Glenn Hall

After signing with the Detroit organization, Hall played goal in the minor leagues for Indianapolis and Edmonton. He played six games in 1952-53 and two more in 1954-55 for the parent Red Wings. Detroit in 1955 won its fourth Stanley Cup in six years (the Red Wings and Montreal won all but one of the Stanley Cups in the 1950s), but Hall did not play enough to have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup

But Detroit General Manager Jack Adams, feeling Hall was ready, traded star goalie Terry Sawchuk to the Boston Bruins. Hall played all seventy Detroit games that season, sporting a 2.11 goals-against average with twelve shutouts. Montreal, however, reclaimed the Stanley Cup, winning four of five games against the Red Wings in the final.

The following season, Hall's regular season goals-against was a solid 2.24, but Boston upset Detroit in the Stanley Cup semifinals, marking only the third time in ten years the Red Wings did not play for the championship.

In addition, Hall fell into disfavor with Adams, first for reporting late to training camp, then talking back to the general manager in front of the team in the dressing room. Adams, already upset at Detroit's failure to even reach the Cup finals while Montreal won its second straight title en route to five in a row, doled out what he thought was the quintessential punishment: banishment to Chicago, which had finished in last place the four previous years. It was "then known as hockey's Siberia," wrote Brian McFarlane, author of the "Original Six" series and a longtime regular on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Hockey Night in Canada telecasts. Adams accepted Chicago's offer of Johnny Wilson, Forbes Kennedy, Hank Bassen and William Preston for Ted Lindsay and Hall.

Years later, Lindsay said union activism triggered the deal. "I was traded because I was behind the formation of the Players Association and the trade happened right after I had my best year as a Red Wings," Lindsay told McFarlane years later. "As for Glenn Hall, I think he was thrown into the deal because he was a Ted Lindsay fan. For the next fifteen years, Hall was the best in the league."