If you’re reading this in Canada, and you’re looking to OD on hockey a day before the Super Bowl, this Saturday, Hockey Day In Canada will be bringing us its annual 13-hours of coverage. This year, the host city is Kamloops, B.C. So here’s an offbeat story from British Columbia’s hockey past.

Before the NHL was formed, the Stanley Cup was a challenge trophy available to the champions of any senior provincial hockey league in Canada. Since all leagues were small and regional, the current Stanley Cup holder would be called upon to defend the Cup (much like a boxing champion or a mixed-martial arts fighter today) against challenges from champions of other leagues . Because the hockey season was so short, these challenges could occur at any time during the winter; before the season, after the season, and even in the middle of the regular season.

The most famous challenger of this early era is the Dawson City team that travelled across Canada – part of the way by dogsled – only to be crushed by Frank McGee and the Ottawa Silver Seven in January of 1905. It was rare for a challenger to defeat the Stanley Cup champion, but teams like the Winnipeg Victorias and the Kenora Thistles did pull it off.

With a population of only 6,000 people in 1907, Kenora will always be the smallest town to win the Stanley Cup. But it wasn’t the only one to take its shot. The smallest of them all was the town of Phoenix, British Columbia (population about 1,000) who challenged for the Stanley Cup in 1911.

Phoenix is located in the south central part of the province, some 300 kilometres from Kamloops and just north of the border with Washington state. The area is known as the Boundary District. Copper was discovered near Phoenix in 1891, and by about 1895 a booming community grew up around the Granby mine. Hockey was introduced to the area a short time later.

The game caught on quickly, and received a big boost in the region in 1907 and 1908 when Frank and Lester Patrick moved to Nelson, B.C., with their father’s lumber business.

During the winter of 1911, the Boundary League featured teams in Phoenix, Grand Forks, and Greenwood. They played each other for times apiece, two at home and two on the road, giving the teams eight games over the six-week season. Phoenix had imported several new players from all across Canada this year, although none were names fans would recognize today. (You can read the names at the bottom the next clip.)

The season began on January 2 with Phoenix and Grand Forks playing to a 3-3 tie. Phoenix then rattled off five straight wins to clinch the title by January 30. Two more wins followed and Phoenix finished the season on February 13 with a record of 7-0-1. But in order to call themselves provincial champions and have a shot at the Stanley Cup, Phoenix needed to win the tournament at the annual Rossland Winter Carnival.

Phoenix claimed the British Columbia title by defeating a beefed-up team from Greenwood and then romping to an 8-2 win over hometown Rossland. They also won the Open challenge series, defeating Rossland once again and crushing the team from Missoula, Montana, 13-5. All four games were played in just five days.

Later, Phoenix beat Rossland one more time, pushing their record for the year to 12 wins and a tie in 13 games. Only one thing marred a nearly perfect season for Phoenix: they never got the chance to test themselves against the Patrick brothers and their powerhouse team in Nelson. Challenges were issued, but Nelson refused to play in the tiny rink in Phoenix, wouldn’t agree to meet the team on neutral ice, and didn’t offer any acceptable dates in their own rink. Nelson even took a pass on the Rossland Carnival.

Undaunted, on February 24, 1911, a telegram was sent to William Foran, one of two trustees in charge of administering the Stanley Cup, asking for a series with the Ottawa Senators:

Newspapers across Canada reported on the Phoenix challenge, though few gave the team serious consideration.

When a reply came from William Foran, it was indeed bad news:

“Challenge received. Regret impossible to give you dates this season as there are three other challenges before the trustees. If you so desire will arrange for a series of matches with the holders of the cup at the opening of next season.”

It was strongly hinted that if Phoenix did get a chance to play for the Cup, they would add Frank and Lester Patrick to their lineup. However, as the 1911-12 season approached the brothers were busy creating the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.  Phoenix never seems to have followed up with Foran.

The team continued to have success in the Boundary League in the years to come, but there would never again be a Stanley Cup challenge.

In the following years, many men from the tiny town of Phoenix found themselves fighting with the Canadian Army during the first World War. Fifteen sons of Phoenix gave their lives. In a sense, the town did too. The end of the War saw world markets for copper collapse, and in 1919 the Granby mine closed down. The town cleared out, with many former inhabitants leaving everything behind. By 1920, Phoenix was literally a ghost town.

