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.”
The World Series starts tonight. It’s the most classic of Fall Classic match-ups, with the Yankees against the Dodgers. This will mark the 12th time the two teams have met for all the marbles. I’m sure baseball is thrilled to have the two biggest markets going head-to-head with some of the biggest stars in the game on the biggest stage, led by probable League MVPs Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the Yankees.
Now, there’s pretty much no team in sports I’ve ever disliked as much as the New York Yankees. As long-ago comedian Joe. E Lewis once said, “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel.” My mother – really, the reason our family is baseball crazy — grew up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers, but the Los Angeles Dodgers have never been the lovable “Bums” of their Brooklyn days. Rooting for them is like rooting for Amazon. So, I don’t think I’ll know who I want to win until I’m watching and I see how I feel as the Series progresses.
Below is a history of the 11 previous Yankees-Dodgers World Series in newspaper pages. I’ve “borrowed” from the The New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle, the Brooklyn Caravan, the Brooklyn Daily, The Los Angeles Times, and Newsday. (New York stories are on the left; Brooklyn/Los Angeles stories on the right.)
The Yankees beat Brooklyn 4 games to 1 in the 1941 World Series. The turning point in the Series came when Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen dropped the third strike that would have ended Game 4 with a Brooklyn victory but instead allowed the Yankees to rally for a victory.
The Dodgers integrated baseball in 1947 with Jackie Robinson on their roster. The World Series featured a near no-hitter by the Yankees’ Bill Bevens in what turned out to be a losing effort in Game 4 and an Al Gionfriddo catch that robbed Joe DiMaggio of extra bases in Game 6. Still, the Yankees beat the Dodgers in 7 games. (Note WAIT ‘TILL NEXT YEAR! in the Brooklyn Eagle.)
Both teams were 97–57 in 1949, but the Yankees won the World Series in 5 games. It would be the first of record five straight Yankees championships.
The Yankees won the 1952 World Series in seven games, with second baseman and future manager Billy Martin making a game-saving catch to preserve a 4–2 victory in Game 7.
Five in a row, and two straight over Brooklyn, for the Yankees in 1953. Billy Martin was the hero again, hitting .500 with a record-tying 12 hits and a walk-off RBI single in the Game 6 finale.
Next Year finally arrived in Brooklyn in 1955 after seven straight World Series losses and four in a row to the Yankees. Dodgers Pitcher Johnny Podres was just 9–10 on the season, but threw a complete game victory on his 23rd birthday in Game 3 and a 2–0 shutout in Game 7 to win the first World Series MVP Award.
The Yankees were back on top in 1956 with a blowout 9–0 victory in Game 7. The 1956 World Series is best remembered for Don Laren’s perfect game for the Yankees in Game 5. After the 1957 season, the Dodgers would move to Los Angeles (and the Giants to San Francisco) for 1958.
For the first time in team history, the Yankees were swept in the World Series. They never even had a lead! Dodgers pitchers Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres, and ace reliever Ron Perranoski combined to give up only four runs in four games. Koufax threw complete games in Games 1 and 4 to win World Series MVP.
The Yankees hadn’t won the World Series since 1962 (they’d lost in 1963, 1964, and 1976) when they returned to their winning ways in 1977. A six-game victory of the Dodgers was punctuated by three home runs on three consecutive swings by World Series MVP Reggie Jackson in an 8–4 victory in Game 6.
After losing the first two games in Los Angeles, the Yankees won three straight back in New York and then wrapped up the series back at Dodgers Stadium with a 7–2 win in Game 6. Bucky Dent, who homered in a tie-breaker game against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park at the end of the 1978 regular season, hit .417 in the World Series with seven RBIs to win MVP.
After a strike-torn “split” season in 1981, the Dodgers beat the Yankees to win the World Series. In a reverse of 1978, the Dodgers dropped the first two games in New York, returned home to win three in a row, then won Game 6 at Yankee Stadium. Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero, and Steve Yeager of the Dodgers shared the MVP award.
A key member of the Dodgers’ 1981 World Champions was pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, who passed on Tuesday. He had recently taken a leave of absence from the Dodgers’ Spanish-language broadcasts, but while he had been sick for quite a while with liver cancer, he told almost no one about his illness in order to preserve his privacy.
Though he’d appeared as a reliever in 10 games in 1980 (with two wins and a save), Valenzuela truly burst onto the scene as a starter in 1981. A late replacement for Jerry Reuss on Opening Day, Valenzuela pitched a complete game five-hit shutout in a 2–0 win over the Houston Astros. It was the start of an amazing run that launched “Fernando-mania.”
In his first eight stars of 1981, Valenzuela threw eight straight complete games and won them all, allowing just four runs while throwing five shutouts. A lefty with a unique delivery and a devastating screwball, he is still the only pitcher to win the Cy Young Award and the Rookie of the Year in the same season.
