No, you haven’t missed anything. Or, at least, you probably haven’t. The last time I sent out a story was my Happy Holidays post back in December. Just haven’t much felt like it lately. A winter spent squeezing in plenty of drives back and forth to Toronto between snowstorms hasn’t helped. Let’s go with that… Also, I don’t know about anyone else, but I enjoy these stories more these days when there’s something at least a little more involved with my own personal history rather than just hockey/sports history. (And yes, I did write about this a few years ago, but if you don’t like me repeating myself, you can ask for your money back!)
Anyway, with the better weather lately, and as I was driving home to Owen Sound this afternoon (yesterday as I post this), listening to speculation about the NHL Trade Deadline (which is today) and thoughts on the difficulty of dealing players in these days of no-trade clauses (Colton Parayko of St. Louis chose not to waive his when the Blues tried to trade him to Buffalo this week), I was reminded of my own personal Trade Deadline Day.
My best hockey team. Andrew Morrison Real Estate. I missed the picture at Mitchell Field, so that’s me in the inset. The captain is Kerry McIntyre, standing in front of his dad and our coach, Andy. Ross Takeuchi is holding the white helmet. Andrew Spitzer is our goalie. My defense partner Blake Jacobs is next to him with the yellow helmet.
Like most Canadian kids, I played hockey as a boy. I started the year I turned nine years old. It was the winter of 1972–73. I was terrible. But I improved a lot that summer after the first of two years at the Roger Crozier Hockey School in Barrie, Ontario, near where we had a summer cottage. I played six years, but never beyond house league. My best years were my second and third seasons, when I was an Atom and a Minor Pee Wee. My teams won the championship in both of those seasons. (Kind of sad, but I peaked in hockey at age 11!)
Playing house league, the Willowdale Boys Club tried to keep the teams even. I can’t remember it all exactly, but I think we were just assigned to teams. I don’t know if our parents rated our skills on sign-up forms, or if we’d been “scouted” from previous seasons, but after playing for four or five weeks, the league would switch players around if some teams were too weak and others too strong.
The North York Mirror reported on our house league games!
I was a pretty good house league player. A defenceman who liked to rush the puck. (I knew I wasn’t Bobby Orr … but I tried!) Anyway, in December of 1974, I was traded to a weaker team to help prop them up. I remember it as being the night of our family Hanukkah party at our Freedman cousins’ house. Looking it up, I see Hanukkah started on Sunday night, December 8, 1974 … so I bet it was that very night. I remember getting a call from the convener of the league before we left home. He told me the coach of Andrew Morrison Real Estate wanted me for his team. But it was my choice.
I didn’t want to go. My current team, Jerrett’s Funeral Home (honestly!) was in first place. I agonized over what to do, but I remember my father saying, “The coach wants you. He thinks you can help them.” I can’t remember anymore how I actually made up my mind (and I’m pretty sure they didn’t give kids the choice any more after me!), but we called back the convener later that night and I told him I’d go.
Stills from home movies shot by my father at Bayview Arena in 1975. Top left, patrolling the front of our net. Top right, picking up the puck on my backhand. Bottom left, carrying the puck out of our zone. Bottom right, at the opposing blue line.
It turned out, Andrew Morrison was a pretty strong team. We were led on offense by the coach’s son, Kerry McIntyre and Ross Takeuchi. I anchored the defence with Blake Jacobs. Our goalie was Andrew Spitzer; the best in the league. And we went on to win the championship.
Maybe the team would have come together without me. But they hadn’t yet.
Not until after my Trade Deadline Day.
NOTE: Later in the day, in the Zweig Brothers text group, David (who usually doesn’t remember things as well as Jonathan and I do), wrote: “wasn’t someone else who had to make a decision part of that trade?” I didn’t remember that, but when David and I were talking afterwards, he said he thought it was Ross Takeuchi. Then we sort of put it all together. Yes, Ross and I had been playing together with Jerrett’s and as I remember it now, Ross (who had played with David in our first season) only agreed to the trade after he heard that I’d agreed too! So, it was a more complicated Deadline Day deal than I first remembered.
No sports in this year’s Holiday post (except for the fact my father and grandfather were both big sports fans, and a big part of the reason my brothers and I are too). Instead, Season’s Greetings courtesy of Toronto newspaper messages from the hat-making company owned by my grandfather and great-grandfather (and partner Ben Banks).
Toronto Star, December 23, 1939Toronto Star, December 24, 1941Toronto newspaper ads from the late 1950s
So, best wishes for whatever you celebrate at this time of year and a healthy and happy 2026 from four generations of Zweig men: my grandfather, my father, me (the Little Prince!) and my great-grandfather, circa 1964.
It’s taken me a few days to get around to writing this. Obviously, I was saddened by the Blue Jays’ Game 7 loss to the Dodgers. It’s funny, because I really didn’t believe this team could win it all, but I had been enjoying the unexpected run. It was SO MUCH FUN! As underdogs all season, it wasn’t until they were coming home up 3–2 in the World Series that it suddenly seemed like it would be disappointing if they didn’t win. And, of course, they didn’t. And it was.
Still, it’s hard to complain. Like I said, it was so much fun. And this team was so easy to root for. Sure, you can blame Isiah Kiner-Falefa for not getting a bigger lead (though I fault Daulton Varsho even more), or Jeff Hoffman for the ninth inning homer (I was already envisioning the perfection of a final out where Ohtani grounded to Bichette, who fired to Vladdy). But really, the Jays had so many opportunities to score more runs. After doing exceedingly well at hitting with runners in scoring position all season, they left too many runners on base throughout the World Series — especially in Games 6 and 7.
