Category Archives: Hockey History

The Bruce County Boys

This is, I guess, a sort of a sequel to my post last month, Early Era Hockey Heroes Played in Owen Sound. The names, this time, aren’t as prominent in hockey history as Howie Morenz and Cyclone Taylor, although these two contemporaries of Taylor are also members of the Hockey Hall of Fame. And, with Hockey Day in Canada hitting town next week, they’re relevant today because — like Taylor, who was born in Tara, Ontario — they were both born in small towns near Owen Sound. Remarkably, these two would later join Cyclone Taylor on the West Coast, giving the Vancouver Millionaires three Bruce County boys on their Stanley Cup team of 1915.

Russell Stanley, known as Barney Stanley for unknown reasons (and an uncle of latter-day NHL star Allan Stanley), was born in Paisley, Ontario, on June 1, 1893. Duncan McMillan “Mickey” MacKay made his debut almost a year later, on May 25, 1894. Both would begin to make their names in hockey during the winter of 1910-11, playing for their respective hometown teams in District 2 of the Northern Hockey League (NHL) along with clubs in Durham, Hanover, Walkerton and here in Owen Sound. MacKay’s Chesley team also competed in the Ontario Hockey Association’s junior series that winter.

Paisley’s 1910-11 NHL team was a weak one, finishing the 10-game season with a record of just 2-8. Stanley was obviously a standout, though, and after Owen Sound crushed his team 11-2 in the season opener on local ice here, the Owen Sound Times of January 12, 1911, reported: “Had there been two or three more in the Paisley bunch of the calibre of Barney Stanley, there would have been a different tale to tell in the final tally…. With a teammate as fast as he himself is, Barney would be a dangerous shooting proposition for any ordinary team to go up against.”

MacKay (whose name was often spelled, incorrectly, as McKay) helped Chesley win the District 2 title that winter, though they would lose the league championship to the District 1 winners from Mt. Forest. But, other than having his name appear (as McKay) in the lineup in a summary in the Owen Sound Sun on March 3, 1911 after a game the night before, there appear to be no other mentions of him in the local paper. However, his hometown weekly, The Chesley Enterprise, noted him prominently throughout the season … despite also spelling his name wrong.

The Vancouver Millionaires’ Stanley Cup team photo. Interestingly, the trophy shown
is Patterson Cup – the championship trophy of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.

“McKay [was] always in the right place,” noted the Enterprise on March 2, 1911, reporting on the team’s final home game (played two nights earlier). He scored at least 8 goals in a 25-0 win over Walkerton. When Chesley clinched the District 2 title with a 7-3 win over Durham in Walkerton on March 7, the local paper, reporting two days later, said: “Every man on the Chesley team played the game of his life; Beatty, Rocker and McKay apparently being the favorites of the crowd…. McKay, as in Owen Sound, was conceded to be a marvel.”

Mickey MacKay was still in Chesley for the winter of 1911-12, playing again for the local team in the NHL and moving up to the intermediate division in the OHA. Barney Stanley had moved out west that year to Edmonton. Hockey would take him to many more places after that, but Edmonton would remain home for the rest of his life.

Stanley began the winter of 1911-12 in Edmonton playing hockey for the Eurekas, a team affiliated with the Westminster Church, in a local Sunday School league. He quickly attracted the attention of an Edmonton team called the Maritimers, who played senior hockey with the Eskimos, Edmonton YMCA and the University of Alberta in a northern provincial league, and finished the year with them.

Cheshley team photo from the Society for International Hockey Research.
Mickey MacKay is the very young looking kid standing at the top right.

According to a story from the Edmonton Journal, picked up in the Ottawa Citizen on April 5, 1918, it was in the fall of 1912 that one Bruce County boy helped another begin his journey to the west.

“It was in the autumn of 1912 that Barney Stanley, himself just graduated from a local junior league, approached Deacon White and Anse Young, telling of a boy down in Chesley, Ontario, who had been burning up the Junior OHA and was anxious to come west.” The only thing holding him up was the cost of the journey, “and the Deacon, always ready to gamble a few dollars in the cause of sport, produced the wherewithal…. It did not take the fans long to reach the conclusion that MacKay was one player from the east who would live up to advance notices, and before the winter was over he was a universal favorite.”

The Chesley Enterprise of October 17, 1912, notes only that “Duncan McKay has gone to Edmonton… ” with no mention of Barney Stanley’s role, but Stanley and MacKay would play together that season of 1912-13 on a new team in Edmonton called the Dominions. Stanley would remain with that team for a couple seasons more, but MacKay moved further west the next winter, to Grand Forks, a mining town in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. According to stats from the Society for International Hockey Research, MacKay led the Boundary Hockey League with 15 goals during the 10-game 1913-14 season before moving further west, to Vancouver, the following year.

Paisley and Chesley are just a short distance apart not too far from Owen Sound.
Walkerton, Hanover and Durham, indicated with arrows, also played in the “NHL.”

Grand Forks would remain home to Mickey MacKay for the rest of his life, but it seems he returned to Chesley following that first B.C. winter. As Frank Patrick — owner, coach, manager, and a star player, with the Vancouver Millionaires — would recall in newspaper stories in 1940 and again in 1950, he received a letter from MacKay from Chesley in the summer of 1914.

According to the 1940 story, Patrick, who frequently received letters from players who thought they were good enough to turn pro, wrote back to MacKay and recommended he try to catch on with a Toronto team. “I don’t know what made me change my mind,” said Patrick, “but I sent a following letter with transportation and told him to report to Vancouver. It was one of those sixth sense hunches. MacKay wasn’t practicing five minutes before he attracted the attention of all watching him…. He was perhaps the greatest centre we ever had on the coast; an equal favorite with Cyclone Taylor in the minds of the masses.”

Frank Patrick provided more details to the story in 1950, telling Alf Cottrell of the Vancouver Province, that he’d never forgotten MacKay’s letter and could almost quote it from memory.

Various clippings from Owen Sound papers during the winter of 1910-11.
References to Stanley and McKay/McKay are in the red rectangles.

“The writer,” recorded Cottrell, “said he had played for an amateur club out in Grand Forks, B.C. the previous winter. No doubt Mr. Patrick had heard of him, as he had done very well. And he would like to play for Patrick’s Vancouver club for special reasons. There was, the young follow said, a young lady out in B.C. whom he would like to marry. Would Mr. Patrick forward money for transportation, so he could come out when the season started and lay his wares on the ice, so to speak?”

Patrick again told the story about recommending this young player try out for a Toronto team, but this time he said he decided he liked the sound of the name Mickey MacKay. So, he changed his mind and sent a second letter enclosing transportation.

Is either version of the story true?

Mickey Mackay with the Vancouver Millionaires and in a
grainy newspaper photo with the Dominions in Edmonton

Well, Mickey MacKay did marry Miss Anne May Reburn of Grand Forks on June 13, 1916. But in his own version of how he wound up in Vancouver, it was Frank Patrick who sought him out. MacKay told his tale in the Owen Sound Sun-Times on January 23, 1932, while visiting his mother and a sister in Chesley.

