With a little more than three weeks to go in the NHL season, the race for the Art Ross Trophy is incredibly tight. And yet there doesn’t seem to be much buzz about it. Perhaps that’s because whether the winner is John Tavares, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, or one of the others in the bunch, he’s likely to end up with no more than 86 points. If so, that’ll be the lowest total in a non-strike season since Gordie Howe led the league with 86 points in 1962-63. But, of course, the NHL season was just 70 games long then.

Howe’s points-per-game average of 1.2285 in 1962-63 works out to about 101 points in an 82 game season, whereas 86 points in 82 games translates to only 73 points in a 70-game schedule. Nobody has led the NHL with fewer than 73 points since Max Bentley led the way with 72 in 1946-47. But the season was just 60 games long at that time, so even Bentley’s total would work out 84 points in a 70-game season, or 98 points in 82 games.

Given that no one has led the NHL with less than a-point-per game total since Toe Blake topped the league with 47 points in a 48-game season back in 1938-39, (comparable to 80 points in an 82-game schedule), we’re looking at a fairly historic lack of scoring in the NHL this season.

David Feschuk, writing in the Toronto Star on March 13, noted that the decline in scoring can be traced directly to power-play offense, with man-advantage chances at the lowest level in 50 years. Feschuk quotes St. Louis Blues coach Ken Hitchcock and Nashville Predators’ GM David Poile as saying that everyone seems to be on board these days with what is and what isn’t a penalty and that coaches are happy with the way games are being called.

Yet Feschuk also quotes former referee Kerry Fraser as saying that the current, younger, referees have been insufficiently trained, and that they’re calling minors instead of majors, or sometimes nothing at all, because they’d rather let plays go knowing that anything they missed will be flagged for additional suspensions, if warranted, by the NHL’s video review. Fewer power-plays means fewer power-play goals, and, even worse, calling fewer penalties makes it that much easier to clog things up for the skilled players. The game may be faster than ever before, but that doesn’t mean much if there’s no room to move and no time to think.

Of course, there’s also the argument that scoring – briefly on the rise after the “Dead Puck Era” by the tweaks to the rules introduced in 2005–06 after the season-long lockout ended – is once again on the decline because goalies today are better than they’ve ever been. They may well be. They’re certainly better-trained than they’ve ever been and physically larger too (even if their oversized equipment has been reined in somewhat).

So, if scoring chances have more-or-less remained the same, but goalies (based on their save percentages) are stopping more shots, then what’s the answer? People aren’t saying it as much as they were a few years ago, but is it larger nets? (We’ll look at that next week.) But if there really isn’t enough time and space on the ice, then maybe the answer is fewer players.

Talks are moving forward on some form of 3-on-3 overtime to break more ties before going to a shootout, but there’s little if any talk these days of going to 4-on-4 in regulation time. I’m not saying that 4-on-4 is the answer (and you’ve got to wonder how much the NHL Players Association would support it), but there did used to be a rover in the early days of hockey and the decision to eliminate that extra position (which was first made in 1911-12) worked out pretty well! Not everybody was on board with that in the beginning either. I think it was future Hall of Famer Marty Walsh of the old Ottawa Senators who said that playing hockey without a rover was like playing baseball without a shortstop.

Yet as early as 1946, another early era Hall of Famer, Newsy Lalonde (who survived and thrived after the change from 6-on-6 skaters to 5-on-5) already believed that the best way to allow speed and skill to flourish in the coming years would be to eventually reduce the game to just four skaters and a goalie per side. Future Hall of Famers Ebbie Goodfellow, Joe Primeau and Charlie Conacher shared Newsy’s view, as did Hooly Smith. “There’s no more stickhandling,” Smith complained, “and 90 percent of the goals are scored by passouts from behind the net or from scrambles in front of the goal.”

That’s a complaint that’s pretty familiar!

