My dad thought he looked familiar.He was working on this car, at a GM dealership in Windsor at the time, doing front-end alignment, wheel balancing and new car pre-delivery inspections.Suddenly this friendly little guy comes along, introduces himself … it’s Roger Crozier, the Red Wings goalie.Dad has a nice chat with him, discovers he’s a nice, humble Canadian boy. He also happens to be one of the best rookie goalies in what was then the Original Six in the NHL.So good, in fact, he won the Calder Trophy in the 1964-65 NHL season. (I actually own the engraved silver ice bucket that teammates gave him as a memento.)Anyway, Dad came home and had a great story to tell. He met and shook the hand of Red Wings goalie Roger Crozier!I was mesmerized. Who was this guy? He even gave Dad an autograph on the back of a dealership card.Previous to this, I was a Maple Leafs fan, and Frank Mahovlich was my favourite player. I even had a Mahovlich calendar.Well, overnight I became a Crozier/Wings fan. My Dad and I started listening to the games on the radio, a new way that we could bond together.Whenever I played road hockey, which was often, I was Crozier. My Mom would even knit me a Wings logo to stitch onto a sweatshirt, as we could not afford to buy an actual jersey.Check out this description of his amazing, acrobatic style, from HockeyThenAndNow."In an era where stand-up goalies were the norm, Crozier resembled a fish out of water. His acrobatic movements were a thing of pure delight. On many plays around his goal crease, Crozier would be flat on the ice. His legs and arms flapping to reach the puck or cover as much space as possible. It was poetry-in-motion when Crozier moved to the front of or beyond his crease to confront a shooter head-on. By doing this, he took away the angles, which suddenly narrowed, as Crozier moved out from the net. As the opposing player advanced, Roger “The Dodger” would back-up in order to adjust to the situation. If a cross-ice pass was completed, the Detroit goalie reacted by propelling his extended body laterally to protect the open-side."And keep in mind, all this was sans a goalie mask! Crozier would suffer two broken jawbones, had part of a front tooth knocked out by an errant hockey stick and sustained a shattered cheek.I once saw a Bobby Hull slapshot go right past his head during a televised game against the Chicago Blackhawks which shattered the glass behind him. Such was the life of an Original Six goalie.That season, the Wings would make it all the way to the Stanley Cup final against the Montreal Canadiens (whom I would learn to hate and do, to this day).Crozier had started all of his team’s games, the last goalie to do so in the NHL and led the league in wins and shutouts with 40 and six respectively. His 2.42 GAA was the second-lowest in the league.This little man had singlehandedly changed the league overnight and even earned the attention of Sports Illustrated, in a November 23 1964 feature story.The SI piece quoted Wings’ coach Sid Abel as saying: “Crozier has the fastest hands of any goalie I’ve ever seen … and he is the quickest to get back on his feet after a fall.”Getting to the Cup final was not easy; they had to beat the Chicago Blackhawks who had a fellow by the name of Bobby Hull and the great Glenn Hall in goal..During that series, which the Wings won 4-2, Norm Ullman would score his famous two goals in five seconds — which we heard play out on the radio.The Wings were rolling and Crozier was killing opposing teams — with elan. The acrobatic goalie was making incredible saves, in a manner that had never been seen before.Anyway, they made it to the final against the Habs.To make a long story short, the Wings won the first two games in Montreal and Crozier was red-hot and shutting the door.Windsor Star sports columnist Jack Dulmage, who followed the series closely, would quote tough guy John Ferguson as saying, “Crozier kills you when he’s hot.”It would be a prophetic statement.Whether they had done it intentionally, or not, they ran Crozier — still a sore spot with me, to this day — and took him out. It was nothing short of the Bobby Clarke slash on Soviet star Valeri Kharlamov which happened decades later.