“It is interesting to hear Mickey tell about his jump into the pro game,” wrote the Sun-Times correspondent. “He was playing amateur with Grand Forks and in the mining towns of British Columbia the going was tough. Frank Patrick heard how he was burning up the league so he telegraphed him transportation and instructions to report at Vancouver.”

The Chesley Enterprise of November 19, 1914, reports on MacKay (still spelled McKay) leaving for Vancouver “on Tuesday last week,” seemingly from Chesley, though with references to his success in Grand Forks. “Still in his teens,” says the 1932 Owen Sound story – though he would actually have been 20 at the time – “Mickey kept thinking things over on his trip to the coast and the more he thought of it, the less he figured he could make good, so when he arrived at Vancouver and was met by Patrick, the first question he asked was, ‘Say, if I don’t catch on with your team, do I get my transportation back home?’”

Barney Stanley early his his career with the Dominions and later with the Edmonton Eskimos.

Patrick wanted a look at him first, and brought MacKay down to the rink. Mickey told of “being taken to the dressing room and introduced to such seasoned performers as Cyclone Taylor, Si Griffis, Frank Nighbor … and Hughie Leman [all future Hall of Famers]. The boys were dressing for a work out and as he was introduced to each one in turn, they merely stuck out a hand, pulled it hastily away, but never said a word or looked up from the lacing of their boots.

“‘A swell reception,’ Mickey thought!”

When he got out on the ice and saw Taylor in action, MacKay figured he’d be sent back to Grand Forks for sure. But then, he decided to take a run at the game’s biggest star. “Before I knew it, I was headed full speed for Taylor. I checked him and sent him sprawling into the boards and sailed clean through the whole outfit and never stopped…”

MacKay made the team. And carried with him the good wishes of his old friend Barney Stanley, who predicted great things for him that winter. “Mark my words,” Stanley was quoted in the Edmonton Journal of December 8, 1914, “Mickey will be a sensation this winter.”

And he was.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy, but these are the all-time scoring stats for the PCHA.
Barney Stanley ranked 18th with 62 goals and 37 assists in 80 games played.

MacKay scored three times in his pro debut for Vancouver against Portland that same night, leading the Millionaires to a 6-3 victory. “Our own speedy hockey player was the sensation of the first game,” The Chesley Enterprise reported with pride on December 17, 1914. He would go on to lead the Pacific Coast Hockey Association with 33 goals in just 17 games played in 1914-15, and his 44 points were just one back of Cyclone Taylor who led all scorers with 45 points on 24 goals and a league-leading 21 assists.

Late that season, Barney Stanley joined Mickey MacKay in Vancouver, signing with the Millionaires on February 13, 1915. In his debut three nights later, Stanley scored the opening goal on a setup from Taylor. MacKay collected a goal and an assist in a 5-0 victory over Portland. Stanley would score seven goals in the five games he played with Vancouver through the end of the schedule.

After the season, in a best-of-five Stanley Cup series with the Ottawa Senators of the National Hockey Association (forerunner of the NHL), Stanley added six more goals in three games. MacKay had four goals and two assist, while Cyclone Taylor had seven goals and two assists as Vancouver scored a stunning sweep by scores of 6-2, 8-3 and 12-3.

The two new Bruce County boys, along with the old one, had definitely made their mark.

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Hockey Writers in Canada

In conjunction with Hockey Day in Canada,  the Owen Sound library will be hosting a series of author events from January 17 to 21 they’re calling Hockey Writing in Canada. For information on the whole program, and all the writers involved, you can contact the library at   info@library.osngupl.ca. If you’d like a direct link to the zoom event featuring me and Owen Sound-born author and historian Paul White at 3pm on the afternoon of Friday, January 20, email me at eric@ericzweig.com and ask me for it. 

Season’s Greeting! (2022)

Christmas/New Years greetings from an ad in the Owen Sound Times on December 8, 1871. And a Hanukkah story from a few years later, on December 7, 1915.

And, in keeping with the usual theme, Owen Sound opened a new indoor ice rink just after New Year’s in 1893, which was a big boon to local hockey. Clippings from the Times of January 5 and 12, 1893:

And, finally, thank you to everyone who had anything to do with the success of this book; those at Firefly Books who helped me get the job done … and to those of you who bought a copy!

From the Toronto Star, December 17, 2022. Slipped a bit this week, which will
be reflected in Saturday’s newspaper. But it’s been fun while it’s lasted!

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, have a happy and safe one!

Early Era Hockey Heroes Played in Owen Sound

After COVID cancellations the last two years, Owen Sound is hoping the third time’s the charm for Hockey Day in Canada. Scheduled for next month, events in the city where I’ve lived since 2006 begin on Wednesday, January 18, 2023. They culminate in a day-long broadcast of NHL games, plus three local games, on Saturday, January 21.

It’s more good luck than good management at this point, but the timing is fairly auspicious, since the 2022-23 season marks the centennial of a breakthrough time for Owen Sound hockey. That’s a bit of a stretch, since the local Greys had done better in previous years, and wouldn’t truly have their big breakthrough until 1923-24, when the Greys won the Memorial Cup as Canada’s national junior champions. Still, the 1922-23 season was an important one in Owen Sound hockey history because it brought Ralph “Cooney” Weiland to town.

Hockey cards depicting Howie Morenz and Cyclone Taylor.

Cooney Weiland was born in Egmondville, Ontario, just outside of Seaforth (about 140 kilometres from Owen Sound) on November 5, 1904. After playing his early hockey in Seaforth, Weiland came to Owen Sound in the late fall of 1922. Playing with Butch Keeling and Teddy Graham — two other future NHLers who’d grown up here — Weiland would lead the Greys to that first Memorial Cup title in 1924. Though he left town to begin a pro career the following season (and probably never lived here again, despite what many old-time hockey stories would later say), Weiland was long-associated with Owen Sound and the ’24 Greys, and well-remembered in town for the next 40 years or more.

In a story in the Owen Sound Sun-Times on March 13 1968, when Weiland was nearing the end of what would be a 21-year tenure as the hockey coach at Harvard University, he reminisced about his early days and the greatest player of his era; a player who’d grown up in Mitchell, Ontario, about 20 kilometres from where Weiland had lived as a boy.

Cooney Weiland played 11 seasons in the NHL, mostly with Boston. He won
the Stanley Cup as a rookie in 1928-29 and in his last season of 1938-39.

“It was common knowledge in our part of the country that Howie [Morenz] was the greatest thing that ever happened in hockey. No other player I saw could skate as fast as Morenz could. In three strides, he would be at full sail. He attacked defences so fiercely and at such reckless speed…. Morenz was absolutely fearless.”

Weiland talked about his early days facing Morenz when Cooney was still in Seaforth and Howie had moved to Stratford. Still, it got me wondering if Morenz himself had ever played in Owen Sound.

Headlines in the Owen Sound Sun-Times from February 8-10-12, 1921.

Turns out, he did.

Probably just once, when the Stratford Midgets faced the Owen Sound Greys in a Junior playoff game in the Ontario Hockey Association on February 9, 1921. The next day’s Sun-Times called the game “very exciting” and said it “kept the large crowd in an uproar from start to finish.”

Howie Morenz wears #4 for the Stratford Indians of 1922-23.