Among the last projects planned in Phoenix was a monument to the local War dead. When many of the town’s buildings were sold for scrap, the $1,200 raised by the sale of iron and lumber from the local hockey rink was put toward the memorial. Today, the Phoenix Cenotaph is the only relic remaining from a once booming town that had hoped to win the Stanley Cup.

Thirty-five years (and two days) ago, on January 24, 1981, Mike Bossy of the New York Islanders scored his 50th goal of the 1980-81 season. He did it just 50 games. Wayne Gretzky would obliterate this unofficial record with 50 goals in 39 games the next season, but we had no way of knowing this at the time, so it was all pretty exciting!

I was definitely caught up in the race as both Bossy and Charlie Simmer of the Los Angeles Kings took their shot at the 50-50 milestone. Simmer fell just short, with three goals in a 6-4 afternoon victory over Boston that same January day to give him 49 goals in 50 games. Bossy had reached 48 goals through 47 games but was shutout in two straight, and then for two periods that Saturday night against the Quebec Nordiques. He finally scored #49 with 3:10 remaining in the third, and then got #50 with just 1:30 to go. By that time, Hockey Night in Canada had gone live to the game, so I was watching when Bossy scored it. It was quite a moment.

Entering the 1980-81 season, there had been 23 players who’d scored 50 goals in a season since Maurice Richard had first done it in 1944-45. Many, like Bossy, had reached the milestone more than once. But none until that night had managed to match the Rocket’s feat of 50 goals in just 50 games.

Twenty years before Bossy, in the 1960-61 season, Frank Mahovlich, Dickie Moore and Boom Boom Geoffrion were all in the hunt to join Richard as the only 50-goal scorers in NHL history. At the time, there were those who claimed that even if one of them made it (Geoffrion was the only one who did), the record would be tainted because the NHL season was then 70 games long. Richard was not among those who saw it that way.

On January 25, 1961 – with Toronto’s Frank Mahovlich having scored 37 goals in 46 games – Richard spoke about his 50-goal record. “Naturally, I’d rather see someone on the Canadiens do it first,” he said, “but what does it matter? Records are meant to be broken, aren’t they?” When asked about scoring 50 in 70 games versus the 50 he’d played, Richard didn’t see any issue. “The record is for most goals in a season,” he said, “not in so many games. After all, Joe Malone once scored 44 goals in 22 games.”

Joe Malone had actually scored his 44 goals while playing in just 20 of 22 scheduled games during the NHL’s inaugural season of 1917-18, but Malone was certainly supportive when the Rocket broke his record in 1944-45. He was at the Forum on February 25, 1945, when Richard netted #45 in his 42nd game and the next day in a bylined article in the Montreal Star, Malone wrote that Richard:

“is one of those players that comes along every once in a while, and I hope he goes on to even greater feats… Ever since he became such a talked-about player I have followed his career with interest… I am happy that my record was broken by such a fine young player. They say he is a fine-living boy, who keeps in tip top shape.”

Richard wasn’t able to be there when Geoffrion became hockey’s second 50-goal scorer on March 16, 1961.

Click to enlarge.

He wasn’t there when Bossy scored 50 in 50 in 1981 either, but he phoned him after the game and sent a telegram of congratulations. Richard was particularly pleased that Bossy was from suburban Montreal. “In fact,” he told reporters later, “I told the Canadiens to draft him in 1977, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They said he wasn’t good enough defensively.”

“What the Canadiens didn’t understand,” Richard added, “is when you can score goals like he can, you don’t watch your man. He watches you.”

Interestingly, Billy Reay said almost the exact same thing about Richard when he left the Canadiens organization to become coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the spring of 1957. In discussing his philosophy of letting a player do what he does best, Reay said: “Take Rocket Richard as an example. He’s so tremendous at carrying the puck in and scoring goals that no one ever worries about his defensive ability. Generally, the man covering him is too busy to think about scoring.”

Coaches don’t think like that anymore, and it’s a big reason why on January 26, 1981, Marcel Dionne led the NHL with 90 points in 50 games (Gretzky had “only” 83 in 47) and Bossy had his 50 goals, while today Chicago’s Patrick Kane leads with 30 goals and 73 points in 52 games … which is actually pretty high by recent low-scoring NHL standards.