A month ago, I entitled my story about early hockey radio broadcasts, Hockey Nerd – Part II. This could easily be Part III, but I’ve decided I’m going to try not to refer to myself that way any longer. It was my friend and colleague Roger Godin who set me straight. In my recent story reviewing the film Red Army and discussing the Winnipeg Falcons heritage moment, I referred to my criticism of the Falcons jersey color as being “pretty nerdy.” Roger left a comment, saying: “Let’s rid ourselves of that description ‘nerd.’ Those of us in this business just want to get things right and frequently find ourselves up against a wall of indifference…”

Often times, the problem isn’t the indifference of others but the mountains of misinformation already out there. For example, if you ask people, “who was the first goalie to wear a mask?” most of those who’ll offer an answer will say, “Jacques Plante.” Plante was my first favorite hockey player when I was a boy and he was starring with the Maple Leafs. He had certainly popularized the use of goalie masks, but he wasn’t the first to wear one … even in an NHL game.

Before he wore one in game action for the first time on November 1, 1959, Plante had been one of many goalies (most of the others at the amateur level) experimenting with masks in the late 1950s. In September of 1957, Delbert Louch of St. Mary’s, Ontario, unveiled a “head-protector and face-shield” that caught on with many NHL goalies for practice, but proved impractical for games.

Long before then, a handful of goalies wore wire masks (like baseball catcher’s masks) in international competition in the 1930s, and many people know that Clint Benedict wore a mask with the Montreal Maroons in February and March of 1930 during his final season in the NHL. Benedict’s was a leather face shield he wore after being sidelined for several weeks following a couple of shots to the face that January.

The NHL had modernized its forward passing rules for the 1929–30 season, and just as the schedule was getting under way, Conn Smythe of the Toronto Maple Leafs stated that he planned to introduce a proposal at the next league meeting making it mandatory for all NHL goalies to wear masks. Smythe stated that there were several NHL managers in favor of the move, but no goalie wanted to be the first, so a rule should be adopted to compel them all to do so.

Apparently, the Ontario Hockey Association had passed such a rule for the 1921-22 season saying that goalies may wear a mask for protection though nobody appears to have done so. Despite what Smythe said in 1929, it would be many years before the NHL adopted similar legislation. Amazingly, even as late as 2009–10, the NHL rule book only said that: Protective masks of a design approved by the League may be worn by goalkeepers. The wording was not changed to say must be worn until 2010-11!

These days, the trendy answer to the question who wore the first goalie mask is Elizabeth Graham, who donned a fencing mask while playing net for the Queen’s University women’s team in 1927 … reportedly under pressure from her father who had recently paid for some expensive dental work. However, others had already worn masks before Ms. Graham. The earliest story I’ve come across about a goalie wearing a mask in a hockey game is from the New York Times on February 24, 1916. The Union Club defeated the Knickerbocker Club 14-0 the night before as part of a Charity Ice Carnival for the Belgian Relief Fund during World War I. Knickerbockers goalie J.G. Milburn Jr. was replaced after the first period by J.J. Higginson, who, the Times noted, “wore a baseball mask.”

Interestingly, in a story reported in the Regina Leader on February 8, 1912, the National Hockey Association (forerunner to the NHL) was said to be considering the use of face protection for goalkeepers “in the shape of a baseball mask,” which some clubs in the United States were already said to be using in practice. A story about roller polo – essentially hockey played on roller skates – in Pittsburgh in 1906 describes the goalie as looking much like a modern-day lacrosse goalie, and wearing a catcher’s mask. (Perhaps the fact that hockey was not nearly as widely popular in the United States as it was in Canada, and was played mainly at elite schools and swank athletic clubs, meant Americans were less hung up on the “manly” aspects of the game?)

Still, the earliest example I’ve come across of a goalie using a catcher’s mask and/or a leather face shield is from Canada in 1903. Eddie Giroux (often misspelled as Geroux in newspapers) was hurt in preseason practice with the Toronto Marlboros on a shot by teammate Tommy Phillips on December 9, 1903. When Giroux returned to the ice a few days later he was wearing some sort of facial protection. Here’s a quick summary of the newspaper accounts:

• sustained “a nasty cut” in practice – Toronto Globe: Dec. 10, 1903
• skips practice, will return with baseball mask – Toronto Globe: Dec. 12, 1903
• practiced wearing a “padded hood” – Ottawa Citizen: Dec. 16, 1903
• discarded his baseball mask – Toronto Globe: Dec. 17, 1903
• experimented with baseball mask; discarded it – Montreal Gazette: Dec. 18, 1903
• discarded baseball mask, using leather headgear – Winnipeg Telegram reporting from Toronto News: Dec. 21, 1903

Whatever it was Giroux was wearing, he does not appear to have used it when the Marlboros played their first exhibition game in Barrie on December 18, nor in any games that followed during the 1903-04 season. He was said to be having trouble locating shots from the side while wearing it. Baseball catcher’s masks date back to the 1880s, and hockey goalies were quick to adopt cricket pads for added protection during the 1890s, but for now, Giroux’s brief experiment is the oldest usage of a mask by a goalie that I’m aware of.

