Detroit Red Wings legend Terry Sawchuk was known as a brilliant goaltender with a darkness and sadness in his heart that often left him brooding or depressed.

But 58 years ago, while playing for the Los Angeles Kings, Sawchuk was feeling festive enough to buy his children a pseudo-White Christmas.

Unless you live in the San Gabriel Mountains or perhaps the foothills, no one in LA dreams of a white Christmas. According to official snowfall records of Los Angeles County, the last instance a real snowfall in downtown LA was a measured two inches in 1932. Temperatures at sea level don’t often dip low enough to turn rain into snow.

But Sawchuk had promised his children a white Christmas and he delivered on that promise the best he could on Dec. 23, 1967.

Dreaming of Crushed Ice?

Sawchuk, making $40,000 per year with the Kings, cut a deal with a local company to have multiple tons of crushed ice dumped on his front lawn in the beachfront community of Hermosa Beach, California. That at created the illusion of a snowfall not far from the Pacific Ocean.

The Hall of Fame goalie’s reputation as a grumpy, surly athlete with too many bad days, was not in play that day. He definitely was one of the coolest dads on the block.

Thirty months later, Sawchuk was dead, on May 31, 1970, at age 40, from complications (internal injuries and infection) resulting from a fight with New York Rangers teammate Ron Stewart the month before.

The Red Wings retired Sawchuk’s No. 1 in 1994. If you want to read more about Sawchuk’s troubled life, Brian Kendall wrote a 1996 book,  Shutout: The Legend of Terry Sawchuk.  A second book Sawchuk: The troubles and triumphs of the World’s Greatest Goalie was published in 1998 by David Dupuis, with the participation of the Sawchuk family.

 

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