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Former goaltender, Stanley Cup winner Manny Legace has priceless memories, memorabilia from memorable NHL career
Manny Legace is proof positive that good things come to those who wait, battle hard and make the most of every opportunity.
He has a Stanley Cup ring, Olympic and World Junior Championship medals, and an NHL All-Star jersey to show for it. These are his most prized collectibles from a stellar goaltending career that spanned parts of four decades from 1988 to 2012.
“I kept all my jerseys, even from the minors,” Legace said. “I've got a lot of sticks from Red Wings teammates like Stevie [Yzerman], Brett Hull, Shanny [Brendan Shanahan], Chelly [Chris Chelios] and Dominik Hasek, all the Hall of Famers. I never was a guy who would go and ask from somebody on the other team.”
How does he display them?
“My wife doesn't let me,” Legace said, laughing. “They're all in a cupboard downstairs. Elvis Merzlikins [Clolumbus Blue Jackets goaltender] visited one time and asked, ‘Do you have memorabilia?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it's all in these boxes.’ He went through it and couldn't believe all the stuff I had.
“It'll get displayed probably when I'm 90,” Legace joked.
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A Toronto native, he's now head amateur goaltending scout for the New Jersey Devils and coaches their minor league netminders at Utica (AHL), Adirondack (ECHL) and draft picks in Juniors.
“I'm here for development,” he said. “There's always a few things we can do to enhance and make them better. That's my job, to make things better.”
At 5-foot-9, Legace had to fight extra hard for everything he earned as a player because bigger, taller goaltenders often get the most attention. The Hartford Whalers took him in the eighth round (No. 188 overall) of the 1993 NHL Entry Draft, the same year he won a gold medal for Canada and was named to the All-Star team at the World Junior Ice Hockey Championships in Sweden.
“But I didn't get drafted my first year [1992] of eligibility,” he said. “I played 57 games in Juniors [Niagara Falls Thunder], including all the playoff games except one and went to the conference final. But my backup goalie, Greg Scott, who was 6-foot-3, got drafted by Detroit a year before me.
“I just knew I had to bide my time and keep playing," he said. “I knew all the bigger guys were going to get better chances. When mine comes I've just got to be ready. The Big Guy Upstairs stuck it out with me and gave me an opportunity.”
After Juniors, Legace spent the 1993-94 campaign with the Canadian National Team, which earned a silver medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Next, the Whalers sent Legace to Springfield, Mass. (AHL) for his rookie pro campaign (1994-95).
In his sophomore season at Springfield, Legace won the Baz Bastien Memorial Award as the league's top goaltender after posting an impressive 20-12-4 record and sparkling 2.27 goals against average.
But three years passed before he got his first taste of NHL action, with the Los Angeles Kings, and three more before landing a full-time job with the Detroit Red Wings.
As the old adage goes, “It's not always what you know, it’s who you know.”
During Juniors at Niagara Falls, Legace's goalie coach was Jim Bedard, who later joined the Red Wings staff.
“That's how I got in,” Legace said. “Jim brought me to Detroit. That changed my whole career.”
Like many Canadians, he began playing hockey as a little boy, but quickly developed an affinity for goaltending.
“I grew up in downtown Toronto, where you're basically born with skates on,” Legace said. “I got to play in net once and told my dad that's where I wanted to play. He said, ‘OK, but not till you play every position.’
“I was the leading scorer so he didn't want me to be in net on the team he coached. I didn't get in net until I played for another team. A Triple-A coach saw me play and that's how I became a goalie at 10 or 11.”
Legace idolized six-time Stanley Cup champion netminder Ken Dryden of the Montreal Canadiens.
“My dad was from New Brunswick, his first language was French,” he explained. “He hated the Leafs. He was a huge Rocket Richard fan. Growing up, his whole life was Rocket Richard, so my brother and I had to be Montreal fans, too. We'd have to watch their games in French on the French channel.”
Manny's father was the oldest of 11 brothers and sisters. Half were Leafs fans, half for the Canadiens.
“If Montreal lost to Toronto, guaranteed three phone calls came to our house rubbing it in,” Legace said.
THE STANLEY CUP
During Red Wings training camp, in preparation for the 2000-01 campaign, he beat out veteran Ken Wregget as the backup goaltender to Chris Osgood. But Osgood got off to a slow start and Legace took over, posting an outstanding 24-5-5 record in 39 games.
The next year, Legace again found himself in a backup role, this time to Dominik Hasek after Osgood was waived and claimed by the New York Islanders. Legace played in 20 games and only saw postseason action to relieve Hasek during Game 3 of the semifinals of the 2002 Stanley Cup playoffs. But he was a major contributor to the Wings’ regular season success with a 10-6-2 record and 2.42 goals against average.
Of course, there's nothing quite like hoisting the Stanley Cup while skating around the ice during postgame celebrations. Legace doesn't wear the ring, though.
“It’s awesome, but it's so big, so gaudy,” he explained.
In 2002-03, Legace teamed up with yet another Red Wings star goaltender, Curtis Joseph, who replaced the retired Hasek. Legace had another good season (14-5-4, 2.18 goals against average) and took over most of the starting duties the next year when his workload increased from 25 to 41 games (23-10-5, 2.12 GAA).
Due to his strong regular season play, he was Detroit's starting goaltender when the 2004 Stanley Cup playoffs began against the Nashville Predators. Legace won Games 1 and 2, but was pulled during the fourth game in favor of Joseph, who ended up being the goaltender for the remainder of the series. The Red Wings won that series, but lost to Calgary in the next round.
After playing briefly in Russia during the 2004-05 NHL lockout, he enjoyed the best year of his career in 2005-06. Legace beat out Osgood for the starting job and set a record for most wins by a goaltender in the month of October (10-1) en route to a fabulous 37-8-3 record (2.12), and helped the Red Wings win the Presidents' Trophy as the NHL's best regular-season team.
Legace placed fifth in Vezina Trophy voting for the league's top goaltender. Calgary's Miikka Kiprusoff won the award, although Legace's 2.12 goals against average was second in the NHL ahead of Martin Brodeur and Henrik Lundqvist, and his 37 wins were seven more than Lundqvist's 30.
As fate would have it, one of the minor league goaltenders Legace now coaches is Brodeur's son, Jeremy, of the Adirondack Thunder (ECHL).
After parting ways with Detroit in 2006, Legace went to the St. Louis Blues and had his best year ever in his second season there, playing in a career-high 66 contests (27-25-8, 2.41) while being named to the 2008 NHL All-Star Game. Unfortunately, the Blues failed to make the playoffs and in February 2009 the Blues placed him on waivers and he spent the rest of that season at Peoria in the AHL.
Over the next three seasons he split time between the NHL (Carolina Hurricanes), AHL and played one year in Germany before winding up his pro career back where it began, at Springfield, which had become the Columbus Blue Jackets' top minor league affiliate.
After one year as a college hockey analyst with Fox Sports Detroit, Legace turned to coaching, working strictly with goaltenders in the low minor leagues for the Blue Jackets. Working his way up, he spent two years at Springfield before reaching the NHL with Columbus in 2018.
A five-year stint there came to an end in April 2023, but Legace had no trouble finding a new job and is currently in his first year working for the New Jersey Devils.
“I've been pretty blessed in my career,” he said. “I got to play in the World Juniors, which is a big thing in Canada and the Olympics. Then to win a Stanley Cup is every Canadian's dream. I loved the game.”