Giroux wears the pads (but no mask) while seated second from the left with the Marlboros in 1904. Tommy Phillips is seated second from the right. Giroux followed Phillips to the Kenora Thistles in 1905. They won the Stanley Cup in 1907.

The NHL recently added many “enhanced” analytic stats to its web site NHL.com. More are likely to come. This year, at the recent NHL All-Star Game, the league introduced sensors in the pucks and uniforms that allow for the tracking of speed, positioning, ice time, and other data that – it’s said – will revolutionize the way we watch and understand hockey. The general buzz around all this has all been positive. VERY different from the much-maligned innovation introduced at the All-Star Game back in 1996 … the Fox Trax glow puck!

It’s not quite the same concept, but take a look at this story I recently came across from the Montreal Gazette back in 1941:

Back in December, I titled a story Hockey Nerd in Canada – Part I. One of my nerdiest hockey nerd interests is the early history of hockey broadcasts on the radio – which I pursue as if someone’s going to give me a prize if I finally push it right back to the beginning!

For me, this pursuit began several years ago with confusion over the date of Foster Hewitt’s first game. Hewitt himself had long claimed that his first broadcast was a senior OHA semifinal playoff at Toronto’s Mutual Street Arena. He said the game was between Kitchener and the Parkdale Canoe Club to determine who would face the Toronto Granites for the Eastern championship. He said the date was March 22, 1923 … but on March 22, 1923, the Toronto Granites defeated the University of Saskatchewan in Winnipeg to claim the Allan Cup as the senior amateur champions of all of Canada. So, how could Hewitt have called the game he said he did on that day?

Obviously, Hewitt was wrong. Turns out, his first broadcast was actually made on February 16, 1923, on Toronto radio station CFCA (which was owned by the Toronto Star, where Hewitt was employed). It was a game between the Kitchener Greenshirts and the Toronto Argonauts. Hewitt never flat out claimed (at least I don’t think he did) that his broadcast had been the very first, but he certainly didn’t discourage people from thinking that either! In truth, CFCA had actually been on the air eight nights earlier, on February 8, 1923, with Norman Albert of the Toronto Star handling the play-by-play. (For more on all this, see the story I did for the Star on the 90th anniversary of that game.)

Given that several other radio stations in several different Canadian cities (Winnipeg, Regina, and Edmonton for certain) were on the air with their own broadcasts within a very short time of the ones in Toronto, I’ve often wondered if anyone, anywhere else, had actually broadcast a game before Norman Albert. The earliest stories I’ve found saying anything about hockey on the radio are from December of 1921 and January of 1922, but they only claim that Westinghouse radio stations (KDKA in Pittsburgh, WJZ in Newark, WBZ in Springfield, Mass. and KYW in Chicago) would transmit the scores of games played in those cities.

I’ve yet to find any earlier live hockey broadcasts then the ones in Toronto, but in March of 1922, the radio station owned by the Vancouver Sun was reading on the air the telegraphed reports they were receiving of the Stanley Cup games in progress between the NHL’s Toronto St. Patricks and the Vancouver Millionaires of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association at the Mutual Street Arena. The station operated by the Vancouver World was broadcasting score updates as they were received. Neither was actually providing live play-by-play, but people certainly seemed pleased … particularly with the Sun‘s coverage.

Eight months later, on November 28, 1922, the Stanley Cup champion St. Pats were in Winnipeg to kick off a preseason western exhibition trip with a game against the Edmonton Eskimos of the Western Canada Hockey League. As had been done in Vancouver, the Winnipeg Tribune promised that its station, CJNC, would broadcast the results from the game “as fast as reports are received.” Again, not live play-by-play, but certainly comprehensive hockey coverage for the time.

