A New Yorker Remembers Eddie Giacomin

This is for the many New York transplants in Florida who remember Eddie Giacomin.

It is also very personal.

I joined the hockey media after Eddie left the Rangers but was still in the league with Detroit.

Before I became a reporter, I was one of many Ranger fanatics, watching the team from the legendary “blue seats” at Madison Square Garden.

Eddie Giacomin played for the New York Rangers well before the Panthers were born.

He began his NHL career at the old Madison Square Garden when the NHL was still the Original Six.

Giacomin came to the Rangers in a manner which cannot happen in today’s hockey structure.

At the end of the 1964-65 season, he was traded from the Providence Reds of the American Hockey League to the Rangers for four players, one of whom was Marcel Paille, who had split the Rangers’ netminding duties with Jacques Plante that season.

Now for the personal stuff.

As a college student and hockey junkie, I first saw Giacomin play for the New York Rovers of the wild and woolly Eastern Hockey League, of Slapshot fame.

The team played in an ancient obsolete arena.

What I remember most about the Long Island Arena was its substandard lighting.

Giacomin knocked around that league for three seasons, playing for three different teams in arenas that still had chicken wire over the boards instead of glass.

He moved on to the Providence Reds of the AHL for the 1960-61 season.Giacomin spent five seasons there. By the time he reached the Rangers for the 1965-66 season he was 26 years old.

The Rangers finished dead last in the six-team NHL that season.

I was there early on when a maskless and prematurely graying Giacomin was booed for erratic play with an equally erratic team.

He spent part of that first season in the Rangers’ organization in the minors.

But Giacomin credited Rangers’ coach and general manager at the time, Emile Francis, a former goalie, with sticking with him and giving him the confidence to succeed.

A year later, the team had its first winning record in 10 seasons.

I was there for the next nine seasons when the Rangers made the playoffs, led by Giacomin and players like Rod Gilbert, Brad Park, and Jean Ratelle.

In 1972, the Rangers reached the Final.

In three consecutive seasons they defeated the prior year’s Stanley Cup winner.

In 1971, Giacomin shared the Vezina Trophy, at the time awarded to the goalies on the team with the fewest goals against, with Gilles Villemure.

Giacomin and Villemure were a tandem for five seasons.

I was stunned on Halloween evening in 1975 when I heard the news that Giacomin was put on waivers by the Rangers and claimed by Detroit.

Waivers?

For such an accomplished player?

It seemed unjust.

I was equally dumbfounded two nights later at the Garden when Giacomin suited up for the Wings.

I was one of the full house shouting “Ed-die! Ed-die!” during the anthem in the now legendary game 50 years ago.

Giacomin was clearly holding back tears and, as he explained later, was still in a state of shock.

A year later I began my avocation as a hockey journalist. I had the privilege of speaking to a now-fully gray Giacomin post-game a few times.

In 1987, I interviewed the retired Giacomin for a New York Rangers Program article about his entering the Hockey Hall of Fame.

I remember him telling me, “I was fortunate to put 13 years in the league after coming up when I was 26 years old. I never thought about the Hall of Fame, so it was quite a surprise when I received the call telling me I was in.”

Giacomin died Monday at the age of 86.

He had retired from the NHL after the 1977-78 season with 290 wins and 54 shutouts in 610 regular-season games.

Giacomin was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1987; the Rangers retired his No. 1 in 1989.

The Rangers, in a social media post, stated: Eddie Giacomin was an integral member of the New York Rangers for a decade and personified what being a Ranger is all about, both to his teammates and the Blueshirts faithful.

You cannot discuss the history of this organization and not immediately think of Eddie.

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