Wings never made the playoffs under Delvecchio. He was fired as coach and general manager in March 1977, having posted a coaching record of 82 victories, 131 losses and 32 ties.
After leaving hockey, he ran Alex Delvecchio Enterprises, a Michigan-based company that produces corporate promotional products. A statue of his likeness appears at the Red Wings’ Little Caesars Arena.
He is survived by his wife, Judy Munro; his children Ken, Janice, Corrine, Alex Jr. and Lenny; 10 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren, The Detroit Free Press reported.
Having played much of his career in the original six-team N.H.L. alignment (the five others were the Bruins, the Black Hawks, the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers), when fights were common and players shunned protective gear, Delvecchio felt that modern-day players were often too soft.
“I remember Sawchuk would get hurt, he’d get hit in the face with a puck, and say, ‘There’s no way I’m going to sit out, because someone is going to take my place and I may lose my job,’” Delvecchio told NHL.com in 2016. “That kind of stuck with me. I said, ‘I’ll play injured, to the best of my ability, until they kick me off the team.’
“I look at the guys nowadays who get hurt, or whatever you want to call it, and are sitting out, and I look at it like he’s got a hangnail or something, and he gets three games’ or three weeks’ rest.”
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