The ice was soft, due to mild weather, “but nevertheless there was some fast playing.” The Sun-Times felt the Greys had six chances to every one for Stratford, “and it was only the good work of the Midget goaltender and the luck he had that saved the famous Midgets from a loss.”

Owen Sound scored the only goal of the first period, but Stratford got two in the second, “one from Morenz the speedy centre,” and went on to a 3-1 victory. Two nights later, in the return game at Stratford, Morenz scored five times to lead the Midgets to a 7-2 win and a 10-3 triumph in the total-goals series. Morenz would lead Stratford to the Memorial Cup final in 1921 (crushing Seaforth and Cooney Weiland three times en route), but they would lose to the Winnipeg Falcons.

Accounts of the two-game series from the Sun-Times of February 10 and 12, 1921.

A few years later, Howie Morenz launched his NHL career with the Montreal Canadiens during the 1923-24 season. He went on to be named Canada’s Hockey Player of the Half-Century in a Canadian Press poll in 1950. But a generation before Morenz, the player most often thought of as the greatest in Canada, and often considered the game’s first superstar, was Cyclone Taylor.

Born Frederick Wellington Taylor in Tara, Ontario — about 20 kilometres from Owen Sound — on June 23, 1884 (many sources say 1885 … or 1883), his family moved some 90 kilometres south to Listowel around 1891. Though Taylor had learned to skate in Tara, it was in Listowel where he began his hockey career. He would go on to star, mainly with the Ottawa Senators, the Renfrew Millionaires, and the Vancouver Millionaires, in a pro career from 1905 to 1923.

The Listowel Juniors of 1903-04. Fred Taylor is the second player in on the right side.

Like Morenz, Cyclone Taylor appears to have played just one game in Owen Sound. It was also a Junior playoff game; this one on February 10, 1904. The final score was 10-6, but the Owen Sound Times (this was before the 1918 merger with the Sun) thought it was “a somewhat listless affair” before a small crowd. “The visitors are a gentlemanly bunch,” said the Owen Sound paper, “and they have a strong, well-balanced team. Taylor is the star of the septette, but they are all fast enough to excuse the pride that the Listowel people take in the team.”

Game two in the series was scheduled for Listowel on February 12, but the Owen Sound Juniors didn’t make it. No reason for the postponement is given. The town’s Intermediate team went instead and faced the Listowel Juniors in an exhibition match. According to the Globe newspaper in Toronto, the home team scored a 19-7 victory.

Taylor’s one game in Owen Sound, from the local Times and the Globe in Toronto.

Team captain Fred Taylor led Listowel to a win over Barrie in the next playoff round, and on to the one-game provincial final in Toronto against the Beechgrove team from Kingston. Listowel lost 9-5, but even getting that far was a big accomplishment for a small-town team. Taylor was now one of the most famous hockey players in the province and would soon be on to bigger and better things.

A Snowball’s Chance…

Here in Owen Sound, we didn’t quite get the 7 feet of snow they got in some areas around Buffalo this past weekend. Still, the 2-or-so feet we got was plenty for mid November! But, as the old saying goes, It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good, and so the storm put me in mind of a story. One that — by happy coincidence — is told in my new book, Hockey Hall of Fame True Stories.

On March 4, 1971, 18 inches of snow fell on Montreal in the space of just 12 hours. As a result, mayor Jean Drapeau asked NHL president Clarence Campbell to suspend the game that night between the hometown Canadiens and the Vancouver Canucks. Reports at the time noted that NHL games had been canceled before. (In the wake of the deaths of King George V and King George VI of England and the assassinations of U.S. president John F. Kennedy in 1963 and of Martin Luther King in 1968. Another game had been canceled in 1950 when heat inside the Boston Garden caused fog over the ice.) But it was generally noted that the Canadiens–Canucks game was the first in the NHL ever to be canceled by weather.

The storm of February 20, 1924, was front-page news in these Ottawa papers.

Bill Westwick, longtime sports editor of the Ottawa Journal, knew that wasn’t true. “After reading for the third time the uncorrected claims that in the recent snow storms a major league hockey game was cancelled in Montreal by weather ‘for the first time in the history of the National League,’” Westwick wrote on March 10, 1971, “the urge must be strong among just a few remaining members of Ottawa’s one-time almost unbeatable National League teams to say: ‘It just ain’t so.’”

Westwick then spun the incredible tale of the Senators’ ill-fated train trip to Montreal on February 20, 1924. It’s an account that is more than backed up by Ottawa newspapers from the time.

More on the team’s travel problems on the front page
of the Ottawa Journal (left) and Citizen (right).

Ottawa was scheduled to face the Canadiens in Montreal that night and because of the threat of bad weather, the Senators decided to catch an early train. “All the players were rounded up and ordered to board the Canadian National express, which left at noon,” reported the Ottawa Citizen on February 21, 1924.

But trouble was already in the air. The train was late arriving from Pembroke because of the snowstorm and didn’t pull out of Ottawa’s Union Station until 1:30 p.m. It had barely gotten out of the city before it was held up again, awaiting a snowplow to be sent ahead and clear the track. This time the train got as far as Rockland, Ontario, about 25 miles (40 km) east, where it was delayed again due to a freeze-up in the water tank.

Many members of the 1923 Stanley Cup champs were stuck on the train that night.

“There was no great danger that the Ottawas would be delayed,” reported the Citizen, “until shortly after Hawkesbury [another 37 miles / 60 km] was passed.” Just a short distance farther, near Cushing Junction, “a terrific blizzard” was raging. Another snowplow had gotten stuck and the train couldn’t get through. By then it was a little after five o’clock.

From 5:30 p.m. until 2 a.m., the players and other passengers were stranded on the train, with practically no provisions. The game in Montreal was, of course, canceled. A plow was finally able to get through to the train and clear the tracks enough to get everyone back to Hawkesbury, where the train sat until some time after 4 a.m. when the line was cleared sufficiently for departure.

The Canadiens went on to win the Stanley Cup in 1924 and wore these
uniforms in 1924-25 to commemorate their ‘World’ championship.

Montreal was only about 60 miles (100 km) away, but it wasn’t until 8:30 a.m. that the train finally arrived. The Senators slept the day away at the Windsor Hotel on February 21 before showing up at the Mount Royal Arena for the reschedule game that evening. Reports say the Ottawa team was never really in the game, and they were beaten by the Canadiens 3-0.

There were lots of strange goings-on during the Senators’ ill-fated train ride to Montreal, but to get the whole story, you’ll have to read Hockey Hall of Fame True Stories!

From the Montreal Daily Star, February 21, 1924.

And hey, just in case you’ve forgotten about that other new book I’ve got out now, if you care to, you can listen to a recently recorded interview I did for the CBC Radio affiliate in Thunder Bay about Engraved in History: The Story of the Stanley Cup Champion Kenora Thistles.

Finally, congratulations to the Toronto Argonauts on their Grey Cup victory over the weekend. Though I’m far from the fan I used to be, the Argos will always be my first favourite team with many memories of my father. And, good luck to the Canadian soccer team this afternoon in their first game at the 2022 World Cup! Before I wrote a book about North American football for National Geographic Kids this year (It’s a Numbers Game! Football), I wrote a book about the game the rest of the world calls football (Absolute Expert: Soccer) back in 2018.

