Who was tougher and meaner: Eddie Shore or Ted Lindsay?

Who was the tougher and meaner player?


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jcs0218

Registered User
Apr 20, 2018
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Eddie Shore and Ted Lindsay are probably the two toughest and meanest players to ever play in the NHL.

Who would you consider to be the tougher and meaner player?
 

TheDevilMadeMe

Registered User
Aug 28, 2006
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Lindsay was actually somewhat undersized. Probably even dirtier than Shore, but he had a tendency to hide behind Gordie Howe if he pissed off someone too much bigger than him.
 
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The Panther

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Mar 25, 2014
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I didn't really get the impression, from stuff I've read / heard, that Lindsay was particularly tough. I mean, it was the 50s and he had his share of the fights and so on, but he wasn't a huge guy. I got the impression he was more of an agitator. He's listed as 5'8'', which is one of the shortest players on his team.

But I did get the impression that Eddie Shore was a toughie. Like, Scott Stevens / McSorley kind of tough.
 

Tuna Tatarrrrrr

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Jun 13, 2012
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Between these two, it's Shore but Sprague Cleghorn was a tougher and especially meaner player than these two.
 
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BobbyAwe

Registered User
Nov 21, 2006
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I think Lindsay was dirtier so I guess that equates to "meaner"? Dirtier in that he would carve you up with his stick. I think Shore (from what I've read) may have pretty much drawn the line at dirty hits? As far as tough, again it depends how you translate "tough". If tough means "good fighter", then I don't think either one ranks very high? Lindsay fought but his "equalizer" as mentioned, was his stick, and from what I've gleaned Shore probably LOST more fights than he won? But if tough means fearless and impervious to pain, then I doubt anyone ever has had the edge on Shore?
 

David Bruce Banner

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Mar 25, 2008
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If it weren’t for the Ace Bailey incident, Shore’s rep as an all time tough guy would be more middle of the pack. I think he, like Lindsay, was an intense competitor. Both were guys that would go through a brick wall to win a hockey game.

I never got the impression that Lindsay had to hide behind Howe either. Howe was tough, but more Messier tough rather than Tocchet tough. Howe took care of Howe.

Also, at 5’9”, Lindsay was maybe a bit shorter than average, but not by much. I don’t think he needed anyone to fight his battles for him.
 

Big Phil

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Nov 2, 2003
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This goes to Shore, with all due respect to "Terrible" Ted. Think of things even after Shore's career, like his coaching career in the AHL. Don Cherry hated playing for him, the players specifically put it in their contract not to be traded to his team (Springfield I think?).

I don't know how true this is, but it was in Cherry's movie the "Don Cherry story" that aired a few years back. Cherry's son Tim directed it and I know there were a lot of accurate stories in it because Cherry has told them for years. There was lots of air time directed to how tough Shore was as a coach. They called him Darth Vader. But there is one scene where Cherry is coaching in the 1970s on the Bruins and Shore is seen in a Boston bar. One of the Bruins players notices Shore and Cherry warns him not to approach him. The player, noticeably drunk does it anyway and goes over to say hi to Shore, pats him on the back and stuff and it irritates Shore. The player tells him to relax and Shore gets up and decks him. He'd be in his 70s at this time.

Is it true? Who knows, but I would suspect it is. So that is a pretty tough guy.
 

The Macho King

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Jun 22, 2011
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Lindsay strikes me as more of a proto-Marchand than a real tough guy. I think this goes to Shore.
 

Nick Hansen

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Sep 28, 2017
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This goes to Shore, with all due respect to "Terrible" Ted. Think of things even after Shore's career, like his coaching career in the AHL. Don Cherry hated playing for him, the players specifically put it in their contract not to be traded to his team (Springfield I think?).

I don't know how true this is, but it was in Cherry's movie the "Don Cherry story" that aired a few years back. Cherry's son Tim directed it and I know there were a lot of accurate stories in it because Cherry has told them for years. There was lots of air time directed to how tough Shore was as a coach. They called him Darth Vader. But there is one scene where Cherry is coaching in the 1970s on the Bruins and Shore is seen in a Boston bar. One of the Bruins players notices Shore and Cherry warns him not to approach him. The player, noticeably drunk does it anyway and goes over to say hi to Shore, pats him on the back and stuff and it irritates Shore. The player tells him to relax and Shore gets up and decks him. He'd be in his 70s at this time.

Is it true? Who knows, but I would suspect it is. So that is a pretty tough guy.

Tough or a maniac? The line is thin sometimes...
 

Iapyi

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Apr 19, 2017
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It’s mostly forgotten that Shore dove, faked injury, and complained at the refs A LOT. He had a high pain threshold, but he was also seen as something of an Ulf Samuelson type figure during his playing career.

Interesting take, I have never ever heard anything to this effect.
 

BobbyAwe

Registered User
Nov 21, 2006
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South Carolina
Lindsay strikes me as more of a proto-Marchand than a real tough guy. I think this goes to Shore.

Nah, he was on a whole other level of nasty than Marchand. There was an anecdote from Johnny McKenzie about Lindsay when they were teammates early in McKenzie's career...

Some player fouled Lindsay and McKenzie asked Ted, "Are you going to let him get away with that?" Lindsay said, "Wait...".
Later in the game there was a pile up with Lindsay and the player in question were in the pile. When the players cleared the guy's face was cut to ribbons. Ted came back to the bench and Johnny said - "You got to be kidding me?"
 

tarheelhockey

Offside Review Specialist
Feb 12, 2010
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Interesting take, I have never ever heard anything to this effect.