But why wallow in the disappointment at the end when it really was a season to celebrate?
I think what I’m saddest about now that it’s over is that it’s over.
No game tonight. Winter is coming.
Another part of why this has been hard to write is that my relationship with the Blue Jays runs so deep that there’s so much I could write about. I was lucky to attend plenty of games throughout the playoffs. (See the pictures below.) Our family has had season tickets pretty much since the day they went on sale back in 1977. Our subscriber number is 840, which I assume means we were the 840th people in the city to buy seats. I wonder how many of the 839 people ahead of us still have their tickets? I was at Opening Day on April 7, 1977, with my brothers David and Jonathan. We were 13, 11 and 9 at the time. We were all there again for Game 7 on November 1, 2025. We’re currently 62, 59 and 58.
I wonder how many other people were at both of those games?
I wonder if any of them were as young as we were?
Our mother is the reason we’re baseball fans. My father was a sports fan, but my mother loves baseball. Those of you who’ve seen her on TV (she had plenty of media hits this postseason, in addition to her almost annual Opening Day appearances since 2018) have heard her explain that baseball was the only sport she really understood as a girl. She played in gym at school, and went to the minor league games of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. She became a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers when a teacher she liked brought a radio to class to listen to the World Series. She was in Grade 7. Which would make her 12 years old. Which would make this 1949.
One of my mother’s many media moments this fall.
When we learned in 1976 that Toronto was going to get a Major League team for the 1977 season, my mother told my father we had to get tickets. And we did. I had not been much of a baseball fan before that. I played hockey and football as a boy, and was pretty good at those sports. I started playing softball in 1972, but I was terrible. Even so, I started watching World Series games with the Oakland A’s and Cincinnati Reds that October. The A’s won in 1972, 1973 and 1974. I would sometimes watch the Expos in those years too, but it was the legendary World Series of 1975 between the Reds and the Boston Red Sox that really captured my imagination. I’m pretty sure my Dad woke me up to see the end of Game 7 on Wednesday night, October 22, 1975.
My first team, in the Willowdale Boys Club. I’m the kid on the left in the top row. Sadly, I’d say the expression on my face sums up my abilities a little too well!
But what really made me a baseball fan wasn’t so much the 1975 World Series itself, as it was the official film of the 1975 World Series, which I watched in a blue-and-white-striped tent promoting baseball in Toronto just outside CNE Stadium at the Canadian National Exhibition during the summer of 1976. My guess is this was on opening day for the Exhibition, August 13, 1976, when the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League (who we had season tickets for in those days) were hosting the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. If so, this would have been one day after the name Blue Jays was announced for Toronto’s new American League expansion team. I do remember learning about the name in a story in The Toronto Star while up at our summer cottage, but I don’t connect it at all in my memory with attending the CNE the next day. Still, I do remember how enthralled I was by the behind-the-scenes look presented by the World Series movie.
I would pretty much say I’ve been hooked on baseball, and loved the Blue Jays, ever since.
This is what my mother and I are looking at in the photo album picture above. A picture she took from our seats before the Home Opener on April 7, 1977.
The Blue Jays were terrible in the early days, but no one seemed to mind. In our house, when a game was on — home or road — there was a radio on in practically every room. (Not a lot of TV games in the early days.) And when the team was home, on weekends especially, we were there! Sometimes, we got to sit in “the good seats” with one of our parents, or even two brothers by themselves. But, as often as not, we were headed down in a group on the TTC. We needed to take a bus, a subway, and a streetcar to get there from where we lived. It took about an hour-and-a-half, but kids could do that in those days. You could buy bleacher seats for $2, and even sometimes get them for $1 at Dominion grocery stores, but we always preferred to buy the $3 seats down the right field line. That way, we were in the main grandstand and could “sneak down” to “the good seats.”
Honestly, it’s great how many new fans the team has attracted with this successful season and World Series run. The same thing happened in 2015 and 2016, but hopefully it’ll last longer this time. Still, I honestly feel sorry for people who haven’t gotten to follow the Blue Jays since the very beginning. Learning to love a terrible team in the 1970s, watching them grow into a contender in the 1980s, and finally winning it all in 1992 and 1993… If you weren’t along for the ride, you really missed something!
Those 17 years took me from age 13 to 30, so I truly did grow up with this team. And I loved it. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve often said I feel like I’ve only stuck with the Jays out of loyalty to my younger self. But this year reminded me again how good it can be!
I joined the Blue Jays ground crew in 1981. My father had a cousin (Herb Solway, technically a cousin by marriage) who was a big wig with the team. He helped get me the job, but when I showed up for what turned out to be my first day — I thought it was only a job interview! — I was wearing nice clothes and spent the day shoveling sand into a big wooden box that broke before we could fill it! So, we shoveled it into a nearby … closet … room … I don’t really know what to call it, but there was still sand in there five seasons later!
I was with the ground crew through the 1985 season, so truly in the “Worst to First” years. I don’t remember the year for this picture, but it might be 1985. It looks like it must have rained at least a little that night, but we’re actually rolling out the tarp to cover the field after the game was over. No matter what the weather forecast, we covered the infield every night.
That’s me on the field (identified by the red ME) when the Blue Jays clinched the American League East for the first time in 1985.
