Red Wings Take 3-2 Series Edge over Black Hawks

Apr. 11, 1965 - It had to be the fastest Stanley Cup playoff game in history — it was over in five seconds. 

Detroit’s Norm Ullman (pictured) scored a hat trick — two of the markers only five seconds apart — to lead the Red Wings to a 4-2 victory over the Chicago Black Hawks before a crowd of 15,007.

The victory gave the NHL regular season champions a 3-2 edge in the best-of-seven Stanley Cup semifinal with the series swinging back to Chicago Tuesday.

Again, as he did in the first game, Ullman overshadowed brilliant Bobby Hull, who seemed to be on the ice most of the game.

Blond Bobby scored his seventh goal of the series at 14:59 of the second period, just after getting out of the penalty box, to give the Hawks a 2-1 lead. But Ullman erased that in record time.

The first one came at 17:35. Warren Godfrey was off after a stick-swinging session.

Ullman picked up the puck by the Detroit blue line, trailed by Chico Maki. Ahead at the Hawk blue line were big Elmer Vasko and Pierre Pilote.

Ullman cut to his left, and the rearguards swung with him, but he fired a big slap shot from 50 feet. Hawk goalie Glenn Hall was partly screened by his own men, and the ice skimmer caught the far corner.

After the celebrating died down, referee John Ashley dropped the puck at center ice, and Ullman was off again, picking up the puck by the Red Wing bench and cutting over the line.

This time, Matt Ravlich and Al MacNeil were the Hawk defensemen.

On a carbon-copy play, Ullman took advantage of a partial screen and blasted from way out again. The puck took a skip along the way and hit that same far corner again as if drawn by a magnet.

“He didn’t make a move on either of the shots,” Ullman said of Hall. 

“Those two goals did it,” said Hawk coach Billy Reay. “We were leading before the first one, and I thought we were outplaying them. And then the second one hit. That was the game right there. They were really the same shot, weren’t they?”

The victory was achieved despite adversity. Regulars Al Langlois, Ron Murphy, and Pit Martin sat out the game because of injuries.

Then big Doug Barkley slid into the boards after tripping Maki, and the Red Wing defenseman hit his head, knocked himself unconscious, and was carried off on a stretcher. He was taken to Detroit Osteopathic Hospital for a possible concussion.

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