Former forward was the second-oldest living NHL player, scoring 252 points in 633 games for Detroit. Marty Pavelich, a four-time Stanley Cup champion with the Detroit Red Wings in the 1950s and one of the best checking forwards of his day, died on Thursday at his Montana home.
Pavelich, 96, was the second-oldest living NHL player, trailing only 101-year-old Steve Wochy, who played briefly for the Red Wings shortly before Pavelich arrived in 1947.
“On behalf of the entire Red Wings organization, I would like to offer my deepest condolences to the Pavelich family,” the Red Wings’ governor and CEO, Chris Ilitch, said in a statement.
“Marty was beloved by everyone who knew him, especially my parents, Mike, and Marian.
Ilitch. He was a key member of the Red Wings’ four Stanley Cup championship teams in the 1950s and one of the most hardworking players of his age. “He will be greatly missed.” Marty Pavelich is jammed along the Maple Leaf Gardens boards by Toronto’s Marc Reaume during the 1956 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Pavelich, five years older than renowned NHL linesman Matt Pavelich, died in his sleep Thursday and Friday after a brief fight with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“We were watching baseball, and I was holding his hand,” Pavelich’s son, Andrew Hofley, told journalist Helene St. James. “A peaceful end to an extraordinary life.”
Pavelich has won the Stanley Cup with the
Red Wings in 1950, 1952, 1954, and 1955. From 1947 to 1957, he played 633 games for Detroit, scoring 252 points (93 goals and 159 assists). He scored 28 points (13 goals, 15 assists) in 91 Stanley Cup Playoff games, five of which were game-winners. “I may not have been the most talented member of those teams, but you were never going to outwork me,” he explained to the Free Press earlier this month. “You could not have had a stronger drive to win than I had. I’d like to think that my legacy and greatest source of pride is my locker room leadership.
“I hated to lose — still do — and that is what I have attempted to pass on to all of the young people in sports and business I have met through the years.”
The 5-foot-11, 168-pound product of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, joined the Red Wings full-time after playing four seasons for their junior team in Galt, Ontario, from 1944 to 1947, spending his rookie season in 1947-48 with the NHL’s minor-league affiliate in Indianapolis.
Pavelich made the playoffs in all ten of his NHL seasons, with his left-wing role on the dominant Red Wings of the 1950s typically shadowing the opposition’s main offensive threats.
“I was playing on a regular line when (coach) Tommy Ivan approached me one day and said, ‘We want to
Make a checking line.” Pavelich told mlive.com’s Ansar Khan in 2022. “I played alongside Glen Skov and Tony Leswick. I had to check (Montreal Canadiens great) Rocket Richard 14 times every year. It was not easy. “To me, he was the greatest goal scorer of all time.” Marty Pavelich speaks to the media during the “Salute to Stanley Cup Legends” event on May 25, 2008, at Detroit’s Renaissance Center. The event honors the Detroit Red Wings dynasty, which won four championships in six years from 1950 to 1955.
Pavelich, who was still in his prime at 29, retired just before the start of the 1957-58 season, as Red Wings general manager Jack Adams started to dismantle a 1950s superpower.
Adams intended to farm Pavelich to the minors, a demotion.
The popular forward would not accept.
A large part of Adams’ plan was likely to punish the popular, gritty forward for his business relationship with Red Wings icon Ted Lindsay; Lindsay, who enraged Adams for his role in attempting to establish the NHL Players’ Association, was traded to the lowly Chicago Black Hawks on July 23, 1957, along with future Hall of Fame goalie Glenn Hall, in a lopsided five-player deal that brought Hank Bassen, Forbes Kennedy, and Johnny Wilson to Detroit.
Adams had previously stated to reporters: “I’d like to believe that Marty could make the Red Wings squad this season, but my better judgment rules against it.”
Pavelich turned down a $7,000 contract offer for 1957-58 because Adams had him slated for the minors. “I suppose this is the end of the line. On August 29, 1957, he told the Free Press, “I was hoping to play one more season, but…”
“I said I wouldn’t play in the minors and would retire first. Then this week, I received a letter from Mr. Adams confirming that he would support my retirement preparations.”
Pavelich worked with Lindsay for years in the plastics industry, supplying Detroit’s automotive company, before leaving related work in the early 1990s to retire.
in Montana to pursue his passion for skiing and fly-fishing.
He would be a major presence in Big Sky, helping to construct the town’s first hockey rink, which would open in December 2022 as the Marty Pavelich Ice Rink.
Later, he was active in the construction of the Big Sky Chapel, the area’s first year-round house of worship that served a variety of denominations. During the 1950-51 season, Detroit’s Glen Skov (left) and Marty Pavelich closed in on Toronto goalie Harry Lumley at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
“I’ve been here 30-some years in the northern part of our country and no hockey,” Pavelich told mlive.com in 2022, just before the arena’s ribbon-cutting.
“I exclaimed, ‘This is ridiculous.'” I phoned the local sportswriter, brought him to lunch, and asked, “How about writing?”
Something about hockey? He began writing about hockey, and now we have two enclosed rinks in Bozeman with over 1,000 kids playing hockey, and the same thing has happened here (in Big Sky). I thought, “We have to give these kids a chance.”
Pavelich was still skiing regularly till just before his death. He skated in the rink that he helped build until he unlaced his skates at the age of 95. “I thought I’d better take it easy for a while,” the man said.
The final living member of the Red Wings’ 1950 Stanley Cup squad will have plenty of memories to share with his renowned Production Line colleagues Lindsay, Gordie Howe, and Sid Abel.
And he’ll certainly be eager to mix it up again.
with the Canadiens’ great Rocket, who wore Pavelich like a thick wool blanket during their long-running rivalry on the ice at Olympia Stadium and the Montreal Forum.
Marty Pavelich studies his skate in the Detroit Red Wings’ dressing room before to a 1950s game at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
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