Tomorrow is Art Ross’s birthday. It would probably be his 131st … but most records indicate it’s “only” his 130th.  In the early days of researching my biography, I probably spent way too much time going back and forth with Art Ross III about the actual year of his grandfather’s birth. Then again, I figured that getting the birth date right was an important part of writing about him! Only some of what I found about Ross’ birthday made it into the book, but there’s plenty more if you’re interested.

Unless I’ve already gotten to them,  the vast majority of hockey sources that list birth dates say Art Ross was born on January 13, 1886. Unfortunately, there’s no actual birth certificate to confirm this. The only official Canadian document to offer proof is a page in the 1911 Census that lists Ross’s birth month as January and the year as 1886. No actual day is listed. However, his 1934 Immigration Registration card from the United States, his 1939 Declaration of Intention to become an American citizen, and his 1942 U.S. World War II draft registration card all list his birthday as January 13, 1886. In interviews, articles, and letters he wrote over the years, it certainly seems that Art Ross himself believed (or, at least wished others to believe!) he was born in 1886. Still, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest he was actually born in 1885.

Art Ross III has his grandfather’s U.S. identification card from World War II.

Old census forms are notoriously unreliable when it comes to determining ages and birth dates. Art Ross’s records are no exception. In the 1891 Canadian Census, he is listed as being seven years old, which would indicate a birth year of 1884. In the 1901 Census – which is the only early Canadian Census with columns for the month, day and year of birth – all the Ross children have a blank space where the year should be. The entry for “Arthur” lists only 13 Jan, but his age of 16 would indicate a birth year of 1885. Similarly, in the 1906 Census of Canada’s western provinces, taken when Ross was living in Brandon, Manitoba, Arthur’s 21 years of age would again suggest he was born in 1885.

I was amazed that the Bank of Montreal HAS an archivist, and that she could find this …
although the middle name Houri (it should be Howey) is a little odd.

More promising than the Census records are the records on file with the Bank of Montreal, whose archives include information on employees with the Merchants Bank of Canada that merged with BMO in 1922. Those records indicate that Arthur Ross began work as a clerk with the Merchants Bank in Montreal on October 4, 1903. His date of birth is listed as January 13, 1885. Of course, it’s possible that Ross was lying if he had to be 18 to get the job. However, a birth date of January 13, 1885 is listed in a biographical entry for Arthur H. Ross in a 1915 guidebook to Montreal and its history. Also, Ross spent one year at the prestigious Bishop’s College School in 1898–99, and according to the school’s archivist, in correspondence with amateur Ross family genealogist Serge Harvey, Bishop’s records also show that Ross was born on January 13, 1885.

Confusion again with the middle name. Herbert, this time, instead of Howey.

Though it’s all little more than circumstantial without a birth certificate, perhaps the most compelling argument that Art Ross was born in 1885 comes from fellow hockey legend and childhood friend Frank Patrick, for whom baptismal records survive to confirm his birth date of December 21, 1885. In the first of an eight-part autobiographical series that ran in the Boston Sunday Globe shortly after Ross hired him to coach the Boston Bruins, Patrick had this to say about his boyhood chum:

When I first met Art Ross he was 12 years old and I was 11. Between then and now, Art seems to have lost time. He now claims he is a year and 23 days younger than I. My belief is that he is that year, less 23 days, older. But Art has lost his birth certificate (accidentally?) somewhere en route, so he has the edge on me there.

Of course, even Frank Patrick seems a bit confused, because if Ross was claiming to be a full year and 23 days younger than Patrick, that would mean that he was born on January 13, 1887. Clearly, though, Patrick recalled that Ross had been older than he was when they were boys, and he believed him to have been born earlier in the same year that he was, and that year was 1885.

This Montreal City Guide from 1915 shows a birth date of January 13, 1885.
Then again, it credits Ross with two extra years of working for the Merchants Bank.

When the grandchildren of Art Ross commissioned a new headstone in 2014 to replace the somewhat shabby original one marking his final resting place in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal, Art Ross III, who has done years of genealogical research on his family, had the birth year 1885 etched into the bronze.

It’s not quite carved in stone (and most sources will never catch up) but there you go.

