Fan favorite won 290 NHL games, Rangers retired his No. 1 in 1989

© Graphic Artists/Hockey Hall of Fame

ByDave Stubbs
@davestubbs.bsky.social NHL.com Columnist

6:16 AM

It will be 50 years this Nov. 2, but if you listen closely, you can still hear the chants of “Kill the Cat!” echoing through Madison Square Garden.

The passing on Monday at age 86 of goalie Eddie Giacomin, one of the New York Rangers’ most beloved figures, sadly comes as the Broadway Blueshirts are just about to embark on their centennial season, having joined the NHL in 1926.

The story of Giacomin and his return to the Garden in the uniform of the Detroit Red Wings is one of the great tales about the man who to pretty much everyone was “Ed-die!” with a hyphen and an exclamation mark.

Late Rangers GM Emile (The Cat) Francis hadn’t exactly endeared himself to New York fans on Halloween day in 1975 by playing a wicked trick on the faithful when he waived the enormously popular Giacomin, then in the twilight of a career that had him bound for the Hockey Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 1987.

© Hockey Hall of Fame

Eddie Giacomin with the Red Wings in the mid-1970s following his waiver pickup by Detroit from the Rangers.

The Red Wings claimed Giacomin, who had played 10-plus seasons for the Rangers. And as fate would have it, Detroit was at the Garden two nights after the waiver deal had shaken New York hockey to its core.

Francis had brought Giacomin, not quite 26, to the NHL in May 1965, giving up four players for him in a trade with 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. I had to build up our goalkeeping,” Francis said in 2016, speaking of the goalie he’d championed for years.

But in 1975, The Cat was leaning toward newcomer John Davidson.

Giacomin’s return to the Garden with Detroit was one of the most emotional nights in Rangers history. The Red Wings defeated the home team 6-4, with the full house bellowing its love of Giacomin through the entire game.

© Hockey Hall of Fame

Eddie Giacomin watches a Toronto shot sail past the Rangers net during a 1960s game at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“Here’s the problem: Both of Eddie’s knees were gone,” Francis said. “I knew that the year before, when I made the deal with the St. Louis Blues to get Davidson, to groom him to be our next goalkeeper.

“But I couldn’t use [Davidson] at Madison Square Garden. ‘Ed-die! Ed-die!’ the fans always chanted. I knew if I was ever going to get [Davidson] ready to play for the Rangers, he’s got to be able to play in the home rink.

“[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.”

Francis laughed at the memory of the chants for Giacomin drowning out the national anthem and recalled that his own conflicted players didn’t want to shoot on their former teammate.

Giacomin was in tears as the love showered him from the upper reaches of the Garden.

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Eddie Giacomin in a Rangers pose, and in action with New York.

“The last 10 minutes of the game, they start: ‘Kill the Cat! Kill the Cat!’ ” Francis said of the fans. “The game ends and the Garden police say, ‘When it’s time to go, we’ve got to escort you out of this building.’

“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.”

Giacomin was adored, if not quite as much, in other buildings of the NHL for his personality and flamboyance in goal.

Indeed, his Rangers jersey, retired by his team on March 15, 1989, was stitched with red, white and blue thread because many of the legendary goalie’s greatest moments involved the Montreal Canadiens.

© Graphic Artists/Hockey Hall of Fame

Eddie Giacomin defends the New York Rangers goal with alternate captain Harry Howell lending support on defense at Maple Leaf Gardens.

From the scout who got him to the NHL in 1965, to an iconic teammate he had during a brief demotion to the minors. From the star who drilled a slap shot into his throat on a late-night TV stunt gone wrong, to perhaps his finest achievement — backstopping the Rangers to a brilliant 1972 playoff series victory at the Montreal Forum.

Giacomin was happy to revisit all of that and more in 2008. Wearing replicas of the jerseys worn in pre-NHL 1915-16, the Canadiens would pay tribute to the Rangers before they faced their Original Six rival.

At home north of Detroit, Eddie Giacomin, then 69, didn’t attend because he figured he might see Yvan Cournoyer on a breakaway.

The Rangers were represented by Andy Bathgate, Rod Gilbert, Ron Greschner, Harry Howell and Brad Park.

But Ed-die! certainly had enough memories of the Canadiens to fill a few scrapbooks.

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Eddie Giacomin with New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, and some of Giacomin’s equipment at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

“The nice thing was, they could embarrass you on Saturday night in Montreal then you could shut them out the next night back in New York, having taken the same train to our rink,” Giacomin said.

“I remember (Canadiens’) Boom-Boom Geoffrion coming to our car, B.S.-ing, and the next night we’d have to kick the [stuffing] out of them.”

The Red Wings had 1950s contract rights to the Sudbury, Ontario area, where brothers Rollie and Eddie Giacomin were raised and played goal. Rollie, older by five years, even played a game for the Senior A Hull-Ottawa Canadiens when Montreal-demoted Jacques Plante failed to report.

Rollie was summoned to the Washington Presidents of the Eastern League but was unable to get off work. So, in his place he sent Eddie, who’d been playing industrial hockey to escape the Red Wings’ contractual grasp.

The young stand-in did well, moved to the New York Rovers the next season and then was picked up for five years by the American league’s unaffiliated Providence Reds.