I still have a champagne bottle (empty) that I took from the Blue Jays clubhouse at Exhibition Stadium after the 1985 celebration. It’s currently among the boxes of Blue Jays items from over the years that are being stored in Jonathan’s basement. And that’s me, in the clubhouse again at Skydome in 1989 while working for Digital Media, holding a tape recorder in front of Blue Jays GM Pat Gillick and George Bell.
Jumping ahead to this year, that’s me in the stands, repeatedly saying “I don’t believe it!” after George Springer’s seventh inning homer put Toronto ahead of Seattle in Game 7 of the American League championship series, then hugging Jonathan after the game was over.
The Jays celebrating their 2025 American League pennant on the field after the game. I didn’t get into the clubhouse this time!
But I did get to celebrate with my brother Jonathan. In the picture of me on the field in 1985, I’m looking at Jonathan in the seats while I’m clapping.
Game 1 of the 2025 World Series. Addison Barger and company coming off the field after Barger’s pinch-hit grand slam. Barger’s blast was part of a seven-run sixth inning that broke open a 2–2 tie en route to an 11–4 victory. It was fun!
David and I were at Game 1 of the World Series, as we had been in 1993 (and also at Game 4 in 1992). The win that night ran our World Series record at games together to 3–0. Unfortunately, the streak wouldn’t last.
With Jonathan, his daughter Zara, and wife Sheri in our season ticket seats before the start of Game 7 of the World Series. David and his wife, Carrie, were seated elsewhere. Maybe David and I should have been sitting together. Oh, well…
Three shots of Bo Bichette heading for the plate after his three-run homer in the third inning put Toronto up 3–0. Though I hoped we’d score more runs to make the lead a little more comfortable, I really thought the Blue Jays were going to win the World Series at this point…
But no. This is the Dodgers celebrating on the field shortly after Alejandro Kirk’s broken bat double play ground ball ended the game in the bottom of the eleventh. Boo!
Well, I’ve avoided writing about the Blue Jays all season long. Truth is, I never believed they could do this. I tried to put my skepticism aside and just enjoy it. But, any time trouble arrived, I’d think, ‘That’s it. They stink. Can’t keep it up.’ I didn’t think they could hold off the Yankees down the stretch. I was pretty nervous heading into the Division Series too. Don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be wrong!
Our family has had Blue Jays season tickets pretty much since the moment they went on sale prior to the first season in 1977. We were all there, in the snow, on Opening Day. I was at every opener until 2018, when Barbara was diagnosed with cancer. I’d even skipped school again in 1980 to attend the makeup game after the official opener was rained out. My mother (Joyce) and brother Jonathan still have their home opener streaks in tact.
Me, with my brother Jonathan, at Game 2 on Sunday afternoon. With the Jays wearing their white-paneled hats for luck, I had to dig out my original fitted cap from the summer of 1977!
My mother is the reason our family became Blue Jays crazy. (Many of you will have seen her TV appearances over the years, including one on the CBC last week. There might be another on CTV this evening!) My father was a sports fan, but my mother was a baseball fan! She always says it was the only game she really understood as a girl. She used to attend the minor-league Toronto Maple Leafs baseball games in the 1950s and root for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the New York Yankees watching the World Series on television.
Vladimir Guerrero reaching home plate after his grand slam on Sunday.
Of course, I watched plenty of games this year — and attended a few — but I wish I’d more fully embraced the team. I should have! They play the type of baseball I really enjoy … putting the ball in play and making things happen, as opposed to slugging and strikeouts. And they really do seem to like each other. But after the playoff flame-outs of recent years, and the terrible season last year, I didn’t think they’d done nearly enough to turn things around. (I certainly wasn’t alone with that thought!) The Jays got off to a good start, but then sort of fell apart and it was easy to believe it would be another frustrating season.
The last pitch last night. (Took the picture off my TV.)
I was hopeful Bo Bichette would bounce back, and even though Vladimir Guerrero has mostly been good-but-not-great (and I have trouble wrapping my head around anyone making $500 million!), I figured they really did have to re-sign him. Still, I wasn’t very optimistic. My friend Leslie was an early believer. I warned her not to get too excited, but it turns out she was right!
Like I said, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be wrong.
Doesn’t get much better than beating the Yankees!
And now, it’s on to the American League Championship Series.
Whether it’s Detroit or Seattle, it should be exciting!!
Spraying champagne after the game. (Again, taken while watching TV.)
I knew Ken Dryden, but not very well. I’ve been a little bit surprised by how the news of his death has affected me. As I said to someone on Facebook recently, we (I) am now at an age where the heroes of our youth are passing away. It’s a sad reminder of how quickly life goes.
Ken became (and remained) good friends with my NHL publishing boss Dan Diamond during Ken’s time as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1997 to 2004. We at Dan Diamond and Associates did a lot of work with Ken when the Maple Leafs were moving from the Gardens to the Air Canada Centre. Dan also worked with Ken during his political career and we were all at the event at Ken’s old elementary school in 2006 when Ken announced he was running for the Liberal leadership.
I met Ken a handful of times over the years, when he would attend parties Dan held either at home or for the office. In more recent years, I would sometimes call or email him if I wanted advice or an opinion for something I was working on. He was usually quite accommodating. The last time he and I talked was in early May. His voice sounded raspy, and he said he hadn’t been well, but he gave no indication of anything worse than that. Ken had called me about my interest in something an old friend had come to him with. I was a little surprised it wasn’t something he wanted to get involved with himself … but, I guess, we now know why.
When Ken attended some of our Dan Diamond curling parties, my brother Jonathan wanted a picture of the two of them leaning on their curling brooms a la the classic Dryden goalie stick pose.