I’ll be honest. When I came across this old newspaper clipping, I hoped it would make for a fun story after Canada won another gold medal at the World Junior Championships … or had at least qualified for the medal round! But really, the strong showings this year by Finland, Russia, the U.S. and Sweden just goes to show how right this story was.

“Although Canada will hold the dominating position in the hockey world for some years to come,” this scoring star and future Hockey Hall of Famer wrote, “it may not always be that the Dominion will develop and produce the winning teams.”

As Hockey Canada president Tom Renney said in the wake of Canada’s disappointing performance in Helsinki: “How long can we say other countries are getting better? I’ve been doing this for 25 years. Other countries have been good for a long time.”

That’s certainly true, and the use of the word Dominion in the clip I found is a pretty good indication that the writer wasn’t Sidney Crosby or Wayne Gretzky or even Phil Esposito. So, who was it? It was the star who’d led Canada on a romp to the gold medal with the Toronto Granites at the first Winter Olympic Games in 1924: Harry Watson. He wrote his thoughts in the Toronto Star on December 28, 1929.

“Canada will always be recognized as the home of hockey and will continue to contribute more players to the game than any other country,” Watson continued, “but already some of the United States colleges are producing players of the first rank and increased interest in hockey on the other side [of the border] will help to bring them on more and more.

“Czecho-Slovakia and other European countries were almost childish in their knowledge of hockey several years ago, but their interest is keen and the development since then has been rapid. The men we came up against in the Olympic competition showed all kinds of natural ability and proper instruction, with competition against better teams, should bring about improvement. The Czecho-Slavs will make good hockey players. So will the Swiss and the Germans.”

Two shots of Canada in action against the United States while en route to a 6-1 victory in the gold medal game at Chamonix, France in 1924. Canada had previously run up scores of 30-0 versus the Czechs, 22-0 vs Sweden, 33-0 vs Switzerland and 19-2 over Great Britain. Harry Watson (seen at the far left) scored 37 goals in those five games.

Interestingly, Watson had nothing to say about Sweden or Finland. But in 1929, Finland had yet to appear at a major world tournament and hockey fans would already have been aware of the Swedes. “They were without a doubt the best of the European teams,” Frank Fredrickson of the Winnipeg Falcons said after leading Canada to gold at the 1920 Olympic tournament (which was held in the spring, in conjunction with the Summer Games in Antwerp, Belgium), and Sweden had recently won a silver medal at the 1928 Winter Olympics.

Of course, no one was talking about the Russians as a hockey power in 1929. The sport didn’t really get started in the Soviet Union until the early 1930s, and didn’t take off until the end of World War II. In 1948, the LTC Prague team from Czechoslavakia came to Russia and could manage no better than a 1-1-1 record in three games with the Moscow Selects. This was big news behind the Iron Curtain, but little notice was taken of it here in the West. By April of 1951, the growing success of the Russian national team against other Communist countries was harder to ignore. The articles that follow all contain the same story, but the different headlines seem to indicate that few in North America took it very seriously.

From The Globe and Mail (Toronto), the San Antonio Light, the Ottawa Journal,
the Decatur Herald, the Terre Haute Star and The Pantograph (Bloomington, Illinois). 

My friend and colleague Igor Kuperman had some information for me about this game. The Soviets were coached by the soon-to-be legendary Anatoli Tarasov and the team had gone to Berlin to practice on artificial ice and play games against the East Germans.

It would be another three years before the Soviets finally entered the World Championships, but they won the tournament at their 1954 debut, and added an Olympic gold medal in 1956. By the 1960s, Canada could no longer expect to dominate international hockey tournaments merely by showing up. Canadians still expect gold from their hockey teams – and often get it – but you can’t win ’em all.

Though it won’t be out for a while, I’m currently working on an oral history of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Recent research turned up numerous references to the famed Kid Line of Joe Primeau, Busher Jackson and Charlie Conacher playing their first game together for Toronto on December 29, 1929. So, I figured, that was a perfect story for today. But – as is so often the case with old-time hockey facts – the true story wasn’t quite so simple.

From left to right, Charlie Conacher, Joe Primeau and Busher Jackson.