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Eddie Giacomin in action with the American Hockey League’s Providence Reds in the early 1960s.

Johnny (Black Cat) Gagnon, a Canadiens great of the 1930s, casually scouted the Providence area for the NHL Rangers, and his game reports to New York coach and general manager Emile Francis always glowed about Giacomin’s acrobatic style and superb puck-handling.

Word by now was that the Canadiens were scoping him too, as were the Red Wings. So it was that in 1965 Francis shipped backup netminder Marcel Paille and three minor-leaguers to Providence for the nickel-belt goalie.

“Emile figured there must have been something there, since my name was in every one of Black Cat’s reports,” Giacomin said.

Before long he was one of the flashiest, most popular players in New York, eager to rush the puck out to the blue line. It was a skill learned when he split goaltending and forward as a midget-class player in Sudbury, having overcome long odds of playing at all after having been badly burned by an exploding kitchen stove.

He struggled early with the Rangers and was shipped down to the AHL’s Baltimore Clippers, where he played a couple weeks behind former Canadiens defense superstar Doug Harvey.

© Brian Babineau/NHLI

Eddie Giacomin, Rod Gilbert and Harry Howell together before the start of the NHL alumni game prior to the 2012 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on Dec. 31, 2011.

But once recalled, Giacomin never saw the minors again, playing 10 terrific seasons with the Rangers before, stunningly, he was claimed off waivers by the Red Wings on Halloween night 1975.

Giacomin played two-plus seasons with the Red Wings before retiring Jan. 17, 1978, finishing 290-209 with 96 ties, a 2.82 goals-against average, .902 save percentage and 54 shutouts. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1987.

In 1970-71, Giacomin and Gilles Villemure together won the Vezina Trophy for fewest goals allowed by their team.

By the time he hung up his pads for the final time, the Canadiens had marked Giacomin’s career, and his body, in many more ways.

In 1966, Giacomin appeared with new Rangers teammate Geoffrion on Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show,” demonstrating to Carson how to stop the Boomer’s slap shot. Rehearsal went fine, but on live TV Geoffrion drilled a shot into Giacomin’s throat, leaving him unable to talk for a week.

© Graphic Artists/Hockey Hall of Fame

Can’t stop them all: Eddie Giacomin kicks his pad at a shot that eludes him at Maple Leaf Gardens.

“Probably the worst injury I had,” he recalled. “I couldn’t fall down with millions of people watching, but at the commercial break I sure felt it.”

Carson stood in with his knees knocking and catching glove in front of his groin.

Giacomin would key a six-game Rangers playoff win over the Canadiens in 1972, making what he believed was the best save of his career on Frank Mahovlich late in New York’s 3-2 Game 6 win — a lunging, seemingly impossible cross-crease stop on the Big M.

He flopped around at the final siren like a fish out of water, “doing a modern-day dance,” he joked, “so excited that we beat Montreal because you didn’t get a chance to do that very often.

“I had extra incentive that night. My dad was a staunch Canadian born in Italy, and he called me from Sudbury earlier that day to tell me, ‘My heart is with you, but my money is with Montreal.’

“When we won, I could hardly wait until 2:30, 3 o’clock in the morning to call him. Collect. Payback is a son-of-a-gun.”

Giacomin had almost made history at the Forum a few years earlier, two decades before Philadelphia’s Ron Hextall became the first goalie to score by actually shooting a puck into the opposing net.

© Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

All is forgiven: from left, Rod Gilbert, Emile Francis, Jean Ratelle, Vic Hadfield and Eddie Giacomin attend Hadfield’s jersey retirement by the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 2, 2018.

With Canadiens’ Gump Worsley pulled on a delayed Rangers penalty, Giacomin saw his opening. The puck he fired rink-length was stopped only by the thick snow in Worsley’s abandoned crease.

When he reminisced in 2008, Giacomin was dividing his time between Michigan and a cottage in Sudbury while doting on his grandchildren.

He had kept only the catching glove from his playing days. Giacomin’s 1987 Hall of Fame ring was out there somewhere; he believed it was lost at a border crossing years earlier. He hadn’t gone to auction with his memorabilia, like many contemporaries, having donated virtually all of it to the Toronto shrine.

As the Canadiens prepared to honor his old team, Giacomin said he might be considering his great, successful rival when he looked at his bare finger.

“I can’t get over it,” he said, chuckling. “We worked so hard to win a Stanley Cup ring that never came, and they just get rid of theirs.”

As for Cournoyer, who won 10 championships? Giacomin met his nemesis in 2007 in Montreal, at a Bell Centre gala honoring Canadiens icon Jean Beliveau, and greeted him warmly.

“I said to Yvan, ‘You’re the pain in the [behind] who gave me the most fits,’ ” he said, laughing.

“I worried an awful lot about Bobby Hull’s shot, and Bobby Orr took a Stanley Cup away from us (in 1972). But year after year, I’d regret hearing the voice say, ‘Canadiens goal scored by Yvan Cournoyer…’ knowing it probably was on another breakaway.”

Top photo: Eddie Giacomin defends the New York Rangers net with defenseman Arnie Brown against Toronto forward Jim Pappin at Maple Leaf Gardens.