He was the third of four sons and one adopted daughter of Louis Sawchuk, a tinsmith who had immigrated to Canada as a boy from Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine), and his wife Anne (nee Maslak), a homemaker.

At age twelve, Sawchuk injured his right elbow playing rugby and, not wanting to be punished by his parents, hid the injury, preventing the dislocation from properly healing.

After inheriting his good friend's goalie equipment, Sawchuk began playing ice hockey in a local league and worked for a sheet-metal company installing vents over bakery ovens.

The Red Wings signed Sawchuk to a professional contract in 1947, and he quickly progressed through their developmental system, winning honors as the Rookie of the Year in both the U.S. and American Hockey Leagues.

Sawchuk showed such promise that the Red Wings traded Lumley to the Chicago Black Hawks, though he had just led the team to the 1950 Stanley Cup.

In the 1951–52 playoffs, the Red Wings swept both the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens, with Sawchuk surrendering five goals in eight games (for a 0.625 GAA), with four shutouts.

He frequently played through pain, and during his career he had three operations on his right elbow, an appendectomy, countless cuts and bruises, a broken foot, a collapsed lung, ruptured discs in his back, and severed tendons in his hand.

[4] Years of crouching in the net caused Sawchuk to walk with a permanent stoop and resulted in lordosis (swayback), which prevented him from sleeping for more than two hours at a time.

[6] The Red Wings traded Sawchuk to the Boston Bruins in June 1955 because they had a capable younger goaltender in the minor leagues (Glenn Hall).

Physically weak, playing poorly, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown and exhaustion, he announced his retirement in early 1957 and was labeled a "quitter" by team executives and several newspapers.

After seven seasons, when they had another promising young goalie (Roger Crozier) ready for promotion from the minor leagues, Detroit left Sawchuk unprotected in the 1964 NHL Intra-League Draft, and he was quickly claimed by the Maple Leafs.

[7] With Sawchuk sharing goaltending duties with the forty-year-old Johnny Bower, the veteran duo won the 1964–65 Vezina Trophy and led Toronto to the 1967 Stanley Cup.

Left unprotected in the June 1967 expansion draft, Sawchuk was the first player selected, taken by the Los Angeles Kings where he played one season before being traded back to Detroit.

They had seven children, and the family endured many years of Sawchuk's increasing alcoholism, philandering (he impregnated a Toronto girlfriend in 1967), and verbal and physical abuse.

On April 29, 1970, after the 1969–70 season ended, Sawchuk and Rangers teammate Ron Stewart, both of whom had been drinking, physically fought over expenses for the house they rented together on Long Island, New York.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy was little understood during his era in sports but may have contributed to his depression and behaviour and would be consistent with the degree of head trauma he experienced during his career.