Today, Canadians all across the country gathered in communities large and small to remember the men and women who have served us in war. This year’s ceremonies took on added meaning, given both recent events and the 100th anniversary of World War I.

One hundred years ago today, Canadians had not yet seen action during the First World War, but thousands of them were stationed at Salisbury Plain in England, receiving further military training after shipping out from Canada early in October. Then as now, wherever Canadians travelled in large enough numbers, hockey wasn’t far from their minds!

The news story above appeared in papers all across Canada on November 19, 1914. It outlines plans for a hockey team in the Canadian camp. It’s unclear as yet if they ever actually played any games, though sports competitions took place regularly during training. Among those listed as taking part is future Hockey Hall of Famer Scotty Davidson.

Scotty Davidson had captained the Toronto Blue Shirts to the Stanley Cup in March of 1914 before becoming the first pro hockey player to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in August. If you’re interested in more on Davidson’s war story, and those of other future Hockey Hall of Famers, click here for the original text of a story I wrote that is currently appearing in the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Legend’s magazine.

So, the Leafs are waiting (again!) for someone to step up and claim their number-one goaltending position. It seems that neither Jonathan Bernier nor James Reimer has taken (or been given!) the opportunity to run with the starting job. You’ve got to think coach Randy Carlyle and the rest of the team brass are getting a little bit desperate … but chances are they won’t resort to something Conn Smythe tried back on March 9, 1929.

The 1928-29 season was the lowest scoring in NHL history. Teams combined to score only 2.9 goals per game that season, meaning the average score of any game was 2-1 in overtime. George Hainsworth of the Canadiens posted a record 22 shutouts during the 44-game season and had a goals against average of 0.92! Toronto’s Lorne Chabot posted a 1.52 average but that was only good enough to rank him eighth among the starters on the 10 NHL teams that season. So Conn Smythe had every reason to see what the young Benny Grant (who’d led his hometown Owen Sound Greys to the Memorial Cup as a junior in 1926–27 before going pro in 1927–28) could do.

This was an era when the game’s top stars – especially defensemen – often still played the full 60 minutes, or very close to it. But in Toronto’s game against Detroit on March 9, 1929, Smythe chose to “roll” two full lines … including his goaltenders! Smythe made changes approximately every five minutes (presumably at whistles, not on the go) and the fans seemed pleased with the results in a 3-0 victory.

Smythe continued to use both Chabot and Grant for the final three games of the season, but he rotated them somewhat more traditionally by switching them up between periods. Over the next few seasons, the Leafs occasionally tried to work Grant into a regular rotation, but it never really panned out. Grant play professionally through the 1943-44 season, but only saw action in 52 NHL games in all those years. Because of the way the Leafs used him, his record is somewhat difficult to determine, but was either 17-27-4 or 18-27-4.

So, why were the Leafs so determined to try Benny Grant when they had a goalie like Lorne Chabot, who still ranks highly among the all-time shutout leaders? And why is Chabot – who has numbers comparable to all the great goalies of his era that have been enshrined – not a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame?

I obviously never saw Chabot play, so I can’t say for sure, but I once asked 1930s NHL defenseman Alex Levinsky what he thought about it. Levinsky was a teammate of Chabot in Toronto and Chicago and a relative by marriage of the former wife of a cousin of mine. (Jewish Geography … or, actually Jewish Genealogy!) “He wasn’t that good,” Levinsky told me.

That seems hard to believe, but then again, there must be a reason why Chabot was traded five times in his 11-year career, including each of the final four seasons he played.

Recently, I came across a story in the Montreal Gazette from April 15, 1958 in which columnist Vern DeGeer discussed the athleticism of various NHL netminders. “One of the poorer skaters of the goalie fraternity was the late Lorne Chabot,” he writes. “He operated on shaky legs and often had to grab a goal-post to steady himself.” Still, DeGeer notes: “He was remarkably successful despite his blade weakness.”

Frank Selke once said his teammates all liked him, but you’ve got to think that if Chabot was playing today, fans and media (and probably the analytics crowd) would be all over him!

Okay, Leafs fans. It’s October of 1935. The new season still doesn’t start for another ten days, but your team wants you to renew your tickets.

The Good News: They’re a powerhouse, who reach the Finals nearly every season.

The Bad News: They never seem to win it … and it’s the depths of the Great Depression!

Brother, can you spare a dime?