Memories of Team Canada

It was September of 1972. I was only eight years old — wouldn’t turn nine until late October — and in grade four at Snowcrest Public School. (That’s fourth grade, for those of you who speak American.) I started playing hockey that year too, although I wasn’t very good yet.

There’s actually quite a lot I still remember about that school year.

But nothing was bigger than the Canada-Russia series!

You can pretty much draw a straight line — well, maybe not all that straight, really — from that series in 1972 (it wasn’t called the Summit Series until some time later) to today, and what I do for a living 50 years later, and have been doing for more than 30 years. So, how could I not write about it?

That being said, I really don’t have anything new to contribute to the collective memory. Even my one bit of original insight is discussed (a little bit) in Ken Dryden’s new book, The Series: What I Remember, What It Felt Like, What It Feels Like Now.

I came to know Ken when he was president of the Toronto Maple Leafs. (He has helped me, from time to time over the years, with answers to questions for some of my own projects.) We at Dan Diamond & Associates did a lot of work with the Leafs when they were moving from Maple Leafs Gardens to the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) and Ken and Dan became good friends. He came to a few of our office Christmas parties and curling bonspiels.

At one of those events, I’d mentioned to Ken that I’d recently watched the entire ’72 series, which had come out on DVD around that time, and how exciting it still was! This was probably in 2002. At that point, Ken had never seen the games since having played in them 30 years before. I asked him how come he and the others who had played with the Canadian national team (the Nats) before going pro hadn’t been able to impart to their Team Canada teammates just how good the Russians really were. He basically told me, “I thought the NHL players were that much better.”

A Ken Dryden hockey card from the time period… and Ken and my brother
Jonathan at a Dan Diamond bonspiel attempting to replicate
Dryden’s famous goalie stick pose with curling brooms.

Dryden had seen the Soviet team in action for the first time when he joined the Nats for the 1969 World Championships in Sweden in March. He would face them for the first time on December 20, 1969. Dryden writes that the game was in Victoria, but it was actually in Vancouver. The Nats beat the Soviets the next night in Victoria 5-1 with Wayne Stephenson in goal, but in Vancouver on the 20th, they’d beaten Dryden and the Canadians 9-3.

“Rod Seiling,” says Dryden of his Team Canada teammate in his new book, “had played against the Russians with the national team, Red Berenson [another new teammate] with the Belleville McFarlands, and a few others against touring Russian teams as juniors. And when I said the Russians were good, I knew they were — I’d lost, 9-3, in Victoria! Some of the others might have known too. [Brian Glennie, who was with Team Canada, had played at the 1968 Olympics.] But the Russians had only been good against the national team and junior teams, few of whose players ever played a minute in the NHL. This was Team Canada. These were NHL stars, the best in the world. So, I knew, but really, I only kind of knew.”

As for me, at the age of eight … I knew nothing!

I didn’t even know there was such a thing as international hockey. Had no idea of the string of Soviet successes. I’m not 100 percent certain I actually remember the announcement that was made in April of 1972 that the series would happen, or the unveiling of the roster in June. But I certainly do remember the fuss about Bobby Hull being ineligible for the team because he’d left the NHL to sign with the World Hockey Association. And I remember all the talk of how Canada would beat the Russians in all eight games.

Dryden with the Nats facing the Russians in Vancouver,
from the Vancouver Sun, December 22, 1969.

I believed it

Why wouldn’t I?

Like I said, I knew nothing about international hockey. I’d watched the Apollo moon landings, but I really knew nothing of the Space Race either. The Russians might as well have been men from the moon as far as I knew. We played hockey in Canada. No one else did! There were plenty of American teams in the NHL … but all the players were Canadians.

Of course we’d win all eight games!

Game one was played on September 2, (a Saturday night) in Montreal. We watched in Toronto at my Zweig grandparents’ apartment. My grandfather had died at the end of August. This was still a night of sitting shiva, the weeklong mourning period in Judaism. I was at the apartment with my mother and father and my two brothers. I remember my father’s Uncle Abe being there too. I think Uncle Saul as well. (They were my grandmother’s brothers.) I’d been to my grandfather’s funeral just five days before … but the memories are completely separate.

What I remember from that night is the excitement of Canada’s two quick opening goals; Phil Esposito after just 30 seconds, and Paul Henderson’s goal six minutes later. I don’t remember when it dawned on us that the Soviets were starting to take over. I do remember it was 4-2 for them after two periods, and that the heat in Montreal was making our guys look slow, sweaty, and tired. (Did I realize how much it was the Russians making us look slow, sweaty, and tired? I don’t remember.) I do remember Bobby Clarke scoring in the third period to cut the lead to 4-3, and that it was all downhill after that until the 7-3 final.

Was I stunned?

I can’t really say that I was.

When you’re eight years old, I think you take the world as it comes.

I don’t remember anything hockey from the Sunday off day, but Monday was Labour Day so Tuesday was a school day. For that reason, I was only allowed to watch the first period of game two from Toronto on Monday night. I may have listened to more on the radio after going to bed, but I’m sure I didn’t know the final score (Canada won, 4-1) until I woke up on Tuesday morning. I don’t remember talking about it at school … although we must have! I do remember talking to my friend, Alan Rusonik, later in the week about the Soviet national anthem. We all liked that!

On September 6, I likely watched only the first period of game three from Winnipeg as well. That one ended in a 4-4 tie. What I actually do remember about that game came the next day, when a young woman who was going to Seneca College arrived at our house. She would be living in a bedroom in our basement that school year, and helping to look after my brothers and me. The first thing I remember Cheryl saying to us was, “Don’t you think they should be playing overtime in a series like this?”

I knew I was going to like her!

But, of course, that tie game would later help in the dramatic finish.

A recent real estate picture of the house at
44 Beardmore, where my cousins used to live.

Game four, in Vancouver, was played 50 years ago tonight, on September 8, which was a Friday in 1972. We watched that one at our cousin’s, the Freedman’s, house. As it wasn’t a school night, I guess we were allowed to stay up and watch it all, but I can’t say I remember too much of this one either.

I do remember the booing.

Especially when Frank Mahovlich fell on top of Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak … and took way too long to get up off him.

I must have seen Phil Esposito’s speech after the game, where he basically took Canadian fans and media to task for the boos and bad press. I’ve seen the clip many times in recent years, so it’s hard to be sure what I know and what I remember. It’s possible that I mainly remember it from pictures in the book Twenty-Seven Days in September, which came out in 1973, and which I’m sure I studied more closely than any school book I ever read.

After the Vancouver game, the series took a two-week break before it resumed in Moscow. The Canadian players had a few days off, and then travelled to Sweden for a pair of exhibition games with the Swedish national team. There was no coverage of those games here in Canada, but I do remember the bad press and the Swedes accusing the Canadians of being thugs.

Game five, the first game in Moscow, was played on September 22. Another Friday. I watched the opening ceremonies, with the exchange of gifts and flowers, while I was home for lunch. Definitely saw Espo slip and fall, then bow to the crowd. And then it was back to school.

At some point that afternoon, probably after recess, I remember just walking out of my classroom. Mr. McMinn’s class was up the hall. His kids were what we called “the slow learners.” They had a TV in their room. I suppose they used it to watch Sesame Street, or other educational programs on TVO. This afternoon, they were watching the hockey game!