I think it's one of those things that gets lost when reputation becomes legend. Shore was "tough" in the sense that he was a ball of muscle, was willing to play through injury, and had a sociopathic willingness to do literally anything to another human being without remorse.

But contemporary source also report regularly that he would go down like a ton of bricks when retaliation came his way, and there are a lot of accounts of him rolling around on the ice to draw a penalty, then popping back up for the power play. Very much like a Samuelsson, Burrows, Kesler, Marchand type of agitator/diver, combined with usually being the best player on the ice.
 

Canadiens1958

Registered User
Nov 30, 2007
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This goes to Shore, with all due respect to "Terrible" Ted. Think of things even after Shore's career, like his coaching career in the AHL. Don Cherry hated playing for him, the players specifically put it in their contract not to be traded to his team (Springfield I think?).

I don't know how true this is, but it was in Cherry's movie the "Don Cherry story" that aired a few years back. Cherry's son Tim directed it and I know there were a lot of accurate stories in it because Cherry has told them for years. There was lots of air time directed to how tough Shore was as a coach. They called him Darth Vader. But there is one scene where Cherry is coaching in the 1970s on the Bruins and Shore is seen in a Boston bar. One of the Bruins players notices Shore and Cherry warns him not to approach him. The player, noticeably drunk does it anyway and goes over to say hi to Shore, pats him on the back and stuff and it irritates Shore. The player tells him to relax and Shore gets up and decks him. He'd be in his 70s at this time.

Is it true? Who knows, but I would suspect it is. So that is a pretty tough guy.

Fact check:

Darth Vader - Wikipedia

Star Wars dates back to 1977. Shore had retired from coaching about 10 seasons earlier.
 
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sr edler

gold is not reality
Mar 20, 2010
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I guess different people can have different definitions of what toughness is, making the concept a bit fluid.

Ted Lindsay though reminds me a lot of Toronto/Seattle proto pest Cully Wilson (who played against Lindsay's dad, I guess) who was a dirty player (broke Mickey MacKay's jaw with a crosscheck and was thrown out of the PCHA) but also took a lot of sticks to his own face. They even printed a stitch map of his face in the January 12, 1916 edition of the Pittsburgh Press. As you can see below he went under the skin of quite many HHOFers (Art Ross, Didier Pitre, Eddie Gerard, Cy Denneny, Steamer Maxwell), and this was only halfway through his career.

original.jpg



When it comes to Shore, as another poster already mentioned up thread, he seemed to have a fair bit of the Bryan Marchment/Ulf Samuelsson theatrics element to his game.
 
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tarheelhockey

Offside Review Specialist
Feb 12, 2010
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Fact check:

Darth Vader - Wikipedia

Star Wars dates back to 1977. Shore had retired from coaching about 10 seasons earlier.

That was my first thought when I saw that quote too. Perhaps some of the detail is being blurred with re-telling.

There’s a common thread here about the influence of media on perceptions of old time hockey. In the popular consciousness, old time hockey is embodied in the media by Don Cherry and his weekly rants about the chivalrous code of a bygone era. But the whole idea of tough guys as principled outlaws living by a “code” is very much a construction of the later era. No such notion governed Shore or Lindsey, who lacked any restraint or ethical compass beyond “win by whatever means necessary” (which extended to both their lives off the ice as well).

I wonder how much the post-Bullies generation was influenced by the shared cultural experience of the Hanson Brothers yelling “Old time hockey! Eddie Shore!”, without the sense of irony that the reference ought to have engendered. And then by the weekly diatribes on HNIC, a re-visioning of history being pumped into young minds every week. We end up with an ahistorical notion that pre-1970s “toughness” didn’t come with the same underbelly of dishonesty and cowardice that it does today.
 

Canadiens1958

Registered User
Nov 30, 2007
20,020
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Lake Memphremagog, QC.
That was my first thought when I saw that quote too. Perhaps some of the detail is being blurred with re-telling.

There’s a common thread here about the influence of media on perceptions of old time hockey. In the popular consciousness, old time hockey is embodied in the media by Don Cherry and his weekly rants about the chivalrous code of a bygone era. But the whole idea of tough guys as principled outlaws living by a “code” is very much a construction of the later era. No such notion governed Shore or Lindsey, who lacked any restraint or ethical compass beyond “win by whatever means necessary” (which extended to both their lives off the ice as well).

I wonder how much the post-Bullies generation was influenced by the shared cultural experience of the Hanson Brothers yelling “Old time hockey! Eddie Shore!”, without the sense of irony that the reference ought to have engendered. And then by the weekly diatribes on HNIC, a re-visioning of history being pumped into young minds every week. We end up with an ahistorical notion that pre-1970s “toughness” didn’t come with the same underbelly of dishonesty and cowardice that it does today.

Revisionism and myth creationism drives the message. Stopped bothering in most instances but this one crossed the line.

Lindsay, 1959 lost an NHL fight to a hockey pacifist who as a youngster boxed Golden Gloves. Lindsay had a 3 lb weight advantage.
 
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blood gin

Registered User
Jan 17, 2017
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Shore I'd say. He was kind of Messier level sadistic in that he could probably remorselessly kill a person if he had to. You definitely saw that later in Shore's life with this psychotic coaching practices
 

scribe114

Registered User
Jul 12, 2005
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Detroit, Michigan
Revisionism and myth creationism drives the message. Stopped bothering in most instances but this one crossed the line.

Lindsay, 1959 lost an NHL fight to a hockey pacifist who as a youngster boxed Golden Gloves. Lindsay had a 3 lb weight advantage.

Who might that have been, since Lindsay checked in at about 165 on a good day.
 

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