Just recently, I came across another interesting hockey broadcasting story from Winnipeg two months prior to this game, from September 23, 1922, about Lester Patrick appearing on CJNC the day before.

The story states:

A pleasing surprise was given to hockey enthusiasts by the appearance before The Tribune’s radiophone of Lester Patrick, manager of the Victoria Pacific Coast hockey team, and part owner of the Pacific Coast hockey league, who was passing through the city on his way west, and who delivered a short address on hockey prospects for the coming season. Sporting fans expressed their appreciation of this addition to the program.

Though I’ve yet to check every other city with radio stations at this time, Patrick’s broadcast in Winnipeg may just be the first example of sports talk radio in Canada!

Connecting all this directly to modern times … In March of 1923 the radio stations owned by the Winnipeg Tribune and the Winnipeg Free Press both agreed to go out of business (they were likely losing money!) to clear the way for a new station in Winnipeg operated by the Manitoba Telephone System, which would later become Manitoba Telecom Services. Known both then and now as MTS, this is the same company that currently holds the naming rights on the MTS Centre in Winnipeg where the Jets play.

I hadn’t planned to write on this subject, but last week I came across the two old photographs shown below. (I already had the cartoons from years ago.) I found the pictures online in the March 1902 edition of The Canadian Magazine. I LOVE pictures like these, and the timing was perfect, so here we go…

On this very day, way back in 1902, the first team from Toronto to play for the Stanley Cup opened a best-of-three series in Winnipeg. The Wellington Hockey Club of Toronto (known as the Wellingtons, and often called the Iron Dukes after the first Duke of Wellington for whom they were named) had been formed around 1895 as a juvenile team for youngsters in the Jarvis Street area of downtown Toronto. Soon, they entered the Junior division Ontario Hockey Association and in 1896-97 the Wellingtons won the provincial championship. Moving up to Intermediate, and then to Senior, the Wellingtons won the OHA Senior title in 1900 and 1901. (They would also win it in 1902 and 1903 before withdrawing from hockey suddenly and surprisingly just prior to the 1903-04 season.) As champions of 1900-01, they sent word to the Stanley Cup trustees in Ottawa saying they wished to challenge the Winnipeg Victorias for the prized trophy at the start of the 1901-02 season.

In this era, the Stanley Cup was a challenge trophy. Because of the need for natural ice, the hockey season only stretched from late December to mid March. Train travel meant leagues had to be fairly local, so in order to make the Stanley Cup available to teams all across Canada, the senior champions of any recognized provincial association were able to challenge the current Cup champion. Games could take place before the season, after the season, and even right in the middle of a season.

Hockey in Canada was considered strictly amateur at this time. The Ontario Hockey Association was the largest hockey league in the country and rigidly enforced the amateur code. The Wellingtons were fairly typical of Ontario hockey teams in that their players generally came from well-off families. Most of them worked in banks or for insurance companies. In fact, when the Winnipeg Victorias requested that the Stanley Cup series be played later in January, the Wellingtons objected because most of their players had to get back to Toronto in time to balance their books for the first of February!

The Wellingtons were considered huge underdogs in their series with the Victorias. Outside of Ottawa (whose top team played in the Canadian Amateur Hockey League, which was considered a Quebec circuit), hockey in Ontario was not believed to be on a par with the game as it was played in Quebec and Manitoba. Many senior hockey players across the country were from the same types of background as the Wellingtons, but the OHA seemed much more determined than other leagues to maintain a gentlemanly style of play, which, sadly, didn’t help from a competitive standpoint. Compounding the problem in Toronto, the city had no first-class arena, with even the main rink on Mutual Street having an undersized ice surface and small seating capacity. Nor did Toronto have the same cold weather as Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City or Winnipeg. In fact, during January of 1902, the weather in Toronto was unusually warm which hurt the Wellingtons’ ability to practice and hampered the quality of the few games they got in before leaving for Winnipeg on January 18.

