Remembering Eddie G’s return to the Garden

On this night 45 years ago, Eddie Giacomin returned to Madison Square Garden — and made grown men cry

I was exactly one month into my fifth year of life on November 2, 1975, when Eddie Giacomin skated to the crease wearing the red and white of the Detroit Red Wings, just two days after the New York Rangers, the only NHL team he’d ever known waived him.

I heard the charged-up chants of “Ed-die! Ed-die! Ed-die!” from the Garden faithful, but I couldn’t understand why the goalie with the gray hair in the other team’s sweater was crying, much less why tears were streaming down my father’s cheeks.

For all I knew, the crowd was teasing the veteran netminder, causing all the tear shed.

What I didn’t know is that for the first time in 11 years, Giacomin was making his first start at the Garden for a team other than the Rangers. I hadn’t a clue how beloved the Sudbury, Ontario, native was by Blueshirts fans, how much he meant to guys like my father.

Nor did I have an inkling about all Giacomin had done for the Blueshirts since joining them as a 26-year old rookie for the 1965-66 season, things that would earn him a spot in Hockey’s Hall of Fame. But my father, and many other Rangers fans at the Garden that night, knew.

They knew Giacomin led the NHL in games and minutes played four times; that he topped the league three times in shutouts and wins; and in saves twice. They also likely were well aware that he finished among the league’s top 10 in goals-against average seven times and save percentage on another six occasions.

They were proud that he went 267-172-89 with a 2.74 GAA and .905 Sv% in 539 regular-season matches for New York and very nearly won the Stanley Cup in 1972 if Bobby Orr hadn’t been around to ruin things. They knew that Eddie G. and Gilles Villemure shared the Vezina Trophy for their efforts in 1970-71.

And now they were heartbroken.

The chant of “Ed-die!” wasn’t the only one that blared in the Garden that night.

“Kill the Cat!” was also heard — probably from the Poconos to Montauk. Except nobody was crying during this one. “The Cat”, of course, was a reference to Rangers general manager Emile Francis, who waived the 36-year-old goalie more than a decade after he traded four players to acquire him from Providence of the American Hockey League.

“I made a lot of good deals, but in my mind, without a doubt [getting Giacomin] was the most important deal I made,” Francis told NHL.com. “I had to build up our goaltending.”

Francis had the same mentality in 1975 with Giacomin, who was old and had bad knees. Plus, the Rangers had 22-year-old John Davidson (acquired from the St. Louis Blues in a June 1975 trade) and Giacomin was making $175,000 (according to George Grimm’s Guardians of the Goal)  — a very high and untradeable salary.

“Here’s the problem: Both of Eddie’s knees were gone,” Francis said. “I knew that when I made the deal with St. Louis to get Davidson. …(Giacomin) had done so much for our team. I tried to trade him but nobody wanted him. So I put him on waivers and who picks him up but Detroit, who’s coming in next game.”

Giacomin wasn’t sure he was going to play, even if Rangers fans knew he would, he’d later admit. Sure enough, he played and helped Detroit to a 6-4 victory. The Rangers were booed every time they took a shot on him, never mind scored on him. The Blueshirts players themselves even felt bad. After beating his former goalie, Steve Vickers was roundly booed.

“Next shift out I skated over to him and apologized,” Vickers told reporters. “He told me, ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re just doing your job.’”

That the Rangers lost might’ve actually spared Francis something worse than chants calling for his head.

“The game ends and the Garden police say, ‘When it’s time to go, we’ve got to escort you out of this building,’” Francis said told NHL.com. “I told them, ‘I came into this building on my own, I’m leaving on my own.’ I said, ‘They may get me but I’ll guarantee you, I’ll take a couple of those (guys) with me.’ I walked right out through the rotunda, through the middle of the crowd, straight to my car.”

In 1989, the Rangers retired Giacomin’s No. 1, the second number retired by the organization (after Rod Gilbert’s No. 7). Among all-time Rangers, Giacomin ranks third in wins (behind Henrik Lundqvist, 459, and Mike Richter, 301), second in shutouts (with 49 to Lundqvist’s 64), and fourth in appearances (539) and saves (13,692).

“(I) never, ever, ever, ever in my life dreamt they’d be retiring my jersey,” Giacomin told the Biography Channel. “The New York crest is embedded in Eddie Giacomin’s heart.”

Just as memories of Giacomin are embedded in the hearts of many older Rangers fans, like my father.