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Ted Kennedy’s skating was rough-edged, not especially smooth or fast. While he could control the puck well, he was not a gifted stickhandler and his shot had more accuracy than velocity. At five-foot-eleven and 175 lb., he was solidly built for his time, although not overwhelmingly so. Mostly Teeder was a winner, at his best in the NHL’s toughest time, the Stanley Cup playoffs, in the ultra-competitive days during and after the Second World War.
A peer, NHL old-timer Bob Goldham, claimed Kennedy’s playing style recalled baseball icon Leo “The Lip” Durocher’s famous line about second baseman Eddie Stanky: “Stanky can’t run, he can’t hit and he doesn’t throw very well. But he can beat you a thousand ways.”
With his skills in various little parts of the game honed to a fine edge, “Teeder” — his lifelong nickname thanks to a boyhood friend who could not correctly pronounce Theodore — compensated for his lack of quickness and slickness with Herculean effort. Players from his 14 seasons with the Maple Leafs, as well as those before and after, can recall no one who worked as hard.
“Late in a game toward the end of the season, from sheer effort, Teeder’s face would look like skin stretched over walnuts,” says Goldham, who suited up as both a teammate and opponent of Kennedy’s. “He often looked like hockey was a sort of torture forced on him. But he was so effective everywhere on the ice, both as a player himself and as the leader of the team. How could his teammates watch him and not give all they had to the cause?”
A battery-operated radio bought by an older brother in the Air Force for a family on a hydro-less farm was attached to a lengthy wire stretched from the old stone house to a tree, a splendid antenna for weak, far-off broadcasts. Among the first programs heard by an early-to-bed 10-year-old hockey fan perched on the stairs were the 1945 playoffs.
Many top Leafs were in the war, but from the first game, an unfamiliar name was never off the tip of Foster Hewitt’s tongue — Kennedy, some 19-year-old kid called Teeder. By the time the ragtag Leafs had eliminated the glistening Canadiens — including the fabled “Punch Line” of Elmer Lach, Toe Blake and Rocket Richard as well as goalie Bill Durnan — that name belonged to our new hero: Teeder would score seven goals in two playoff series.
Kennedy actually started out as property of the Canadiens. At 16, he spent part of a season in Montreal, living in a hotel, attending high school and practising with the Canadiens and junior teams. Homesick, he returned to Ontario and finished the season playing with the Port Colborne seniors, coached by Nels “Old Poison” Stewart, the NHL’s career scoring-leader until he was passed by Rocket Richard.
“Nels saw that I wasn’t a great skater so he worked with me on my other skills, especially passing and shooting the puck,” Kennedy said. “Then Hap Day worked hard with me to make me good on faceoffs.”
Stewart told Leafs coach Day of the young Kennedy’s potential. Leafs executive Frank Selke traded for Kennedy’s NHL rights, and one of the team’s greatest players joined the Blue and White.
When the Leafs honoured Kennedy’s No. 9 in 1993 he chuckled during a lengthy interview with me when I recalled my troubles hearing that radio broadcast.
“I didn’t have it easy in those games, either,” Kennedy said. “At least 10 players who would have been Leaf regulars were still in the service and we had a bit of a patched-together lineup. That season [1944–45], we had finished third with 52 points and the Canadiens were 28 points ahead. The Punch Line had grabbed the top three spots in the scoring race so it seemed we didn’t have much chance.
“But we had our own little advantage,” Kennedy said. “Our coach Hap Day, the smartest man I ever met in hockey.”
Realizing his ’45 team lacked the front-line manpower to match the Canadiens’, Day switched to two lines — Kennedy between Bob Davidson and Mel Hill, Gus Bodnar with Sweeney Schriner and Lorne Carr. Nick Metz, just out of the army, took occasional relief shifts at centre.
A dandy defensive winger who became the Leafs’ chief scout for 40 years, Davidson had strong memories of the teenage Kennedy in those playoffs.
“Elmer Lach was a tough, skilled veteran who tried to physically intimidate most opposition centres,” Davidson recalled. “When they lined up for the opening faceoff in the first game, Lach leaned close to the kid and said, ‘Stay away from me or I’ll cut your head off with my stick.’ Teeder leaned right back even closer to Lach and said, ‘If you try that, I’ll put you in the hospital.’ We knew then we had a young guy who wouldn’t be frightened by anyone.”
Kennedy battled Lach for every inch of ice and scored three goals as the Leafs won the series in six games, then beat the Red Wings in a seven-game Final. Kennedy continued his exceptional work in that series, scoring the winner in the second game as the Leafs took a 3–0 series lead and popping three goals in a fourth-game loss. In a 2–1 seventh-game win, Kennedy set up Hill for the first goal and created the screen for defenceman Babe Pratt’s Cup-winning shot.
Kennedy always claimed that series was the best memory in his distinguished career.
“Some had called the ’45 Canadiens the best team in NHL history to that point,” Kennedy said. “But about a dozen of us scrubs were able to beat them because of Day’s remarkable use of his players. I’ll tell you one thing: I was never as tired in my life as when those playoffs were over.”
That was the start of a remarkable string of success for the Leafs with Kennedy in a pivotal role, playing on a line with wingers Howie Meeker and Vic Lynn. Kennedy led a dynamic group of young players, many of them war veterans, and they were the first NHL team to win three consecutive Cups. When centre Syl Apps retired as captain in ’49, the “C” was given to Kennedy.
The team won another Cup in ’51, making it five in seven seasons. Kennedy and young wingers Sid Smith and Tod Sloan produced 15 goals in 11 playoff games.
Sandwiched among these triumphs was the 1950 playoff incident involving Kennedy and Red Wings star Gordie Howe. Emotions were high before the semi-final series started — the Leafs looking for four Cups in a row, the Wings a hot contender led by the “Production Line” of Howe, Ted Lindsay and Sid Abel, and smarting from 11 consecutive playoff losses to the Leafs.
When the Leafs took a 4–0 lead in game one, things turned ugly. Kennedy was carrying the puck near centre when Howe came sweeping in from the side, trying to crash Kennedy into the fence. Kennedy stopped quickly to miss the hit and Howe tumbled face-first into the boards, knocking himself unconscious, his face covered in blood. A few hours later, amid speculation that he might not survive, surgeons in a Detroit hospital operated on Howe to relieve pressure on his brain.
The Wings, led by their loud GM Jack Adams, immediately launched an attack on Kennedy, claiming he had butt-ended Howe or speared him with his stick. NHL president Clarence Campbell, who was sitting rink-side, exonerated Kennedy completely of any blame, and other players on the ice agreed, although some time was needed for various Wings to go against their GM’s rants. What Adams succeeded in was firing up his team, and with extremely aggressive — sometimes brutal — tactics, especially against Kennedy, Detroit won the series in seven games.
“We allowed all the Red Wings baloney about it to get to us,” Kennedy said in reflection. “We should have won that series, then beaten the New York Rangers in the Final, which would have given us five Cups in a row.”
Kennedy had five more productive years as the Leafs captain, announcing his retirement at the end of the 1954–55 season when he won the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player. No Leaf has won it since. Speculation was that the voters gave Kennedy the award for a career of excellence. He spent a season out of hockey, then returned for 30 games in ’56–57 to try and help his old linemate Meeker, who was coaching the team. But the Leafs missed the playoffs and Kennedy hung ’em up for good.