Even so, the Wellingtons surprised most critics by keeping the games close and playing pretty good hockey against the Victorias. Still, they lost the January 21 game 5-3 and dropped the second game by the same score two nights later, giving the Winnipeg team a sweep of the series. “We played as hard as we ever played in our lives,” said Wellingtons captain George McKay, “but the checking … was much harder than we were accustomed to. It was fierce.” The Victorias were also said to be faster skaters.

Despite the loss, Toronto hockey fans were proud of the team’s showing in Winnipeg. The Wellingtons arrived back in the city at 9 pm on January 28. Even though their train was seven hours behind schedule, there was still a big crowd to greet them at Union Station. “Captain McKay has his left arm in a sling,” according to the Toronto Star report. “Chummy Hill’s bad eye is cut again, Frank McLaren walks with difficulty, and George Chadwick is completely done up. Irvine Ardagh, Dutchy Morrison, Worts Smart and Jimmy Worts, are all in good shape.” The Wellingtons were taken from the train station to Shea’s Theater and were given a great reception.

An important date in NHL history passed last Friday without anyone I’m aware of noting it. Okay, admittedly, the 97th anniversary of anything is a clunky number to celebrate, but just three weeks after the league played its first games the NHL made a very significant rule change. Without this change, the Buffalo Sabres probably wouldn’t have been honoring Dominik Hasek last night by retiring his number…

As the Toronto Star reported on January 9, 1918, “When Canadiens meet Torontos tonight in the NHL game at the Arena the hockey public may see Harry Holmes, the Toronto net guardian, standing on his left ear and nonchalantly booting high ones over into the corner, or Vezina, the French-Canadian wizard, sitting on the top of a goal post and batting them out like Larry Lajoie hammering out a two-sacker at the Island last summer. Anything but murder and an Ostermoor mattress goes in the nets in the pro league from now on.”

Until that day, professional goalies in eastern Canada had been required to remain standing in front of their nets at all times. They faced a penalty if they flopped to the ice to make a save. On January 9, 1918, NHL president Frank Calder sent a telegram to referees Lou Marsh and Steve Vair prior to the Toronto-Montreal game advising them that, “Section 13 and that portion of section 9 dealing with the goalkeeper are hereby deleted, thus permitting the goalkeeper to adopt any attitude he pleases in stopping shots.”

Out west, in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, brothers Frank and Lester Patrick had already dealt with this injustice. “A goalkeeper should be allowed to make any move he wants,” said Lester Patrick, “just like the rest of us. He should be allowed to make the most of his physical abilities.” In his biography of the Patricks, Eric Whitehead indicates that this rule change was made during the first PCHA season of 1911-12, but Craig Bowlsby (who has meticulous research to back it up) writes in his 2012 book Empire of Ice that the Patricks didn’t actually introduce the rule officially allowing a goalie to stop a shot any way he pleased, except by throwing his stick, until the 1916-17 season.

Paintings by Darrin Egan. Visit him on Facebook.

Clint Benedict, star goalie of the Ottawa Senators, who’d perfected the knack of “accidentally” falling to the ice to make a save, is usually credited as the inspiration behind the rule change in the NHL. However, in the Toronto Star on January 10, an unnamed columnist (perhaps Star sports editor William Hewitt, father of Foster) had a different opinion.

“Montrealers certainly run this NHL to suit their own sweet selves. Yesterday they calmly announced a change in the playing rules allowing the goalkeeper to assume any attitude in goal to stop a shot, yet the first paragraph of the constitution says that the playing rules may only be amended at the annual meeting. Did somebody say National Hockey League? They should call it George Kennedy’s league [Kennedy owned the Canadiens] and be done with it. The French-Canadian mogul gets everything he wants from soup to nuts.”

Contact Darrin at: inthebluepaint@gmail.com

Georges Vezina, it’s been said, was never much of a flopper, but whoever it was that pushed for the rule change undoubtedly made the right call!

It’s easy to be cynical about politicians and sports. After all, cheering for the home team is an easy way for them to try and show they’ve got the common touch. But some times, it’s for real.