Joe Primeau (born January 29, 1906) was the first of these young players to reach the NHL. He was 22, but Primeau played only a few games with the Maple Leafs in 1927-28 and 1928-29. Charlie Conacher (born December 20 1909) was more than a month shy of his 20th birthday when he joined the Leafs for the 1929-30 season. According to most accounts, right winger Conacher began his NHL career playing with center Eric Pettinger and left winger Harold (Baldy) Cotton. Soon, though, Primeau replaced Pettinger as the center on the line. Cotton was already 27 years old and in his fifth NHL season, but after the Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Cougars 1-0 on a Primeau goal on Saturday night, November 30, 1929, Toronto Star sportswriter Lou Marsh writing in the paper on Monday, December 2, referred to “Whizz-Bang Conacher, Slippery Joe Primeau and Harold Tonsilitis Cotton” as Conn Smythe’s “kid line.” Marsh uses lower-case letters (as he would for a while yet), but this is the first use of the phrase I’ve come across.

A few days later, on December 6, 1929, the Maple Leafs signed Harvey (Busher) Jackson. Born on January 17, 1911, Jackson was still just 18 years old and was the youngest player in the NHL when he made his Leafs debut the following night against the Montreal Canadiens. Jackson and Conacher had been teammates with the Toronto Marlboros the past two seasons, and were immediately paired up with the Leafs – with Primeau as their center.

To be honest, it’s unclear if Primeau, Jackson and Conacher played the entire game together on December 7, 1929, but they were certainly the combination Conn Smythe turned to with the game on the line. As Lou Marsh wrote in the Star on Monday, December 9:

“Apart from the fact that the Leafs were lucked out of a win the contest did not wow the customers except in the last four minutes. But in that four minutes the customers got even with the box office. The score was 1-0 then – had been since the second minute of the second period when Hap Day deflected a Lepine to Mantha pass into his own net – and the Leafs were staging a peppery three-ply attack upon the Canadien’s citadel… Manager Smythe hurled reinforcement after reinforcement at the unbroken red-clad troops. First he had the kid line out – Harvey Jackson, the newest recruit, Joe Primeau and Whizz Conacher – and they whirled in upon the Canadien defence like vagrant cyclones… It did not look as if they could miss the tying goal. How Hainsworth kept that puck into open circulation no one knows – but he did.”

From the Toronto Star, Monday, January 20, 1930.

Not only did the Leafs lose 1-0, but Jackson appears to have been hurt. He wasn’t in the lineup when the Leafs visited the New York Americans on December 10 and on December 12 the Globe in Toronto noted that he was “laid up with a bad leg.” Jackson missed three more games before returning to face the Pittsburgh Pirates on December 21, but it appears that he lined up with Eric Pettinger and Art Smith that night, while Primeau and Conacher stayed with Cotton. Conacher was reported as having played despite being sick, and he was out of the lineup when Toronto was defeated 6-2 in Boston on December 25.

Cotton appears to have been hurt in the Christmas night game, and when Toronto was in Chicago on December 29, Smythe was forced to juggle his lines again. The Maple Leafs beat the Black Hawks, “and what pleases Horace H. Public the most,” wrote Marsh in the Star, “is the fact that the Leafs’ kid fowards – Conacher, Primeau and Jackson – delivered on target.” Primeau set up Jackson midway through the second period for a 3-1 Toronto lead and after Chicago rallied to tie it in the third, Conacher took a pass from Primeau and beat Charlie Gardiner to give the Leafs a 4-3 victory.

While it’s clear the December 29 game wasn’t the first time they’d played together, there was no splitting up the threesome after that! The Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Maroons 5-3 on New Year’s Day, and the Globe noted:

“The feature of the game was the work of the ex-Marlboro stars. Jackson and Conacher worked well with Primeau and they provided some of the best attacking plays of the game… That ‘kid’ forward line of Primeau at center and Conacher and Jackson on the wings showed some pretty hockey.”

Three nights later, when the Leafs beat the Canadiens 4-3 on January 4, 1930, the Kid Line earned headlines … and capital letters!

From the Toronto Star, Monday, January 6, 1930.

The rest is history, with scoring titles and All-Star berths to come for Primeau, Jackson and Conacher, and Stanley Cup championships and a nation-wide fan frenzy (thanks to Foster Hewitt’s radio broadcasts) soon to follow.