I sat in the hallway, outside the door, and listened.

I can still sort of see myself, sitting there.

I don’t really remember what I heard, but I know that Canada blew a 4-1 lead in that game and lost 5-4. Still, the noisy gang of 3,000 Canadian fans in the stands cheered the team off the ice. Team Canada trailed the series 3-1-1 … but the tide was about to turn.

I don’t remember if, back in Canada, we knew what was going on in Moscow at the time. Over the years, we’ve heard about the phones ringing all night. The food (and beer) disappearing. (I feel like I knew about that at the time.) I also don’t remember any discussion of Bobby Clarke’s slash to the ankle of Valeri Kharlamov in game six. In fact, for some reason, I don’t remember much of game six at all. It was played on a Sunday afternoon, Toronto time. I remember hearing some of it in the car while running errands with my father.

I have no idea why I wasn’t at home watching.

Around the back of Snowcrest, my public school. That’s the gym on the left,
and what we called the “open area” on the right. The upper windows
at the back were my classroom in grades five and six.
I was pacing this pavement anxiously at recess during game eight.

Radio would play a big part in my following game seven on Tuesday afternoon. Once again, I watched the early part of the game on TV at lunchtime, but this time I brought a transistor radio to school with me. I remember listening to it while walking in the school yard. Might still have been lunch time, but definitely at recess later.

It was 2-2 after two periods … and Canada needed to win this game to have a chance to win the series in game eight. Back at my desk in our classroom, I turned the radio down, but I didn’t turn it off. Our teacher, Ms. Tadman (the first Ms. I ever knew) didn’t seem like a hockey fan (I remember her as a terrible skater), but she said something to me along the lines of, “if you’ve got a radio, turn it up so we can all hear.” Which I did … and we listened to Canada score a 4-3 victory. The series was tied 3-3-1.

Two days later, for the eighth and final game, Ms. Tadman brought a TV into our classroom!

Again, I don’t really know what I remember because I saw it that afternoon or what I remember because I know it happened. There were all the bad penalty calls early in the game. There was J.P. Parise nearly swinging his stick at the referee. Later, there was the goal judge failing to turn on the light to signal a Canadian goal, and the players skating across the ice to rescue Alan Eagleson from the Soviet police after he’d protested.

As for the score, it was 2-2 after one period, but it was 5-3 Russia after two.

One of the things I remember for certain was that, when it was time for recess, the school made us go out and play. Normally, recess was my favourite part of the day, but that day, I wanted to stay inside and watch the game! I guess because we’d have the TV in our classroom, I hadn’t brought my radio this time so it was 15 minutes of pacing outside and waiting to get back in!

Prudential Insurance Great Moments painting of the Paul Henderson
goal along with Henderson’s Team Canada hockey card.

I don’t know for sure, but I think I saw the early third-period goal by Phil Esposito that cut the lead to 5-4, and I’m certain I saw the later goal from Yvan Cournoyer that tied it 5-5. But another thing I remember for sure is that when our school day ended at 3:10, the game wasn’t over yet.

Ms. Tadman didn’t make us leave this time … but I know that plenty of kids left anyway!

Were they crazy!?!

Of course, I stayed. And I saw Paul Henderson’s goal with 34 seconds left.

I watched Canada hold on for the 6-5 victory.

I remember throwing things into the air.

I can’t honestly say if that was after the goal, or after the game ended.

Maybe it was both times.

But it doesn’t matter.

Clearly, after 50 years, I can’t remember it all … but I’ll still never forget it!

Childhood Sports Heroes…

Joe Theismann hobbled towards me on crutches, his right ankle encased in a cast to protect a broken bone. I, too, was in a cast. Mine went from the tips of the fingers on my right hand all the way up to my shoulder. I’d broken both bones in my wrist around the same time Theismann had broken his ankle. My dad and I had made our way down to the sidelines as the players came onto the field. I was too shy, but my dad called out, “Joe, would you sign my son’s cast?”

As he made his way over to me, Theismann said, “Signing casts isn’t exactly my bag.” But he was smiling when he said it. And he signed it for me. He didn’t ask me to sign his.

I know what some of you are thinking. Who in their right mind would ask Joe Theismann to sign his cast so soon after that injury?

But this wasn’t the gruesome, career-ending broken ankle of Monday Night Football fame from November 18, 1985. What Theismann said to me is a pretty good clue that we were in an earlier era. This all happened shortly after Joe’s Toronto Argonauts season-altering broken ankle of August 3, 1972.

He signed my cast before the next Argos home game on August 16 — 50 years ago tonight.

Before the Blue Jays, the Zweigs were a football family. David and I were really into it. Jonathan, not so much. (He was the all-time hupper!) The picture on the right is the three of us at Centennial Park in Barrie. Later that night, I fell out of the top bunk in our bedroom at the cottage and broke my wrist. Not sure of the exact date.

I kept that cast for the better part of 20 years, until it all but crumbled to dust.

I always say baseball is my favourite sport. And hockey is the sport that has been the main part of my professional life for almost 30 years. But football was my first sports love, and Joe Theismann was my first sports hero. He led Toronto to a 10-4 record and the East Division championship as a rookie in 1971 — before a crushing defeat by the Calgary Stampeders in the Grey Cup. I’d seen my first Argos game in person earlier that season, and was hooked on football!

Not the best picture of me, but there I am wearing my Joe Theismann Argos jersey with David and Jonathan and our cousin Bob (Bobby back then).

It’s just a coincidence about the 50 years, but I’ve been thinking about that night a lot lately. Last month, on the same night we had the local launch party for my new hockey book, Engraved in History: The Story of the Stanley Cup Champion Kenora Thistles, I spent almost the entire day prior to that (7:35 am to 4:55 pm) doing 17 different phone and zoom interviews for my other current book, It’s a Numbers Game! Football, published by National Geographic Kids. (I did an 18th interview the following week.)

There are some football books in my “canon.”

I’ve never done that much promotion for anything before. It was fun … but it was exhausting. I’d written about me and Joe Theismann in a brief biography the NGK publicity people put together for the day … and practically everyone I spoke to asked me about it! If you care to watch, you can see me telling the story in the first few minutes of my interview on The Douglas Coleman Show, a syndicated talk and music show/podcast.

These two books, by my first sports heroes, were like my bible!

Theismann spent just three years in Toronto through 1973 before signing with Washington and jumping to the NFL. Interestingly, 1973 was the same year that Borje Salming signed with the Maple Leafs and entered the NHL from Sweden. I suppose it’s because Theismann spent only those three seasons with the Argos (when I was seven-to-10-years-old) that I associate his time in Toronto with my childhood. Salming was with the Leafs for 16 seasons until 1989 (when I was 25) and has, really, been associated with the city ever since.

You may have heard the announcement last week that Salming has been diagnosed with ALS — Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Though there are better treatments now, there is still no cure for ALS. It’s a horrible disease … and it’s horrible news.

Sports cards from the early 1970s.

I have no personal connection to Salming, other than having watched and admired him for years. Before he came to Toronto, goalie Jacques Plante was my first favourite Leaf. (He was with the team from 1970 to 1973.) After that, I could never settle on just one. I was a big fan of Darryl Sittler, Mike Palmateer, and many of those mid-to-late ’70s Leafs. Still, Salming — with his unique brand of toughness in an era of goons — was always something special.