When Ken called in May, I took the opportunity to ask him something for a book I’m working on that I hadn’t previously because (more big name drops!) I had already been in touch with Scotty Bowman and Dick Irvin about it. My question was, did he remember anyone referring to the line of Guy Lafleur, Steve Shutt and either Pete Mahovlich or Jacques Lemaire as The Dynasty Line during the Canadiens’ 1970s Stanley Cup Dynasty. Like Bowman and Irvin, Ken had never heard that term. Ken said something along the lines of “it would have been silly to call them that then.” Then I quoted him something from an Al Strachan article in the Montreal Gazette from the 1975–76 season. Pierre Bouchard had apparently dubbed the line of Lafleur, Shutt and Mahovlich The Donut Line as a shot at Mahovlich, “because the line had no center.” Shutt responded by saying Mahovlich called them The Helicopter Line “because they had no wings.” Ken laughed and said, “that sounds like Shutty!”
Ken was always very approachable and I remember at our office Christmas party in 2002 mentioning that I had recently watched the DVD of all the games of the 1972 Canada-Russia series, which had come out around then. He told me he’d never seen it and that he didn’t like to watch any old footage of his games, which I’ve read again recently in various memories of him. (I do believe he finally re-watched the 1972 games for his 2022 book on the 50th anniversary of the series.) He was pleased when I told him the intensity and skill displayed in the series still held up, and then I screwed up my courage to ask him something I’d long wondered about. How come he, and some of the other players, who had spent time with the Canadian National Team hadn’t been able to convince their Team Canada teammates how good the Soviets really were? Ken said something along the lines of, “I just thought NHL players were that much better.”
I’ve kept this package of Ken Dryden’s Big Canada Chocolate Chip Cookie since 2006!
One thing I never had the guts to tell Ken was how much I didn’t like him when I was a boy! In truth, I did like him at first. Like most people, I became aware of him during the 1971 playoffs when — though not yet even officially considered an NHL rookie — he led the Canadiens to that huge upset of the Bruins and then all the way to a Stanley Cup championship. Of course, I was seven years old at the time, and I can’t really say anymore how much I actually remember versus how much I now know. And, of course, there was his role in the 1972 series. But by the time I was 12 years old, the Leafs had Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald, Borje Salming et al and I was hooked on my hometown team.
I was barely 13 when Mike Palmateer became the Leafs goalie, and I was way more into him that I was into Ken Dryden! The two playoff losses to the Canadiens in 1978 and 1979 didn’t help … but, I’m sure, had I told Ken that young me had hated him, he wouldn’t mind. He was a sports fan above all and would have understood childhood loyalty. After all, he had that quote about the best era of the game being “whenever you were 12 years old.” (Though you sometimes see the age recorded as young as 10 or 11.)
I’ll conclude this with an email/phone conversation I had with Ken back in 2010. This was regarding some early work that would lead towards my Stanley Cup books for Firefly in 2013 and 2018. I’ll begin with an except from my email to him, and then my notes based on our phone conversation.
I was one of several people Ken sent this photo to to get the word out about the importance of wearing masks during the Covid pandemic.
Dear Ken,
The best of the season to you and Lynda and your family. I hope you are all well … and that you will have a few minutes to spare over the holidays to think about this question I have for you…
When I first started pitching [my Stanley Cup history book] to a few publishers, I got a lot of responses along the lines of “this is a great book that somebody should do” but no commitment to take it on, or, worse yet, “hockey fans don’t like history, and history buffs don’t like sports.” Well, as one hockey fan who loves the history of both the game and his country, I think they’re wrong!
Though I’m honestly not sure how I’d fit it into the narrative as I’d like to do it, I have been asked to consider adding some sort of “what my Stanley Cup win meant to me” angle … and so I am wondering what sort of connection, if any, the players I grew up watching or the ones playing now have to the history of the Stanley Cup.
When you won, either for the first time in 1971, or as part of the “dynasty” later in the decade, or when you first saw your name engraved on the trophy, did you personally feel any kind of connection to the history of the game? Or, if not at the time, do you look back on your Stanley Cup wins now as something that will forever make you a part of hockey history? Do you think other players have felt this? Is this an angle at all worth pursuing in a book about the early history of the Stanley Cup?
A response by email is certainly sufficient, but if this is something you’d be at all interested in talking about in any more depth, please feel free to call me at home.
Thanks, Eric
Notes from Ken’s phone call:
Unreal feeling joining the Canadiens … like, “if this is the real Canadiens, why am I here?”
Even more of a disconnect in the playoffs. “If this is the real Stanley Cup … Conn Smythe Trophy … then why am I winning it?”
Being in the NHL didn’t really hit him until coming home after game seven in the first round against Boston and there were big crowds at the airport.
Didn’t feel a connection to history when they won. He never felt there was a quiet moment where you took a deep breath and thought, “this is what the Rocket did.”
Parades helped to make it feel real.
How each team got there was what really mattered, and the harder the journey the more rewarding.
Best was in 1976. “The quest.” He felt that he, and probably everyone, starting preparing for that as soon as they were eliminated from the playoffs in 1975. Thought about it all summer. Played Philly tough in the preseason (see Denault book), set the tone in regular-season games. “Felt like a full-season quest.”
As to history, Ken only had a very general awareness of the challenge history … and thought the NHL took over the Stanley Cup right way in 1918. Feels the seeds of the modern sport (all modern NA sport) where sowed in the 1920s. Probably due to radio. Created first media stars (Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Bobby Jones et al.)