A hockey book for Christmas has been a good idea since 1909. The Ottawa Journal had only good things to say about Percy Lesueur’s effort in this article from December 16 of that year. Lesueur was a future member of the Hockey Hall of Fame and as the paper notes,  the “famous goaltend” of the Stanley Cup champion Ottawa Senators.

If you’re still searching for a gift for the hockey fan or history buff on your list, might I suggest my latest efforts — Art Ross: The Hockey Legend Who Built the Bruins and, for younger readers, The Ultimate Book of Hockey Trivia for Kids. Or check out these suggestions from Lance Hornby of the Toronto Sun in his annual Christmas hockey book list.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Art Ross and Conn Smythe didn’t like each other. You’ll sometimes read that the feud between the two men was staged to sell tickets. It certainly seemed to help the box office, and maybe they played it up in the years after World War II, but it seems to me that they truly disliked one another throughout the 1920s and ’30s.

There are many theories as to what sparked this hatred. I go into greater detail about much of this in my book Art Ross: The Hockey Legend Who Built the Bruins, but the leading contenders seem to be:

• Smythe mocked the first-year Bruins on a trip to Boston with his Toronto Varsity team in 1924 and Ross never forgave him
•  Ross duped Smythe into trading for Sailor Herbert for the Maple Leafs in 1927 and Smythe never forgave him

These and many other petty reasons no doubt added up, but I think they were just two strong personalities who each wanted what was best for themselves and their team and damn anyone who got in the way.

One of the last great flare-ups in the Ross-Smythe feud occurred on this week back in 1939 when Conn Smythe showed up at the office of the Boston Globe. The defending Stanley Cup champion Bruins would be the NHL’s highest scoring team by far during the 1939-40 season, but Smythe was spewing venom about the Boston’s boring defensive play in a 1-1 tie in Toronto a few days before. As quoted in the Globe on December 19, 1939:

“First of all, I want to put a paid advertisement in your paper to let the fans of Boston know that they can see at least one great hockey team in action [to]night.”

“Mind you, we’ll get no financial return from this ad because the visiting club doesn’t get a share at all in the receipts. But if we’ve got to carry the whole National League while the other clubs fall asleep and try to scare the customers away, then we’re willing to put out the dough.

“I’m referring particularly to that game the Bruins played in Toronto last Thursday night. That, my friends, was a living disgrace. It was a perfect exhibition of how to drive the customers away in droves. Sure, I know the Bruins have lost Eddie Shore and Roy Conacher, but they’re still the champions, aren’t they? Everybody calls them champions. Why can’t they play like champions then, both on the road and at home?

“We have anywhere from 500 to 1000 fans from Kitchener every time the Bruins are in town to see the Sauerkraut Line. All they saw last Thursday night was the ‘Sauer’ part…. I guess Ross is so busy inventing things that he doesn’t find time to make his players play hockey… Well, if that’s the way they want to play, we’ll carry the load and show the customers hockey as it should be played.”

Smythe’s outburst helped to attract a crowd of 14,107 to the Boston Garden that night. It was the largest crowd of the season to that point, and they saw the Bruins score a 3-2 victory in overtime. Ross later demanded that the NHL fine Smythe $1,000 for his conduct. The issue was raised at the next league meeting, but was dismissed. Instead, a motion was passed censuring both Smythe and Ross for their unseemly bickering over the years.

Art Ross, Conn Smythe, and Art Ross Jr.

Soon after, Ross’s sons Arthur and John enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Smythe was a World War I veteran who would re-enlist during World War II. “I was a little sorry about having been on [Ross] all the time when his sons came up and joined the RCAF,” Smythe would write in his autobiography. “We weren’t so hard on one another after that.”

The feud did seem to abate as the years went by, though the two men probably never liked each other much. Perhaps, though, there was at least some level of mutual respect. At the end of my book, I mention a telegraph that arrived at the Boston Garden following Ross’s death on August 5, 1964. Here it is:

And, in light of the recent decision by Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred on Pete Rose, a link to my story from February 18.

On Monday, Garret Sparks became the first goalie in Maple Leafs history to earn a shutout in his NHL debut when Toronto beat Edmonton 3-0. His emotional reaction in an interview after being named the game’s first star – and the shot of his parents in the stands – is definitely worth checking out.