A nagging shoulder injury would slow him down after a career-high 21 wins in 1986, but Valenzuela remained with the Dodgers through the 1990 season. He later pitched for the Angels, Orioles, Phillies, Padres, and Cardinals before retiring in 1997. His career record was 173–153 with an ERA of 3.54 and a no-hitter he pitched in 1990.
The Dodgers retired Valenzuela’s #34 in the summer of 2023. He will be honoured during this year’s World Series, and the Dodgers will wear a commemorative patch during the Series and throughout next season.
I don’t really have anything fresh or new to say about Pete Rose. Still, when the all-time Major League hit leader dies — as Pete Rose did on Monday — how can someone who calls himself a sportswriter not write something? And, as a reminder, though writing about hockey has been my profession for years, I’ve long been — and continue to be — a much bigger baseball fan.
I first started paying any attention to baseball in 1972. Playoff games. In the afternoon. Oakland against Detroit in the American League Championship Series. Cincinnati against Pittsburgh in the National League. Then, the A’s and Reds for the World Series. Oakland won, and really, most of my memories are of them. But Rose was there, as he would be through the years of my early baseball life, which went from casual fan to rabid follower once the Blue Jays got started in 1977.
Until the Blue Jays, I’d mostly watched baseball only at World Series time. So the 1975 and 1976 wins by Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine” put Rose (and Johnny Bench, and Tony Perez, and Dave Conception, and George Foster, and Ken Griffey, and Sparky Anderson) firmly into my baseball mind. During the summer of 1978, on a family trip to Israel, my brothers and I followed baseball — a day or two after the fact, as I recall — in the pages of the International Herald Tribune. Pete Rose’s hit streak, which ran to 44 games (still the longest since Joe DiMaggio’s record 56-gamer in 1941), and which we followed in those pages, further solidified Rose for me as an historic baseball figure.
And, of course, Pete Rose was Charlie Hustle. Even now, when everyone slides into bases head first, the way Rose dove into bases still looks unique. And threatening. Never the most gifted athlete, Rose willed himself to greatness with a drive that has rarely been matched. But fans (especially young fans like me) knew little about the dark side of that drive. His womanizing … and his compulsion to gamble.
Which would lead to his lifetime ban from baseball in 1989.
Which would keep baseball’s all-time hit leader out of the Hall of Fame.
Pete Rose broke Tommy Holmes’ National League record when he ran his hit streak to 38 games. It’s close, but this isn’t the picture I remember from the International Herald Tribune that summer!
I’ve never been much of a gambler. And I get that pretty much the number one rule for athletes (although it’s actually rule 21 D in the baseball rule book) is don’t gamble on your own sport. Especially in a game in which you’re involved. For many good reasons! And yet, today, when gambling is everywhere in the way we consume sports, it seems almost hypocritical to keep Rose out of baseball.
But he did break the rule.
Though a 35-year sentence seems an awfully long time.
People get less for murder!
This, from the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News on March 31, 1963, was the earliest reference I found to Pete Rose has Charlie Hustle … although the story would claim his Reds teammates had given him the nickname.
Back in 2015, Pete Rose had been hopeful, when Rob Manfred became baseball’s new commissioner, that he might be re-instated. Rose was allowed to take part in a handful of Major League events, but he was never fully welcomed back.
And now, he’s dead at 83 years old.
So, does a lifetime ban end with the end of a lifetime?
Shoeless Joe Jackson, banned for life for his part in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, when the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the World Series, has yet to be reinstated. Seven other teammates were banished with Jackson, but he was the only one likely to have wound up in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I heard it said on Monday night that Pete Rose had no interest in being inducted posthumously, basically saying, ‘My family might appreciated it, but what do I care after I’m dead?’
This story, from the Tampa Tribune on August 18, 1963, gives a truer version of the Charlie Hustle story. Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford gave Rose the nickname sarcastically when he ran to first base after drawing a walk.
Even so, will Rose be reinstated?
Will he finally make it to the Hall of Fame?
Does a lifetime ban end with his lifetime?
(The wording in Rule 21 d 3 is actually “permanently ineligible.”)
I guess we’ll see.
But it seems sad that if it finally happens, it’ll happen without him.
Pete Rose Major League Records • Most Career Hits 4,256 • Most Games Played 3,562 • Most At Bats 14,053 • Most Singles 3,315 • Most Total Bases Switch Hitter 5,752 • Most Season 200 or more hits 10 (tied with Ichiro Suzuki) • Most Season 600 or more At Bats 17 • Most Season 150 or more games played 17 • Only Major League Player in History to Play 500 Games at 5 Positions
National League Records • Most Doubles 746 • Longest Consecutive Game Hitting Steak (44 Games) 1978 • Batting Champ 1968, 1969, 1973
I’m not sure what inspired me to go looking for this the other day. Old issues of The Brantford Expositor have been available online for quite some time now. But whatever the reason, I came across this famous photo of Wayne Gretzky and his childhood hero Gordie Howe in what must be the first time it ever appeared. It’s on the front page of The Expositor from May 4, 1972.