Not sure any player feels the connection to history. Thinks modern players have been programmed to give the answer you’d want to hear (“I thought about my heroes when I lifted the Cup…” but he doesn’t believe they really do). You’d really have to dig to get a thoughtful answer about what they really felt.
These days, whenever I post a story on my web site, I feel like it might be the last one I ever do. Like, I’m all out of ideas and this is it. It’s been a long time since I’ve actively searched out subjects for these stories … but, then, something always comes up. Usually it’s a current event that reminds me of something historic. Sometimes it’s something in my own life. Whatever it is, an idea for a story will suddenly seize me. Then, I go down too many rabbit holes trying to put it all together before reining it in. And then, a post. Like today’s.
Lynn and I recently had a short getaway in Paris. (Not THAT Paris — although, as some of you will remember, we were in France in May of 2024 and it was lovely.) This was Paris, Ontario, and until we arrived and I saw a sign for the Syl Apps Community Centre, I’d forgotten the long ago captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs who was voted the second greatest player in franchise history for the team’s centennial in 2017 was from there.
Syl Apps plaque in Paris, Ontario and Apps with the Hamilton Tigers (SIHR).
Charles Joseph Sylvanus Apps was born in Paris on January 18, 1915. After being named the NHL’s rookie of the year for the 1936–37 season, his hometown honoured him on the night of June 11, 1937, as part of a three-day Lions Club Carnival. That season, NHL president Frank Calder was encouraged by Toronto Star sports editor Andy Lytle and Maple Leafs owner-manager Conn Smythe to donate a trophy for the winner of the annual (since 1933) Canadian Press sportswriters poll selecting the league’s top rookie. Perhaps this was because the Leafs boasted rookie stars Apps, Gord Drillon and Turk Broda that season!
As the story goes, Frank Calder was en route from Montreal to Paris by train with his trophy when he realized something. Unlike the NHL’s other individual awards — at the time, there was just the Hart for MVP, the Lady Byng for sportsmanship, and the Vezina for the best goalie — a player named the NHL’s best rookie could never win that award again. So, the league boss decided he would give Syl Apps the Calder Trophy to keep. Every year after that until his death in 1943, Calder bought a new trophy and presented it to the NHL’s top rookie. Official approval for the permanent Calder Memorial Trophy was given by the league governors at an NHL meeting in Montreal on September 7, 1945.
Brantford Expositor, June 11, 1937.
Apps received the first Calder Trophy at a star-studded gala held at the Paris Arena. Unknown to me when Lynn and I visited, the Paris Arena was originally built in 1921–22 … and is still housed within the Syl Apps Community Centre! It now boasts a much more modern brick exterior, and there’s no longer a hockey rink inside, but the old arena space is used for indoor soccer and still features the same wooden beams and ceiling/roof from the early days. From behind, the modern community centre still looks looks like an old-time auditorium.
Syl Apps played 10 years with the Toronto Maple Leafs from his rookie season of 1936–37 through 1947–48, missing two years due to military service in World War II. He was named captain in 1940 and led the Leafs to Stanley Cup victories in 1942, 1947 and 1948. At 6 feet tall and 185 pounds, he was big and handsome and played a stylish game. (For those old enough to remember, think Jean Béliveau.) Apps is one of few Maple Leafs of whom it can honestly be said he was among the very best players in the NHL in his day. He never won the Hart Trophy as MVP, but in his first seven seasons before the War, Apps was second in voting three times and third in voting twice.
Brantford Expositor, June 12, 1937.
Apps likely started playing hockey as a young boy. He played midget hockey in Paris as a 14-year-old during the winter of 1928–29 and was a member of the local Ontario Hockey Association junior team in 1930–31 when he turned 16. There were reports in the spring of 1932 that after high school Apps would attend Western in London, but that fall he left Paris for Hamilton to attend McMaster University. He would play hockey there, as well as football, and though he’d apparently played little of that sport in Paris (he did play basketball in high school), Apps became quite the star on the gridiron. He was also on the McMaster track team, where he competed in the pole vault which he’d taken up in high school at least as early as 1928. He also competed in the long jump and the high jump as a student in Paris, and while still in high school he placed second in the junior division in a pole vaulting competition in Hamilton in conjunction with the first British Empire Games (now the Commonwealth Games) in 1930. Four years later, Apps wasn’t just the best pole vaulter in Canada but won the gold medal on August 6, 1934, at the second British Empire Games in London, England.
Brantford Expositor, October 1, 1927. The photo is from August 27, 1930.
While in his final year at McMaster, Apps joined the Hamilton Tigers hockey team for the 1935–36 season. He led them to the OHA senior champion and was the top scorer in the province. At the end of April, Apps traveled to Los Angeles for hockey (and lacrosse) games with a Canadian Legion team from Hamilton, although he and teammate Norval Williamson flew home early to complete their final university exams.
By the spring of 1936, it was well known that several NHL teams wanted Syl Apps and the Maple Leafs had put him on their negotiation list. Still, he had no interest in turning pro before taking his shot at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. (There had been stories he was being considered as an addition to the Canadian Olympic Hockey team earlier in 1936, but he hadn’t wanted to interrupt his studies.) In July, Apps won the Ontario championship in the pole vault with a jump of 12 feet, 11 inches. Barely a week later at the Canadian Olympic trials in Montreal, he jumped 13 feet and a half inch to win that competition. A few days later, Apps was on board the Duchess of Bedford with the rest of the Canadian Olympic team sailing for France before a train ride to Berlin.