Pierre Trudeau once joked that: “Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts.” He was front and center at the opening of the 1972 Summit Series, and weighed in with his belief that Bobby Hull should have been on the team despite his jumping to the WHA. Trudeau may have been using the series for politcal gain, but Brian Mulroney could often be seen in seats just behind the Canadiens bench at the Montreal Forum long before he ever became Prime Minister. Well before that, Lester Pearson played hockey in England and Europe while he was a student at the University of Oxford in the 1920s. Later, he worked for the NHL Players Association in 1970.

In the acknowledgments to his book A Great Game, Stephen Harper writes that his love of hockey history developed as a way to compensate for the fact he wasn’t much of a player. If you ever get the chance to speak to him about hockey, you’ll find a very different man from the one you see on the news.

This coming weekend marks the 200th birthday of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald. Other than the fact that Lord Stanley of Preston began his term as Governor-General while MacDonald was Prime Minister, there aren’t many real connections between John A. and hockey … but his son, Hugh John MacDonald, had a fairly significant one.

Hugh John MacDonald was born in 1850 but when his mother died in 1857 after many years of failing health, he was raised mainly by his father’s sister and her husband. Hugh John graduated from the University of Toronto in 1869, and was called to the bar as a lawyer in 1872. After the death of his first wife, he moved to Winnipeg in 1882, were he somewhat reluctantly entered politics. Hugh John was elected to the House of Commons in 1891 during his father’s last election campaign (John A. would die later that year) and later served as a cabinet minister under Sir Charles Tupper in 1896. He became leader of the Manitoba Conservative Party in 1897 and was briefly the Premier in 1899 before resigning to take on popular Liberal cabinet minister Clifford Sifton in the 1900 Federal Election. MacDonald lost, and returned to his law practice, though he remained active on the Manitoba and Winnipeg political scene.

By the mid 1890s, Hugh John MacDonald was a patron of the Winnipeg Victorias, the greatest hockey team in Western Canada. (He was also involved with cricket in Winnipeg.) When the Winnipeg Victorias defeated the Montreal Victorias to win the Stanley Cup for the first time on February 14, 1896, Hugh John was among the large group of Winnipeggers that met the team’s train to welcome them home ten days later. He took part in the very first Stanley Cup parade and made a short speech at a civic reception held at the Manitoba hotel. Afterwards, Hugh John was among those who filled the Stanley Cup with champagne and drank toasts from it.

In this early era of hockey history, the Stanley Cup was a challenge trophy, and the Victorias’ reign as champions proved short-lived. Before the next season even got under way, the Montreal Victorias travelled to Winnipeg for a rematch. The sudden death playoff on December 30, 1896, was a thriller, with the Montreal Vics scoring a late goal to defeat the Winnipeg Vics 6-5. At a dinner held for both teams after the game, the duty of officially congratulating the new champions and presenting the Stanley Cup to Montreal captain Mike Grant fell upon Hugh John MacDonald.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, the Winnipeg Victorias won the Stanley Cup again on January 31, 1901, when their captain and biggest star, Dan Bain, scored the first overtime goal in Stanley Cup history to cap a sweep of a best-of-three series with a 2-1 victory over the Montreal Shamrocks in game two. In the civic reception at the Claredon hotel upon the team’s return to Winnipeg on February 11, Hugh John MacDonald once again gave a speech. This excerpt from it is both typical of the time it was made, and a classic example of the hold hockey has had on Canadians for well over 100 years:

“As patron of the hockey club it is my duty to express to you my pleasure at your return from the east and to congratulate you on the victory you have won. The English language, copious as it is, is not sufficient so to enable me to express the warmth of the welcome we wish to extend to you. This may seem to you an exaggeration, but I can assure you that if you had been in Winnipeg and seen the intense eagerness with which every word [telegraphed live from rink side in Montreal] was seized upon – an interest so intense that it became painful at times, and if you had heard the shout of triumph when the news was flashed across the wire that the winning goal had been scored by our own Dan Bain, you would have realized to some extent at least that I am keeping quite within the mark when I speak of the warmth which the [citizens of Winnipeg] wish to extend you.

Hugh John MacDonald had one last chance to speak at a Stanley Cup victory banquet when the Winnipeg Victorias defeated the Toronto Wellingtons in January of 1902, but he appears to have been too busy with provincial government affairs to be on hand when the Victoria lost the Stanley Cup to the Montreal AAA that March.