Canada Post has recently issued new stamps honouring former star NHL defensemen Bobby Orr, Harry Howell, Doug Harvey, Tim Horton, Red Kelly and Pierre Pilote. They’re really quite attractive.

A friend of mine who works for Canada Post suggested I write something about this, so I tried to find a little bit of history. It seems that several countries have issued hockey-themed stamps (usually around the Olympics or World Championships) for many years. Looks like the first time Canada did so was on January 23, 1956. An announcement about it appeared in Canadian newspapers on December 9, 1955.

The story claimed that former Liberal Member of Parliament for Toronto Trinity Lionel Conacher (who had died of a heart attack during a House of Commons-Parliamentary Press Gallery baseball game in the spring of 1954) gave “strong sponsorship” to the hockey stamp. Conacher, of course, played in the NHL from 1925 to 1937, and also starred in football, lacrosse and several other sports. He was named Canada’s Athlete of the Half-Century in 1950.

Here’s a look at that 1956 stamp.

One of the big stories in the early days of the 2014-15 NHL season is the apparent demise of fighting, and/or enforcers. I’ve never been a big fan of fighting; never been the kind of guy who leaps to his feet when a fight breaks out. I wouldn’t miss it if the NHL imposed tougher penalties for fighting. I certainly don’t miss it in the playoffs, or at the Olympics. As Brendan Shanahan recently said, there’s a difference between tough hockey and fighting. Give me an old-fashioned Brian Glennie hip check any day … and punish the Dan Maloney types who attack him after a clean hit.

So how long has fighting truly been a part of hockey?

Hockey has always been rough. A few years ago, when researching the history of the Stanley Cup, I came across this story from The Quebec Saturday Budget dated March 4, 1899:

“Queen’s hockey team, Kingston, has challenged the Victoria hockey team, of Montreal, for the Stanley Cup. Before leaving they should order seven full suits of armour and as many coffins in order to be prepared for all emergencies.”

The warning makes it pretty clear the sport was tough … and I don’t think any hockey historian will tell you that the Montreal Victorias were noted for their violence.

Even if only some of the reports in early era newspapers of players swinging sticks at opponent’s heads are accurate, the level of violence would stun modern fans. Slashing, high sticking, cross-checking, butt-ending, and spearing was all common place. And it wasn’t “rats” doing the dirty work. In the days of seven-man hockey, when players were expected to be out on the ice the full 60 minutes, many of the biggest stars were also the dirtiest players. Frank McGee is best known today for scoring 14 goals in a single Stanley Cup game in 1905, but he wasn’t above hooking an opponent around the neck!

Still, there weren’t many fights in the early days, and when there were, it was often the police that broke them up. Art Ross and Roy “Minnie” McGiffin (who, despite his small size, may well have been hockey’s first true goon) were famously arrested after fighting in a game in Toronto on February 17, 1915. Unlike Todd Bertuzzi or Marty McSorely in recent years, Ross and McGiffin hadn’t done anything more violent than simply exchanging punches … though McGiffin took a pretty good beating. As the arresting officer explained to a reporter from The Globe:

“That is not fair to the public. Last night, there were three hundred women present in the audience of fifteen hundred. Professional hockey has been fairly clean this winter, but it is time that players should learn that no rowdyism will be tolerated. There can be no use in allowing it to continue. Such exhibitions will kill the sport.”

Seems Inspector Geddes was wrong about that!

So, what changed the game from one of stick-swinging violence to one of actual punches and fighting? This likely isn’t the definitive answer, but with the First World War raging in Europe, an unnamed editorialist writing in the Toronto World a few days later, put the blame squarely on sa Germuhns!

In an amazingly propagandistic rant, the writer says:

“Now that the police court has been called in to settle the etiquet of the hockey rink, it might be well for all who are responsible for the honor of Canadian sport to recognize the introduction of this German element into our national games… We have no desire to see sport reduced to pink tea proportions, but there is all the difference in the world between vigorous, manly sport, according to the rules laid down, and the crooked, German violation of rules in order to win by foul means… A vast mass of our population never get any other ideas of honor and fair play except what they get in sport. If our sport is not clean and fair our people grow up with such ideas of honor as the Germans have shown in events leading up to the present war situation… King George thought it sufficient condemnation of the German methods to say that ‘It isn’t cricket.’ Canada should have as high a standard and be able to say with equal force, ‘It isn’t hockey.’”

What would Don Cherry think?