I haven’t researched it myself, but according to hockey goalies.org, Sparks is the 23rd goalie in NHL history to begin his career with a shutout. Bad news for Leafs fans, but only a few went on to notable careers, and only one – Boston Bruins legend Tiny Thompson – went on to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Though he didn’t begin with a shutout as Thompson had in 1928-29, the debut of Frank Brimsek in Boston 10 years later was even more spectacular. Brimsek – the first American-born NHL star – was in the news last season when Ottawa goalie Andrew Hammond tied his NHL record by allowing two goals or less in 12 straight starts to begin his career. Still, unless you’re into hockey history, Brimsek’s not a name many fans know today. That may change due to a book out soon by Ty Dilello.

Ty and I have never met in person, but we have been touch online. He’s only about 23 years old … and he’s the first person I know who grew up to become a writer after reading my books for kids when he was a boy! So, I’ll admit, it was a kick when he sent me an early copy of his Brimsek book and asked me to provide a “blurb” for the back cover.

The book is called “Mr. Zero” and if you know anything at all about Frank Brimsek it’s likely to be that that was his nickname, coined after the string of shutouts he put up at the beginning of his career. But pretty much everything you think you might know about him is wrong. Not meaning to steal any of Ty’s thunder, but some of this already appears in my Art Ross biography, so here’s a brief rundown of the fact versus fiction.

It’s generally reported that Art Ross’s decision to trade Tiny Thompson and replace him with Brimsek came as a bolt out of the blue. While it’s true that Boston fans – and even Bruins teammates – were shocked by the move, it had actually been a long time coming. Thompson had first told Ross he was contemplating retirement at the end of the 1936-37 season. He even suggested Brimsek as his replacement, and so Ross signed him for the Bruins farm team. Thompson was talking retirement again in April of 1938 and there was soon talk that he and Brimsek would share time in the Bruins net during the 1938-39 season.

Painting by Darrin Egan. Contact him at: inthebluepaint@gmail.com

Even so, Brimsek was ticketed to return to the minors until Thompson suffered an eye injury late in training camp. Brimsek opened the season with the Bruins, posting a 3-2 win in Toronto and a 4-1 victory in Detroit. With Thompson now recovered, Brimsek was dispatched to Providence. Boston went 3-1-1 in the next five games with Thompson allowing just 8 goals in 310 minutes for a 1.56 average. Still, Ross had liked what he’d seen in Brimsek and on November 28, 1938, it was announced that Thompson had been sold to Detroit for $15,000. At the time, it was the richest deal for a goalie in NHL history.

The other thing you might know about Brimsek is his run of six shutouts in his first eight games, but that’s not quite true either. That total ignores Brimsek’s first two starts at the beginning of the season and only begins from the time Thompson went to Detroit. After recording those two early wins, Brimsek actually lost his first start as Boston’s number-one goalie with Thompson gone, but then he bounced back with three straight shutout wins. After a 3-2 victory in his next start, Brimsek strung together another three shutouts in a row. He was now 9-1-0 in 10 games with six shutouts and a 0.70 goals-against average and was the talk of the hockey world.

Brimsek finished the 1938-39 season 33-9-1 and led the NHL with 10 shutouts and a 1.56 average. He became the first goalie to win both the Vezina Trophy and the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year, and he led the Bruins to their first Stanley Cup championship since Tiny Thompson’s rookie season in 1928-29. He never put up such spectacular numbers again, but Brimsek did win the Stanley Cup for a second time in 1941, the Vezina again in 1942 and was a perennial All-Star both before and after taking two years out in the prime of his career to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II.

They’re not going to win the Stanley Cup this year, but the Leafs have been on a bit of a roll lately. Still, no one’s likely to be wondering this time if it’s the cigarettes or if it’s the shoes!

(In case you can’t read the small print, the cigarette ad reads: Joe Primeau, clean sportsman, staunch centre of the Stanley Cup winners, Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Team’s famous “kid line,” won this season’s award of the Lady Byng Trophy for “the best type of sportsmanship combined with a high standard of playing ability.” Joe says of Buckingham: “A clean, cool, mellow cigarette. I recommend Buckingham.”

Clancy’s letter says: Dear Sir – We came across, the championship is ours, and your shoes for both hockey and street wear helped though a long, hard season. Kindest regards, Yours truly, Frank King Clancy.)