Well, Edmonton might have the best players, but the defending champions clearly have the better team. (And there’s nothing wrong with their top stars either!) So, the Stanley Cup will remain where it’s been for a while longer. It’s a fairly apt description of the series that wrapped up with a Florida Panthers victory on Tuesday night, but it would also apply to the Oilers’ first shot at the Stanley Cup, with Wayne Gretzky and company, against the New York Islanders back in 1983. As it turns out, it’s also a pretty good account of Edmonton’s very first attempt to win the Stanley Cup … all the way back in 1908!

The history of hockey in Edmonton dates to 1894, which is a year after the Stanley Cup was first presented in 1893. Early Edmonton hockey teams were amateur clubs — as all sports organizations in Canada were — but shortly after the first openly professional hockey teams and leagues started up in Canada in the winter of 1906–07, an Edmonton team decided to go pro. Fred Whitcroft was imported from Peterborough to star on and manage the Edmonton pros.

The early Edmonton teams had been known as the Thistles, but was often just called the Edmonton Hockey Club. The web site for the Society for International Hockey Research calls the team the Edmonton Capitals starting in 1907–08, but the team was often called the Edmonton Seniors, the Edmonton Professionals or just the Edmontons. A story in The Edmonton Evening Journal on December 28, 1908 — on the night Edmonton’s first Stanley Cup challenge began — says Fred Whitcroft called his team “the Little Tigers, partly because of their vivid orange and black stripes and partly because of the ferocity which he imagines them to be capable of.”

Fred Whitcroft first came to attention in hockey playing in Peterborough, Ontario, where he grew up. He had joined the Kenora Thistles midway through the 1906–07 season when they ran into injury problems. Whitcroft helped them hold on to the championship in the Manitoba Hockey League, but the Thistles lost a Stanley Cup rematch to the Montreal Wanderers at the end of the season. Whitcroft went home to Peterborough, and though various newspapers in the spring of 1907 said he would return to Kenora, on October 14, 1907, The Edmonton Bulletin reported that Whitcroft “has wired from Peterborough the acceptance of the position offered him by the local club.” He left Peterborough by train on Friday, October 18 and arrived in Edmonton late at night on Tuesday the 22nd.

The team Fred Whitcroft helped put together in Edmonton for the 1907–08 season was a good one. According to The Edmonton Evening Journal, recapping the season in its March 24, 1908 edition, the team won 19 of 22 league games playing against teams from nearby Strathcona and North Battleford, Saskatchewan. They also played and won five exhibition games. (They may actually have played 22 games in total.) The Journal reported that Whitcroft “carries off the honours for the season’s play,” scoring 49 goals in 16 games. Among his teammates, only Harold Deeton (25 goals in 16 games) and Hay Miller (21 in 15) came close.

As champions of the Interprovincial Professional Hockey League of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Edmonton challenged the defending Stanley Cup champion Montreal Wanderers in March of 1907. A two-game, total-goals series was arranged for December 28–30, 1908 before the start of the next season. The trustees in charge of the Stanley Cup had recently passed new rules hoping to bar challenging teams from recruiting star players as “ringers” for the big games. Still, when a challenge from one season was held over to the next, the trustees knew it was impossible to force teams to re-sign all their players to play with them again. Edmonton was told that as long as any new players were under contract before the start of the new season, they would be allowed to play with them for the Stanley Cup. The only proviso was that they couldn’t sign anyone who’d played for the Cup during the 1907–08 season.

Fred Whitcroft was apparently a whiz as a story teller and very popular among his fellow players. That couldn’t have hurt when he set out from Edmonton in the fall of 1908 to sign up new players to bolster his team. Tommy Phillips (who would soon sign with Edmonton) had been the one who brought “Whitty” to Kenora in 1907. In speaking with The Vancouver Province on November 28, 1908, Phillips said: “Fred has this fellow Munchausen lashed to the third rail. He told us more hair-raising experiences than would fill a twenty-volume encyclopedia… Fred was a dandy to make the time fly on long trips.”

After speaking with Whitcroft following the 1909–10 hockey season, a reporter from The Ottawa Citizen in a story on March 24, 1910, said “Whitcroft … is recognized as the champion storyteller of the National Hockey Association. ‘Whitty’ will take you on a flying trip to the North Pole just as readily as he will tell you how he floated across the Rockies in an airship to sign on Lester Patrick for the Edmonton club.” Whitcroft did sign Lester Patrick for the 1908 Stanley Cup series, but there’s no record of him flying out to Nelson, British Columbia to negotiate with him — and you’d think something like that would have made the papers!

Whitcroft, Tommy Phillips and Lester Patrick were all future Hockey Hall of Famers. Whitcroft signed another one for Edmonton in Didier Pitre. He apparently made an offer to Cyclone Taylor too, but Taylor either turned him down or the stories aren’t true. Whitcroft also signed Joe Hall, who scored eight goals in the one exhibition game he played in Edmonton but this future Hall of Famer was released shortly thereafter. In the December 28, 1908, Edmonton Journal story, it was reported that other Western papers said Whitty released Hall out of fear the notorious Bad Man would “rough it up and cause trouble in the East,” but Whitcroft said Hall was let go “because he was not playing the game.” Three other players signed for Edmonton’s Stanley Cup challenge were Hal McNamara, a long time pro of this era, Steve Vair, who was a solid player at the time, though little-known today, and goalie Bert Lindsay. Lindsay also had a long professional career but is best remembered as the father of Detroit Red Wings legend Ted Lindsay.

The Edmonton team began practice for the new season on November 25, 1908. They would play three exhibition games in Edmonton before departing for Montreal on December 16. But with new players constantly arriving, they never had their full lineup together before a workout or two in Montreal. For Game One against the Wanderers, Edmonton lined up with Steve Vair at center and Tommy Phillips and Hal McNamara on the wings. Fred Whitcroft was the rover with Lester Patrick and Didier Pitre at point and cover-point (defense) in front of Bert Lindsay. Only Whitcroft had played in Edmonton the previous season. The Wanderers had Harry Smith at center with future Hall of Famers Moose Johnson and Jimmy Gardner on the wing. Pud Glass was the rover with Walter Smaill at cover point. Two more future Hall of Famers in Art Ross (point) and Riley Hern (goal) completed the lineup.

At the end of the first half (hockey was played in two 30-minute halves not three 20-minute periods until 1910–11), Edmonton led 3–2. “We thought we were going some in the first half,” Whitcroft was quoted as saying in The Montreal Star the next day, “only to find out we were not in the second half.” The Wanderers scored five times for a 7–3 victory.

Newspapers the next day reported Tommy Phillips had broken his ankle with about 10 minutes to go, but continued to play until the end. Phillips himself would later say he’d actually broken his ankle shortly after scoring to give Edmonton a 2–1 lead midway through the first half and played the final 45 minutes despite his injury.

With Phillips out, Whitcroft was forced to shake up his all-star team. He dropped Steve Vair back to rover, benched Hal McNamara and put on an all-Edmonton forward line of himself, Harold Deeton and Hay Miller. Their familiarity with each other made a big difference, with Whitcroft scoring once and Miller (two goals on the game) and Deeton (three) scoring in the final minutes for a 7–6 victory.

Still, the Wanderers won the total-goal series with a 13–10 victory. The champions for most of the last two years retained the Stanley Cup. The challengers would have to try again.