I recently asked my brother David what his first memory of Salming was.

It was exactly the same as mine.

My brother David, and his friend Melina, with Borje Salming back in 2016.

We were at our family cottage late in the summer of 1973. (It was just a year after my broken arm. We were seven and nine years old.) David was looking at a newspaper story with the Maple Leafs roster, probably for training camp. There were names he recognized from the past season, and new players he hadn’t heard of yet. Two of the new names were strange, and he read them out loud to me: Borje Salming and Inge Hammarstrom.

Our family was a Toronto Star family, and I figured it would be easy to track down the article in an online search. It must have been August, or the Labour Day weekend at the very latest.

But I couldn’t find it.

Strange.

Good luck to Borje and his family. It’ll be a tough battle. But few people are tougher than he is.

Hockey In July

If you’re a regular follower of my posts, I hope that I’ve convinced you by now that there’s something fun and fascinating in the old-time history of hockey. I know it’s probably still not for everyone, but I’m very proud of my new book Engraved in History: The Story of the Stanley Cup champion Kenora Thistles. I think it’s the best work I’ve ever done.

As I’ve said in previous posts, the book won’t go into wide release until the fall (in time for the new hockey season), but it’s available now at outlets in Kenora and to people anywhere online. (More on that in a minute.) It’s also for sale in my hometown of Owen Sound, and we’re having a local launch party here for the book next week, on Thursday, July 28 at 7 pm at The Ginger Press Bookstore and Cafe. If you’re in town — or can get here — we’d love to see you!

Otherwise, you can purchase copies at: ratportagepress.com. Click on the book cover when you get there and then follow the prompts. If you prefer to support an independent bookseller, Elizabeth Campbell Books/Darlington Gallery in Kenora has copies for sale too. Go to the Contact page on Elizabeth’s darlinggal web site, where you’ll find a phone number you can call, or a comments section you can fill out.

In Kenora, publisher Rick Brignall has copies for sale, along with issues of his Lake of the Woods Cottage Guide magazine, at Matiowski Farmers’ Market all summer long. Books are also available at the Lake of the Woods Museum and at a few other sites in Kenora.

Click on the image to enlarge.

We haven’t really sent out review copies yet, but my friend Stan Fischler has already jumped aboard with some kind words in a couple of his recent online columns for The Hockey News.

Click on the image to enlarge.

I’ve also taped some interviews to promote the local launch. The Smitty and Middy Show is hosted by Noah Smith and Tyler Middleton. It appears on various radio and cable television stations in southwestern Ontario, and also as an online podcast. If you’d like to listen, their interview with me is here. They introduce me at the 8:10 mark and I’m on from 8:30 to 34:50. (It’s pretty long, so you’re excused if you don’t listen to it all!)

Engraved in History on the wall of the Smitty and Middy set.

My other recent interview is with Fred Wallace of CFOS Radio in Owen Sound. It’s only five minutes long, so give this one a try if the other is too long for you.

And, does anyone remember the story I posted a few years back about the man who kicked a 65-yard field goal in 1882? Well, that story didn’t actually make the final cut, but the football book I did for National Geographic Kids is finally about to come out. You can order this one from Amazon right now … but if you’re at the book launch at The Ginger Press next week, we’ll have a few copies on hand as well.

And, no. I didn’t get to meet Patrick Mahomes. But he wrote a really great foreword.

Engraved in History… 2022… 1912… and 1907

Congratulations to the Colorado Avalanche who, on Sunday night, became Stanley Cup champions for the 2021-22 NHL season. It’s Colorado’s first Cup victory in 21 years, since 2001, and the team’s third since relocating from Quebec City for the 1995-96 season. The Nordiques, of course, never won the Stanley Cup, although they were Avco Cup champions of the World Hockey Association in 1976-77.

(Congratulations also to the newest members elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, who were elected on Monday: Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin, Daniel Alfredsson, Roberto Luongo, Riikka Sallinen, and Herb Carnegie.)

Image off of my TV of the Avalanche with the Stanley Cup.

Top-tier hockey in Quebec City dates back to around 1879, and even though the Nordiques were never champions of the NHL, Quebec is not without a Stanley Cup title. Two, in fact. You just have to go back 110 years to find them. In 1912, and again in 1913, the Quebec Bulldogs of the National Hockey Association won back-to-back championships.

Not surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of similarities between Colorado’s victory in 2022 and Quebec’s in 1912. For one thing, the Avalanche completed an 82-game schedule and four rounds of playoffs with a championship victory on June 26. The Bulldogs became champions on March 5 at the conclusion of an 18-game regular season without the need of playoffs. And Quebec certainly wasn’t facing a team from Tampa Bay in 1912. American cities weren’t yet allowed to complete. The key victory for Quebec that year came in Ottawa, with later wins at home against a team from Moncton, New Brunswick.

These are the 1913 Bulldogs … but it’s a better image than the 1912 pictures.

Hockey was a very different game back then. It was played on natural ice that relied on cold (winter) temperatures. The players would look ridiculously small, and poorly equipped, to modern eyes. There was no giant 32-team league that controlled the Stanley Cup, as the NHL does today. Train travel meant leagues were small and regional. In order to ensure that the Stanley Cup was a Canadian national trophy, the champion of one league was able to challenge the champion of another for the ultimate hockey prize.

Before the 1911-12 season, a new league was added to the national landscape: the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. Brothers Frank and Lester Patrick raided the NHA’s Bulldogs, as well as the Montreal Canadiens and Montreal Wanderers, to help stock their new teams in Vancouver, Victoria and New Westminster. Only the defending NHA and Stanley Cup champion Ottawa Senators were left in tact, a move which left most experts of the day predicting Ottawa would romp to another NHA title. Instead, the four-team race that year was remarkably close.

Heading into the final weekend of the season, Quebec had a record of 9-and-8. Ottawa was 9-and-7, while the Wanderers were 8-and-8. Only the Canadiens were out of contention at 7-and-10. On March 2, 1912, the Canadiens beat the Wanderers 2-1 to eliminate them from championship contention while the Bulldogs visited the Senators. A win for the home team would clinch another NHA title, but a win for the visitors would keep their championship hopes alive.

A small group of fans was on hand from Quebec City, but they were drowned out by 6,000 Ottawa faithful as the Senators took a 2–0 lead after one period. Future Hall of Famers Joe Hall and Joe Malone of Quebec scored in the second to tie the game before Ottawa went back on top with two goals midway through the third.

The summary in Quebec’s Daily Telegraph shows Joe Malone with the
overtime winner, while the summary in the Chronicle lists Joe Hall

Again Quebec fought back for a tie, but Ottawa went ahead 5–4 with just three minutes remaining. As the final seconds were ticking down, many Ottawa fans began to take their celebration into the streets, but with only about 10 seconds to go, Joe Malone scored to tie the game. It took until three minutes into a second overtime session for Quebec to emerge with a 6–5 victory — and newspapers seem to be equally split over whether Joe Malone or Joe Hall netted the winner.

