Kennedy, "Teeder" (Theodore S.)
Hockey
b. Dec. 12, 1925, Humberstone, ONT
When he was only sixteen, Kennedy was invited to training camp with the Montreal Canadiens, but he got homesick and left. The Canadiens traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs and he began his NHL career in the 1942/43 season, when he was eighteen.
He starred for the 1947 Stanley Cup champions, the youngest team ever to win the NHL championship. They beat the Montreal Canadiens in the finals, with Kennedy scoring the winning goal in the final game. The following season, he was named Toronto captain and the Leafs won two more Stanley Cups in a row.
Kennedy was involved in one of hockey's ugliest incidents in 1950, during the Stanley Cup semi-finals against the Detroit Red Wings. In the first game, Kennedy avoided a check from Detroit's Gordie Howe, and Howe suffered a serious head injury when he crashed into the boards. The Red Wings thought Kennedy had deliberately injured Howe with his stick.
In the second game, one of the Red Wings tripped Kennedy and was whistled for a penalty. As Kennedy was getting up, Detroit's Ted Lindsay cross-checked him. In the meantime, Leo Reise of the Red Wings attacked a Toronto defenseman with his stick, left him lying bloody on the ice, and then went after Kennedy. Backed into the boards, Kennedy was grabbed from behind by a Detroit fan who held him while two Red Wings pummeled him. Fortunately, he wasn't seriously hurt.
Detroit went on to win the series and the cup, but Toronto won again in 1951, beating Montreal in the only series in which every game went into overtime, Kennedy scoring one of the winning goals as the Maple Leafs won in five games.
Kennedy won the Hart Trophy as the league's most valuable player in 1955, then retired. However, he returned to the team for the second half of the 1956-57 season because the Maple Leafs were depleted by injuries.