The Montreal Star, July 13, 1936. Syl Apps is #3.
Canadian papers noted Apps would likely need to improve his height by at least a foot to earn a medal in the pole vault in Berlin. On July 4, 1936, American George Varoff had set a new world’s record of 4.43 meters (14 feet, 6 1/2 inches) … although a few days later he slumped to fourth place at the American Olympic trials and didn’t even make the U.S. team. In the Olympic final on August 6, 1936, another American, Earle Meadows, won gold with a jump of 4.35 meters (14 feet, 3 1/4 inches). Apps did improve his performance by nearly a foot, clearing an even 4 meters (14 feet, 1/8 inches) but that was only good enough to tie for sixth place. (In reading about Apps over the years, I’d always assumed it was a two-way tie for sixth place, but he was actually one of 11 men tied at 4 meters.)
On August 25, 1936, Syl Apps arrived back in Canada aboard the Duchess of Richmond with about one-third of the Canadian Olympic team. He said he’d made up his mind not to try out for the Hamilton Tigers football team that fall and there were also reports he’d turned down offers from several hockey teams in London, England while he was in Europe. Football in Canada and hockey in England were strictly amateur at the time, yet Apps still hadn’t decided whether to go pro with the Maple Leafs. He made up his mind soon enough, signing a contract on September 2, 1936.
Colourized photograph of Syl Apps from Canadian Colour, 2015.
“In our circle,” Apps would tell Stan Fischler for his book Those Were The Days (1976), “professional athletes were not looked upon as the right sort. But economic conditions were poor at the time and jobs were scarce. Molly [girlfriend Molly Marshall] told me the chance with the Leafs was a golden opportunity. I decided to sign although I was scared when I went to see Mr. Smythe.”
He would have to give up his amateur athletic pursuits, but “Sylvanus Apps loves hockey above all other games,” reported Andy Lytle in The Toronto Daily Star on October 28, 1936, a few days before the start of his rookie season.
The Stanley Cup headed out on Sunday to begin its summer vacation with the players and staff of the 2024–25 champion Florida Panthers. The idea of giving everyone from the winning team their own day with the trophy began in 1993. To celebrate the Stanley Cup’s centennial that year, every member of the Montreal Canadiens was given his own day to spend with the trophy during the summer.
After the Stanley Cup got a rough ride with the New York Rangers in 1994 — it’s never truly been clear whether Ed Olczyk really fed the Kentucky Derby–winning racehorse Go for Gin from the Stanley Cup at Belmont Park —this popular practice was formalized in 1995. Since then, the Hockey Hall of Fame has provided the Cup with its own “keeper” to ensure things stay on schedule (the Cup travels nearly every day over the summer, and often goes overseas these days) and that things don’t get out of hand.
Ottawa won it in 1909, but a new Stanley Cup tradition would have to wait.
Back in the old days — from the 1890s through the 1980s — the Stanley Cup champions were usually presented with the trophy shorty after winning it, either on the ice, in the dressing room afterwards, or at a banquet in a hotel or another civic location over the next week or two. In the early years, the Cup would often reside in the championship city for a while and go on display in some prominent public space. (My friend Stephen Smith wrote about this recently on his wonderful Puckstruck web site.) In more recent years, the players might get a few days to spend with the Cup, but then they weren’t likely to see it again until their team’s home opener at the start of the next season.
Before 1993, the Stanley Cup did occasionally make special appearances for personal reasons. I was recently reminded in a story from ESPN that in 1989, Phil Pritchard, the Cup’s most famous keeper (and, really, the only one back then), was persuaded by Colin Patterson of the Calgary Flames to bring the trophy to his home in the Toronto suburb of Rexdale. And in 1992, the Stanley Cup spent some time in the backyard of my longtime boss Dan Diamond of NHL Publishing.
Dan Diamond’s Stanley Cup commemorative book and his dog, Louis.
Dan’s day with the Stanley Cup came on July 5, 1992. (This was before my time with Dan Diamond & Associates.) The trophy had spent the previous day celebrating the 4th of July in Pittsburgh with Penguins captain Mario Lemieux and his teammates. (It may or may not have ended up in Mario’s swimming pool that time, as it when Pittsburgh first won it in 1991 and would again in 2009.) Dan picked up the Cup at Pearson Airport in Toronto in the morning and brought it to the McClelland & Stewart booth at the Canadian Booksellers Association Expo. M&S was getting in some early promotion for The Official National Hockey League Stanley Cup Centennial Book, which Dan was edited and they would publish the following summer. Guests at the booth could get their picture taken with the trophy that day.
Things being simpler then, Dan was told they didn’t need the Stanley Cup returned to the Hockey Hall of Fame until the next morning. So he brought it home for a backyard barbecue. There were about 35 friends on hand who were pretty excited to see it … although Dan’s collie, Louis (pronounced Louie), reclining with the Cup on the table behind him in the photograph above, seems a little more chill.
But is it possible that special days with the Stanley Cup began all the way back in 1909 with hockey legend Cyclone Taylor?
From Stanley Cup: 120 Years of Hockey Supremacy and from Star Power: The Legend and Lore of Cyclone Taylor.