Over 10,000 people greeted the Bulldogs when their train arrived back in Quebec City on Sunday evening. There was a brass band and a bugle corps leading a parade through the streets, and players were called on to make speeches. The Quebec Chronicle refers to Joe Hall as being treated as the hero of heroes, though the Daily Telegraph credited Malone with the winner. But whoever had scored, the Bulldogs hadn’t won the NHA title and the Stanley Cup just yet.

The Senators now had to make up a protested game from earlier in the season. If they beat the Montreal Wanderers they would be tied with Quebec and there would be a playoff. So, on the evening of March 6, 1912, the Bulldogs and some of their fans gathered for a banquet at the Victoria Hotel in Quebec City.

Course after course of fine food was served from a menu on which the first page paid tribute to Quebec players Paddy Moran, Goldie Prodger, Joe Hall, Jack Marks, Eddie Oatman, Jack MacDonald, and Joe Malone. The tribute was in the form of a song parody, spoofing the popular 1910 Billy Murray hit, What’s the Matter with Father? (People of my vintage will likely recognize the tune from What’s the Matter with Flintstone? from an early episode of the cartoon we all watched for years at lunch time.)

What's the matter with Goaler 'Pat'?
          He's all right!
To 'Goldie' Prodger lift your hat —
          He's all right.
Joe Hall would make a team alone;
Marks and Oatman hold their own.
What's the matter with 'Mac' and Malone?
          They're all right.

A special telegraph wire was set up to provide everyone at the hotel with details of the game in Ottawa. When word came that the Wanderers had scored a 5–2 victory, the celebrations started all over again, with the Daily Telegraph reporting that people were soon singing the new song in rooms all over the hotel and then in the streets throughout the city.

The following week, the Bulldogs played a Stanley Cup challenge series against the Moncton Victorias, champions of the Maritime Professional Hockey League. “Whether the trophy will remain here long or not, will depend on the ability of he Moncton team,” reported the Quebec Daily Telegraph, which reminded its readers that, “Judging from the advance notices, Quebec will have no easy thing to handle in the Moncton team.”

But, in fact, Quebec had a very easy time as the Bulldogs romped to victory in the two-game, total-goals series with a 9-3 win on March 11 and an 8-0 rout two nights later. The next season, with the NHA expanded to six teams with the addition of the Toronto Blueshirts and the Toronto Tecumsehs, Quebec rampaged through the 20-game season with a record of 16-and-4, and then crushed another Maritime team, the Sydney Millionaires, 14-3 and 6-2 to repeat as Stanley Cup champions.

            *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

My New Book is Available Now!

It’s fairly obvious to anyone who reads the stories I post that I love these “time travel” hockey tales. That’s why, when Rick Brignall contacted me a little over two years ago and asked if I’d be interested in writing the full story of the Kenora Thistles’ Stanley Cup victory of 1907, I told him that I’d kick myself if this book came out someday and I wasn’t involved with it. Now, finally, the book is ready!

As you may recall, Engraved in History: The Story of the Kenora Thistles and the Stanley Cup was originally scheduled to come out last November. A tactical delay, and then more Covid, pushed things back. (Floods this spring around Winnipeg and Kenora didn’t help either!) Now, the book is coming out in two stages. There will be a “National Launch” this fall, when you’ll be able to find the book on Amazon or, hopefully, at a store near you.

Until then, the book is available in Kenora, and will be available in my hometown of Owen Sound as well. But if you would like to purchase copies right now, and can’t get to Kenora or Owen Sound, fear not! You can order them online and copies will be mailed to you right away. You will have to pay for shipping, however.

The site is: ratportagepress.com. Click on the book cover when you get there. (The site is a little slim at the moment, but it will improve in the days ahead and is already good to.)

If you prefer to support an independent bookseller, Elizabeth Campbell Books/Darlington Gallery in Kenora has copies for sale too. Go to the Contact page on Elizabeth’s web site, where you’ll find a phone number you can call, or a comments section you can fill out.

If you are in Kenora, Rick will have the first copies for sale today at the local Farmer’s Market. (There will be a bigger event on Canada Day and the books will be available at the Cottage Guide booth at the Farmer’s Market all summer long.) They’ll also be available soon at the Lake of the Woods Museum.

In the Owen Sound area, I’ll have a few copies to sell at the Farmer’s Market in Flesherton on the morning of Saturday, July 16. Copies should be available at The Ginger Press in Owen Sound a little before that. (We’ll have something of a “Christmas in July” to celebrate at Ginger Press around the 25th or so.)

Come fall, with the full launch, we’ll have much more publicity, promotion and events.

In the meantime, if you have any other questions, you can contact me directly at
eric@ericzweig.com.

You’ve Gotta Have Hart … But Come o-n-n-n, Teeder!

Well, let’s face it. It ain’t the Stanley Cup. Then again, the Leafs have won the Stanley Cup twice in my lifetime. (I don’t remember them. I was six months old in 1964 and 3 1/2 years old in 1967.) But I wasn’t even born the last time a Toronto player was named the NHL’s Most Valuable Player. Before last night, it had only happened twice in team history.

I don’t understand where the stars of the current team go once the playoffs start. Better analysts than I am have (and will continue) to discuss that. But Auston Matthews has won the Hart Trophy after a team record-breaking 60-goal season. You can’t take that away from him. And even if you want to argue that Connor McDavid is still the better player, the voting wasn’t all that close.

I took this picture with my phone off the TV during last night’s NHL Awards.

What do sportswriters know?

Well, Matthews also won the Ted Lindsay Award, and that’s given to the most outstanding player as voted on by his fellow players. If they think he deserves it, who are we to say he doesn’t?

The first Leafs player to win the Hart as MVP was Babe Pratt in 1944. The second — and last, until last night — was Teeder Kennedy in 1955.

The complete vote for the 2021-22 NHL MVP.

Ted Kennedy was just a 17-year-old kid when the Leafs acquired him in the spring of 1943. With so many players serving in the military during Word War II, the NHL was populated mainly with young kids and worn-out veterans.

Kennedy was never the most skilled player. He wasn’t very fast. He wasn’t a big scorer. But he was a good playmaker. Most importantly, he was a leader who knew how to win. He starred during the most successful era in team history, winning the Stanley Cup in 1945, 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1951. He was named captain of the team before the 1948-49 season.

It’s often said that the Leafs used this red lettering only during the 1947-48 season …
But Teeder Kennedy wasn’t named the team captain until the following year.

Though he was still just 28 at the time, Teeder Kennedy had completed 11 seasons in the NHL by the end of 1953–54. He had planned to retire, but was convinced to come back for another year. Kennedy would score just 10 goals in 1954-55, but his 42 assists ranked third in the NHL and his leadership was a key reason why the Maple Leafs even made the playoffs.

Unlike the current team, the Leafs of Kennedy’s era won the Stanley Cup plenty of times, but didn’t win a lot of individual honours. “As coach Hap Day put it so well,” team owner Conn Smythe told reporters after the team’s Stanley Cup win in 1948, “we may not have the all-stars on our team, but we have the world champions.”

