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A Hall of Famer, he led the N.H.L. in shutouts and single-season victories three times and was stunned when the Rangers let him go in his 10th season.
Sept. 15, 2025, 2:40 p.m. ET
Eddie Giacomin, the Rangers’ Hall of Fame goalie of the late 1960s and early ’70s who became a fan favorite when the team emerged as Stanley Cup contenders after a string of lackluster seasons, and whose 1975 trade to the Detroit Red Wings left many shocked, died on Sunday at his home in Birmingham, Mich. He was 86.
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Nancy Schwartz.
Giacomin joined the Rangers in 1965 as a prematurely graying 26-year-old and blossomed as a star the next season, when he was selected as a first-team all-N.H.L. player, was chosen for the first of his six All-Star Games and posted what became his career-high nine shutouts.
He went on to lead the N.H.L. in shutouts and single-season victories three times and shared the 1971 Vezina Trophy — awarded by the league for best goaltender — with the Rangers’ Gilles Villemure for lowest goals-against average.
The Rangers had made the playoffs every spring from 1967 to 1974 with Giacomin in the nets.
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The Rangers reached the Stanley Cup finals in 1972, bolstered by Giacomin along with Jean Ratelle at center, Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield on the wings, and Brad Park on defense.
Sports aficionados regarded Giacomin as a brilliant stick-holder who was unafraid to take chances and who had an approach seldom seen among goalies of his era. He thrilled the Madison Square Garden crowds by wandering beyond his goal crease to stifle opponents’ rushes, often feeding passes to his teammates after making a save, touching off Ranger forays up ice.
“You can hear Giacomin all over the ice,” Park told Sports Illustrated in January 1971. “He’s always yelling at us, telling us where the puck is and who is chasing us.”
The Rangers were denied its first Stanley Cup championship since 1940 when the Boston Bruins defeated the team in six games in the 1972 playoff final. But the Rangers remained one of the N.H.L.’s leading franchises during the next two seasons.
Then, on Halloween night 1975, Emile Francis, the Rangers’ general manager and coach, seeking to overhaul his roster, summoned Giacomin to his office at the team’s practice rink in Long Beach, N.Y., to tell him he was being traded to the Detroit Red Wings. As Giacomin recalled, his wife was waiting in their car while the men spoke.
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“It was like I had fallen through a trap door and was tumbling in space,” Giacomin told The New York Times in 1989. “I walked toward the car, but didn’t know whether I should stop or just keep walking, keep walking out into the water. Why couldn’t it have at least been a trade? Maybe I would have felt better then.”
Two nights after the Rangers discarded him, Giacomin returned to the Garden as the starting goalie for the Red Wings. As he stood alongside his new teammates at Detroit’s red line, the fans drowned out the playing of the national anthem, shouting, “Eddie! Eddie!”
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Giacomin raised his stick twice in an unsuccessful plea for silence as tears streamed down his cheeks. The fans resumed their chant when he turned away Ranger shots in a 6-4 Detroit victory.
“The last 10 minutes of the game, they start: ‘Kill the Cat! Kill the Cat!’” Francis told N.H.L.com in 2016, recalling how the enraged fans invoked his own nickname during his years as a goalie.
Giacomin was replaced by John Davidson in goal. A week later, in a swapping of All-Stars, Francis traded Park and Ratelle to the Bruins in a multiplayer deal for defenseman Carol Vadnais and the future Hall of Fame center Phil Esposito.
Giacomin saw sporadic action with the Red Wings. He retired after the 1977-78 season with 49 shutouts for the Rangers and five for the Red Wings and a career goals-against average of 2.82. He was named to the first all-N.H.L. team twice and the second team three times.
He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1987 and became the second Ranger, after Gilbert, to have his number retired, when his No. 1 jersey was hoisted at the Garden in March 1989.
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“Eddie was an incredible competitor, and he simply may have been the most popular player ever for the Rangers,” Esposito, who had become the team’s general manager by then, remarked that night.
Edward Giacomin was born in Sudbury, Ontario, on June 6, 1939, to Antonio and Cesira (Bartolucci) Giacomin. His parents had immigrated from Italy, and his father was a construction worker who rose to foreman.
Eddie had ambitions to play pro hockey early on but, in the summer of 1959, following his first season in the Eastern Hockey League, he incurred serious burns to his legs and feet in a kitchen fire. He underwent skin grafts and returned to the league that autumn.
He was the regular goalie for the Providence Reds of the American Hockey League for five seasons before the Rangers gave up four players to obtain him in a trade.
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After retiring from the N.H.L., Giacomin owned a sports bar in suburban Detroit, and he was a broadcaster for the Islanders and a goalie coach for the Rangers, Islanders and Red Wings.
His marriage to Margaret Wilder ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two sons, Mark and David; a sister, Gloria Giacomin; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
For all of Giacomin’s achievements, hockey’s greatest honor (one that the Rangers would not attain again until 1994) eluded him.
“If I had the bottle, the genie, the one wish, it would be to see the Stanley Cup carried around Madison Square Garden, and by the Rangers,” he told The Times while awaiting the ceremony for the retirement of his number. “My life would be just about complete.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