After the Ottawa Senators clinched the Stanley Cup with an 8–3 win over the Montreal Wanderers on March 4, 1909, the team was rewarded with a banquet at the new Russell House hotel in the Canadian Capital on March 16. Reporting on the evening the next day, The Ottawa Citizen noted: “Fred Taylor made the unusual request that he be allowed to take the Stanley Cup home to Listowel with him at Easter time. He said it had always been his highest ambition to figure on a Stanley Cup team and now that he had assisted in winning it he wanted to take the celebrated trophy home to his native town to let the Listowel people get a look at it. Taylor guaranteed to return the Cup in perfect order and his wish may be granted, providing the trustees don’t object.”
The Citizen never followed up on the story. Nor did The Ottawa Journal. (Two newspapers that are now easily searchable online.) But at some point, I came across a story somewhere that said Cyclone Taylor wasn’t allowed to bring the Stanley Cup home to Listowel. I wrote as much in a children’s biography of Taylor in 2007 and in a book about the Stanley Cup in 2012. But, in 2021, when Stephen Smith asked me about the Taylor incident for a story he was writing for his web site, I could NOT come across what I’d found. I can no longer remember if it was in a newspaper or a book (there’s nothing in Eric Whitehead’s biography of Taylor), but I was stunned when I couldn’t find anything in my notes.
I’m still positive I’d found something … but it bothered me that I didn’t have proof.
Until a few days ago!
Another colleague, Greg Nesteroff (a British Columbia writer and historian who maintains a fascinating website about Frank and Lester Patrick), told me The Ottawa Free Press had been digitized by a British newspaper web site. I knew I hadn’t found my Cyclone story there originally, but I still felt certain The Free Press would have something about it. And with Greg’s help, I found what I was looking for!
There were actually two stories. The one shown above is from April 10, 1909, and it more or less says the trustees hadn’t allowed Taylor to bring the trophy home. The second story, from April 27, offers as the excuse that the Stanley Cup was too big to travel and that the freight charges “would be considerable.”
As noted in the book excerpts above, Fred W. (Cyclone) Taylor engaged in a little freelance engraving back in 1909.
The way the second story is written, the exaggerated size of the Stanley Cup at that time is either meant as a joke … or it’s a big city Ottawa reporter mocking the citizens of small town Listowel.
There’s no way to know for sure, but I’m glad to have proof again that I was right!
Sad news yesterday for Blue Jays fans old enough to remember Jim Clancy, who passed away at the age of 69. Clancy was a workhorse pitcher back in the days when that meant something. Only one other pitcher since then (Charlie Hough in 1987) has matched the 40 games Clancy started for Toronto in 1982. He was a Blue Jay from 1977 to 1988, so covering all five years of my time with the ground crew from 1981 to 1985. My favorite Clancy memory is from his 40th and final start in 1982.
The Jays finished that season strong, and on October 3, 1982, Jim Clancy capped the year with a complete game five-hitter in a 5-2 win over Seattle. With that, the Jays finished the season with a record of 78-84. Not very impressive, you might think, but for the first time ever Toronto wasn’t buried in last place. True enough, they were tied with Cleveland for sixth instead of alone in seventh, but the 19,064 on hand roared their approval as Clancy came off the mound and fired his cap and glove into the stands. “We’re Number 6!” some people shouted, and “Bring on the Indians!” You just knew better things were ahead! And indeed the next 10 years would culminate in back-to-back World Series championships.
The NHL used to play games on Christmas Day until the 1972–73 season. Over the years, from the first Christmas game on December 25, 1919, through the last games in 1971, there were a total of 125 games played on Christmas Day. I wrote about that 1919 game 10 years ago, but I didn’t realize until recently that NHL records showed the game to have been played on December 24. Stuart McComish, Senior Manager, Statistics and Research, for the NHL and I went over this last month.
Though it does appear the original newspaper stories about the 1919–20 schedule showed the first two games being played on December 24, 1919, the actual schedule had Toronto at Ottawa on December 23 and Montreal at Quebec on December 25. (The Canadiens won, 12–5). If you go looking for stories (other than mine!) about the first NHL game on Christmas Day, you’re likely to find the Toronto St. Patricks at the Montreal Canadiens on December 25, 1920 (Toronto 5, Montreal 4) … but the NHL has now updated their records. Here’s an ad for that 1919 Christmas game from The Quebec Chronicle, on Wednesday, December 24:
There were six NHL games on Christmas Day in 1971. The final game that night — the last NHL game ever played on Christmas — was a West Coast affair with the Los Angeles Kings hosting the California Golden Seals. The Seals won 3–1.
Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1971.
An earlier game that night in Toronto — Maple Leafs 5, Red Wings 3 — holds some significance in my family since it was the first game my brother David (a Christmas baby!) ever attended, with our father on his sixth birthday. (There’s no actual date in this image from The Toronto Star, so you’ll have to trust me that it’s from December 24, 1971.) I remember watching the Miami Dolphins beat the Kansas City Chiefs 27–24 in the longest overtime playoff game in NFL history earlier that evening, and then switching to the Leafs game on Hockey Night in Canada. I was looking for David and my Dad in the stands, but I never saw them…
And, well, because I’m Jewish, we’ll conclude with this. It’s not easy to find stories combining hockey and Hanukkah, so this, from The Toronto Star on December 20, 1973, is the best I could do!
No matter what holiday you celebrate at this time of year, I hope you have a happy one. And all the best to everybody for a happy and healthy — and peaceful — new year in 2025.
Hi Everyone. It’s been about a month since I posted a story. I don’t usually like to let longer than that go by, so here’s something new today. To be honest, it’s not much more than some self-promotion (with a good word for a few friends too). But, hey, whaddya want for nothing?!?