“At first, I thought my leg was broken,” said Crozier. “I was stretching for the corner of the goal when (Bobby) Rousseau fell going through the crease, jamming my leg against the post. “There was a searing pain and my leg went limp. It started to quiver, I couldn’t control it and couldn’t regain my feet.”Hank Bassen, the backup, was forced into action. Crozier would eventually return, but he wasn’t 100%.The Habs, led by the amazing Jean Beliveau, would win the series 4-2. But the last game remains controversial to this day.It went into overtime, 2-2, at Olympia Stadium. Henri Richard slid straight into the net, unpenalized, with Wings defender Gary Bergman, who said he held onto his stick.Columnist Dulmage would call it, “the unseen hand.”.Somehow, the puck ended up in the net. Referee John Ashley ruled it a goal and the rest is history. Crozier and Bergman, to their dying days, insisted Richard put it in with his hand. We will probably never know.The diminutive goalie from Bracebridge — he weighed 160 pounds soaking wet and stood 5-ft. 8-ins. — would win the Conn Smythe trophy on the losing team, with an amazing playoff GAA of 2.34.After the game, an angry JC Tremblay would kick things around the Canadiens’ dressing room, feeling he should have deserved the MVP award.But the facts stood out — the 23-year-old backstopped the Red Wings against the two highest-scoring teams in the NHL.Detroit managed just six goals over those last four games on Gump Worsley, the final two of which Crozier played with a sprained knee and twisted ankle.In addition to the $1,000 cash award for the Conn Smythe, a $5,000 Mustang sports car was thrown into the mix.Media reports say Crozier motored around Bracebridge, Ontario during that summer, as he recovered from the Stanley Cup final disappointment.Sadly, Crozier’s health would then take a turn for the worse — he would suffer from pancreatitis and ulcers, which forced him to miss 12 games out of 70 in 1966-67.He would win 22 games and recorded a 3.35 GAA, as the Wings missed the playoffs, and after another bout of ill health at the beginning of the 1967–68 season, he announced his retirement due to stress and depression. A Wings teammate who went to visit him to try to talk him into returning, found him hammering shingles onto a roof of a house in Bracebridge.Crozier’s comment was: “If I bend a nail up here, I don’t have 12,000 people booing me!”But his Original Six talent, which was remarkable, remained.Six weeks later, he would return after a stint with the Fort Worth Wings of the Central Professional Hockey League, playing two more seasons on a mediocre Wings team before being traded to the Buffalo Sabres in 1970.GM Punch Imlach knew that solid goaltending would be the cornerstone around which a competitive team could be built. Crozier gave the Sabres instant credibility while playing in 44 games in their inaugural season.His experience and poise gave the Sabres a chance to win any time he was between the pipes.Still suffering from pancreatitis, ulcers and now afflicted by gallbladder problems, he would help backstop the Sabres to a winning record in 1972-73 with an impressive 2.76 GAA.He would post 17 wins and two losses in the 1974–75 season, helping the Sabres rank first in the Adams Division. During the NHL playoffs Crozier played five games, including two in the Stanley Cup finals. The Sabres would trade him to the Washington Capitals in exchange for cash in 1977. He played only three games with the Caps before retiring after 14 NHL seasons.Crozier played in 518 regular season games, winning 206, losing 197, tying 70 and played in 32 NHL playoff games, winning 14 and losing 16.He died at age 53 after a battle with cancer on January 11 1996.Taking all of this amazing hockey history into account, it is outrageous to me that Crozier is not in the NHL’s Hockey Hall of Fame.In fact, he remains the only No. 1 goaltender for a team of the NHL Original Six during the 1960 to 1979 period not elected.No goalie, not even to this day, stopped pucks so creatively and magically, as Crozier. Had health issues not cut him down, there is no telling what he could have achieved.It should be noted that he was also active in civic and charity work. He served on the board of directors of the Boy Scouts of America, receiving its Distinguished Citizen Award in 1984. He also established the Roger Crozier Foundation to aid underprivileged children.If ever there was a man, who should be in the Hall, it is Roger Crozier. And I hope and pray it happens, before I join him on that big ice rink in the sky.