So it was somewhat ironic that Kennedy won the Hart Trophy in a year the Leafs struggled just to make the playoffs. (They were swept by the Detroit Red Wings, who went on to beat the Montreal Canadiens in seven games for the Stanley Cup.) But, when the results of the voting for the 1954-55 MVP award were announced, Kennedy easily out-polled teammate Harry Lumley as well as Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, and Doug Harvey of the Montreal Canadiens. Gordie Howe and Red Kelly of the Stanley Cup champions were well back in the voting.

Still, the general censuses was that it was about time that Teeder Kennedy was finally recognized for his talents. Everyone seemed to agree, except perhaps for the Leafs captain himself. “It comes as quite a thrill, one of the biggest I’ve had in hockey,” said Kennedy. “But I believe it should have been Harry Lumley. Leafs would have been down the drain without him. And I’m not just being modest.”

Not only did Auston Matthews win the Hart Trophy last night, he and teammate Mitch Marner were both named to the First All-Star Team. The last time two Leafs made the First Team it was Frank Mahovlich and Carl Brewer in 1963!

“Kennedy deserves the Hart,” said the Leafs goalie. “I hate to think of us without him. He was the guy that made our club tick.”

Despite winning the Hart, Kennedy made good on his plans to retire … though he did return to the team again during the 1956-57 season to help out when the club was hit with a rash of injuries. After that, he retired for keeps.

Sixty years later, in 2017, Teeder Kennedy was ranked third all-time — behind Dave Keon and Syl Apps — when the Toronto Maple Leafs celebrated their centennial season by naming their top 100 players. Auston Matthews undoubtedly has more sheer talent than any of those three. He’s probably already among the greatest players in Toronto’s history. But if he’s ever truly going to be the best, he’s going to have to lead the Leafs to the Stanley Cup … and pretty darn soon!

Colorado Wins on History (But Don’t Doubt Tampa!)

The Stanley Cup Final starts tonight. For those among my readers who haven’t been following the NHL playoffs, it’s the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Colorado Avalanche. By all accounts, it should be a good one!

I’m not much as a hockey analyst. I don’t really watch with a critical eye. So, as I offer my thoughts, I wouldn’t exactly go rushing off with them to one of the many (MANY!) sports books being advertised on hockey broadcasts throughout the playoffs.

Personally, I think that Colorado has the more talented team, but Tampa has the better goaltender. That often makes the difference. Before the playoffs started, I offered the opinion that I didn’t think the Lightning were going to win again. If they do, it’ll be three in a row. To me, that would automatically place them among the greatest teams of all time — especially when considering all the obstacles over the past couple of years. I’m not really convinced they’re that … but I wouldn’t bet against them at this point.

This is the earliest reference I have found to hockey in Denver.

That being said, you don’t come to me expecting analysis. You come to me (I hope!) for some historical perspective. So, here we go…

This year’s Colorado–Tampa Bay matchup guarantees it’ll be at least 30 years by 2023 since a Canadian team last won the Stanley Cup. I think that as much as some Canadian fans enjoy watching hockey, they enjoy bashing Gary Bettman just as much. Though Bettman is the guy who spearheaded hockey’s southern expansion — capitalizing on the success of Wayne Gretzky in Los Angeles — he probably can’t take the blame for this long drought. I don’t really have an answer as to why Canadian teams haven’t won for so long. (I don’t think anyone really does.) It’s probably just a statistical quirk.

Denver versus Leadville for the State Championship.

Colorado, being ski country, at least seems like a winter state where there’s no reason not to enjoy hockey. And, indeed, the origins of hockey in Colorado go back to at least the late 1800s. According to the web site International Hockey Wiki, it was noted in the town of Leadville, Colorado, on December 17, 1890, by a Mr. M.A. Morland that there were a number of good skaters in the city, and that “There used to be a hockey club here and I cannot see why one should not be gotten up now.”

Leadville is in the center of the state, about 100 miles from Denver and not too far from Vail and Aspen. A game of ice polo (a similar, but different, sport) was reportedly played in Leadville on December 8, 1894, and hockey games were played at the Leadville Crystal Palace as part of the Leadville Crystal Carnival hockey tournament in 1896. Apparently, the Denver Athletic Club formed a team that same winter.

Leadville beat Denver 7-1.

The first mention of a hockey team in Denver that I could find in newspapers doesn’t appear until February of 1898. On February 2, 1898, the Leadville Herald Democrat reported that arrangements had been made for a game between the Denver AC and the local club for later that week. On game day, February 5, the same paper noted that the game that Saturday night would be for the state championship. The next day, the Leadville newspaper, with a lead in language so politically incorrect it just wouldn’t fly anymore, reported on the 7–1 victory of the home team, whose maroon, red, and white colors weren’t all that different from what the Avalanche wear in the NHL today.

Not surprisingly, hockey history in the Tampa Bay area isn’t quite as old. Though there was hockey being played in the Miami area as long ago as 1938 (which you’ll be able to read quite a bit about in my book Hockey Hall of Fame: True Stories when it comes out this fall), the first hockey team on Florida’s west coast isn’t quite that old, though its first campaign of 1971–72 was still 50 years ago this season.

According to information on the web site of the Society for International Hockey Research, the old Eastern Hockey League granted a franchise to the St. Petersburg area on May 12, 1971. However, the earliest reference I could find in a Tampa newspaper was from May 30, 1971. Tampa Tribune sports editor Tom McEwen confirmed the story on June 3, 1971, under the headline ‘The Icemen Cometh.’

As of then, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Wauchula area team had no name, but McEwen speculated that they would surely be dubbed “Suns, Stringrays, Porpoises, Pelicans, Sharks, Senior Citizens, Mullets, Geritols, Oysters, Ecologists, Suncoasters, Catfish, or Whatnots.” McEwen had cast a wide net, but he was more or less right on two counts when the rival Tampa Times reported on July 26, 1971, that the team had officially been dubbed the Suncoast Suns.

The Suncoast Suns lasted just two seasons in the EHL, and played a third and final year in 1973-74 in the Southern Hockey League. The team boasted at least two NHL players. There was Ed Kea during that first season of 1971–72. A native of Collingwood, Ontario, Kea went on to play with the Atlanta Flames and the St. Louis Blues between 1973 and 1983. There was also Cliff Pennington, of Winnipeg. Pennington, who finished out his hockey career playing all three seasons with the Suns in both leagues, had previously played in the NHL with Montreal and Boston over three seasons in the early 1960s.

So, there you go!

Tampa Tribune, June 3, 1971.

And, changing subjects… my Facebook memory this morning noted that it was two years ago today that I signed a contract to write a book about the Kenora Thistles. Two-plus years from signing to publication isn’t unheard of, but it is a little bit on the long side for me. So, here is a long-awaited update.

Engraved in History: the Story of the Stanley Cup Champion Kenora Thistles has now been printed! I expect to receive my own author’s copies any day now. The book will soon be available in the Kenora area in time for summer cottage season in the region. There will also be a web site where the book will be more widely available. As soon as I have information on that, I will pass it along. However, at this point, the book won’t truly go into “wide release” until the fall. At that point, you should be able to purchase copies on Amazon and through other booksellers too. We’ll have a full launch, with promotion and public appearances, in the fall as well.

Tampa Times, July 26, 1971.

Thanks, everyone, for your patience. Covid — and spring floods in Winnipeg and Kenora — certainly haven’t made this easy!