I have two new books out as we head into the holiday season. Amazing Hockey Trivia for Kids is the sixth in a series for Scholastic Canada. If you’ve got a child on your shopping list, ages 8 to 12 or so (older people say they like them too), these books have been very popular. Hockey Hall of Fame True Stories 2 is a sequel to Hockey Hall of Fame True Stories. (I wanted to call it True Stories Too). I had a lot of success with the first book in 2022, and I have high hopes — if somewhat nervously! — for this one.
I’ve also received or purchased a handful of other new hockey books for 2024. There’s Ian Kennedy’s Ice In Their Veins, which is a history of women’s hockey. (Ian covers women’s hockey for The Hockey News.) I haven’t read it yet, but the online reviews I’ve seen are excellent. There’s also Turk, a biography of Gerard Gallant. Admittedly, it’s not the type of hockey book I’d normally read, but a colleague who works for the publisher was gracious enough to send me a copy, so I’ll get to it.
Another book on my “get to it” list is Jack and the Box by Kevin Shea. Kevin’s books are always well-researched and well-written, and I know this story was very personal to him. I’m sure it will be excellent.
One new book I have read is Ronnie Shuker’s The Country and the Game. Highly recommended! Though there’s plenty of hockey in it, it’s not your typical hockey book. It’s a travelogue of his hockey adventures across Canada from coast to coast to coast and is filled with fascinating stories and interesting people. Ronnie is an author, editor, freelance writer, and an editor at large for The Hockey News. He did copy editing on both Hall of Fame True Stories books … but that’s not the reason I’m saying he’s an excellent writer!
As for Hockey Hall of Fame True Stories 2, it once again indulges my personal interest in stories from hockey’s past … and hopefully tells them more truthfully and accurately than they’ve usually been told before. There’s a chapter on the NHL trophies; on the early days of the Stanley Cup; on the rules that helped make modern hockey; on early international hockey; on the first hockey broadcasts on radio and television; and a final chapter about strange injuries and other oddities. Regular readers of these posts on my web site will recognize some of the stories, but there’ll be plenty that’s new.
Art Ross III never had any idea who this person was seated next to his grandfather. He suspected it was someone hired to portray one of the characters he had created for his many stories about life in smalltown Quebec.
I’ve often said — in these posts, and elsewhere — that I enjoy the research I do more than the writing. It’s always fascinating to me when trying to find one thing leads to something completely different. In this case, I was trying to track down the history behind the rule change in 1943–44 that introduced the center ice red line to hockey. I found plenty about that, but I also found this odd little tale that I had not seen years ago when research and writing Art Ross: The Hockey Legend Who Built the Bruins.
To be honest, this story doesn’t really fit any of the categories covered by the six chapters. I was also a little worried some people might find it politically incorrect. But, it made me laugh and so it found its way in. It’s actually the last story in the book, in the Injuries and Oddities chapter. It’s sort of an injury story … but it’s mostly an oddity.
The story appeared in Dink Carroll’s column in the Montreal Gazette on May 11, 1943. He was writing about a recent informal meeting of the NHL Governors, and noted that while sitting around in a suite in Montreal’s Windsor Hotel, Art Ross had been prevailed upon to tell “what has become known as ‘the Father Leveque story.’” He told it, wrote Carroll, “with obvious relish.”
Dink Carroll’s column from May 11, 1943 and the NHL Governors for 1943–44.
In setting the scene, Carroll notes the story dates back to the fall of of 1936, when Ross’s Boston Bruins played Tommy Gorman’s Montreal Maroons in a six-game exhibition tour of the Maritime Provinces prior to the 1936–37 NHL season. By the time they reached Saint John, New Brunswick, interest had built to the point where tickets were scarce. Both Art Ross and Tommy Gorman were being inundated with requests for seats.
On the afternoon of the game, Ross called up Gorman and said it was Father Leveque speaking. Art can talk Habitant dialect with the best of them and Gorman went for it, particularly as “Father Leveque” kept telling him that he had admired the great job Tommy had done as a newspaper man and then as a hockey manager. Tommy said yes, he remembered “Father Leveque” very well.
“Father Leveque” then said he was the principal of a boys school, and the boys were poor and he would like a few passes for the game. Could he possibly get them? Tommy said he thought he could handle it all right. “Just a few passes,” said Father Leveque. “There are 59 boys at the school and they all want to go to the game. Can I maybe have 59 passes?”
Tommy demurred . . . but “Father Leveque” again recollected the great job Tommy had done on the newspaper, and his glorious record in hockey. Tommy finally capitulated, saying he would pay for some of the seats himself.
“One more thing,” said “Father Leveque. “Are you sure the boys will be able to see from the seats?”
“Of course they will,” Tommy answered a little testily. “These will be the best seats in the house. They’ll be able to see fine.”
“That will be a miracle then,” said Father Leveque. “Because these boys are all blind.”
After an exhibition game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Montreal Wanderers four nights earlier, the first regular-season hockey game was held at Toronto’s new Arena Gardens on Mutual Street on Christmas night, December 25, 1912. (That’s coming up on a somewhat stylistically interesting – but not really significant – 111 years ago.)
In that season opener of the National Hockey Association (forerunner of the National Hockey League), the Canadiens beat the brand new Toronto Hockey Club (aka the Torontos, the Blueshirts, or the Blue Shirts), 9-5.
No matter what you celebrate at this time of year, I hope you have/had a happy one. And all the best to everybody for a happy and healthy — and peaceful — new year in 2024.