The occasion was the Kiwanis Great Men of Sports Dinner in Gretzky’s hometown of Brantford, Ontario, which had been held the night before. The principal speaker had been Rudy Pilous, former coach of the Chicago Blackhawks (Black Hawks, in those days) who was currently being wooed by the Chicago Cougars of the WHA and would later become coach and GM of that league’s Winnipeg Jets.
In addition to Pilous and Gordie Howe, other guests that night included Toronto Argonauts quarterback Joe Theismann and Hamilton Tiger-Cats defensive lineman Angelo Mosca. There was also Tom Matte of the Baltimore Colts, former Major League pitcher Sal Maglie, Toronto Metros coach Graham Leggat, harness horseman John Hayes, and coach Morley Kells of the Brantford Warriors lacrosse team.
CFL Stars Angelo Mosca and Joe Theismann were also in Brantford that night.
The Expositor notes that 506 people attended the $25-a-plate dinner, which was the largest attendance in the nine-year history of the event, with all proceeds going to the Kiwanis Club of Brantford’s girls’ camp. “One of the biggest ovations,” the paper says, “was reserved for Wayne Gretzky, Brantford’s 11-year-old hockey star.” Gretzky was coming of a 1971-72 season that had seen him score 378 goals and 139 assists in an 85-game Atom season. (The paper notes that the “four foot, nine inch, 80 pound” Gretzky had scored a mere 372 goals.)
Interestingly, young Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe shared the same page in the Brantford newspaper again barely a month later, on June 8, 1972, the day after Howe, Jean Béliveau, and Bernie Geoffrion were elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Gretzky had hit a home run and a double to help his Brantford tyke baseball team win its fifth straight game the night before.
Wayne Gretzky’s boyhood accomplishments were well noted in his local newspaper while growing up in Brantford. There are many, many, stories about his hockey, lacrosse, and baseball exploits in the late 1960s and through the 1970s. (And, to be honest, many more times when his name and Howe’s appeared in the paper on the same day.) Gretzky’s first mention in The Expositor would seem to be this one from December 28, 1967:
This was the first winter that Gretzky played hockey after being turned away as a five-year-old the year before. Now a six-year-old playing on a team of 10-year-olds, Gretzky is known to have scored only once that season, so this must be it! (The picture is from the Gretzky family collection and was used by us at Dan Diamond and Associates in our 1999 publication with Gretzky, 99: My Life in Pictures.)
Interestingly, it would seem that Wayne Gretzky’s father, Walter, also made his first appearance in The Brantford Expositor for his own sporting achievements when he was just six years old. Under a headline reading CHILDREN ENJOYED CLOWNS AND RACES AT PENMANS PICNIC Walter Gretzky’s name appears as the winner of a boys 25-yard race:
Though the race is said to be for “boys under six” Walter’s birth date of October 8, 1938, means that he was already six years old by then!
I’ve never really been one of those Jewish sports fans who cares a whole lot if a player is Jewish. But I do love trying hunt down the facts. So, when my brother texted “Way to go Jewish (I suppose) hammer thrower!” and I texted back, “Hadn’t thought of that” I quickly got on the case.
Ethan Katzberg certainly sounds like a Jewish name – and Katzberg himself looks like he could be Jewish – but it was hard to find anything to prove if he was. His father, who had first taught Ethan’s sister, and then Ethan, to throw the hammer at the Nanaimo Track and Field Club, is named Bernie. That sounds pretty Jewish too! His mother – Coralee – not so much.
Evan Katzberg and Summer McIntosh were Canada’s flag bearers at the Closing Ceremonies.
I soon came across a Nanaimo News Bulletin story from 2013 about Mike Gogo’s Christmas Tree farm, which had been in his family for 84 years. Included is a picture of the Katzberg family, who had just picked out their tree! It was, apparently, their first time tree hunting … in Nanaimo, at least.
“A light came down from the sky and illuminated it from above,” joked Bernie. “And the kids helped pick it out too,” Coralee added, also stating that the family loves authentic trees. “The real ones are better,” Coralee said. “They smell good.”
Plenty of mixed marriage Jewish families out there who celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah. Was this a case of that? “My guess,” I texted my brothers and nephew “is his Dad is Jewish and his Mom is not.”
The Katzberg family picks out their Christmas tree in 2013. (Nanaimo News Bulletin.)
Clearly, we weren’t the only people wondering, as other queries started showing up online. There was a particularly long thread on Reddit … which would seem to show that Katzberg is NOT Jewish. As one comment noted:
Ethan and I went to the same high school (years apart). I was so proud of him today! The Jewish community is pretty small in Nanaimo and I haven’t seen his name mentioned anywhere, so I don’t think he’s Jewish.
Still, maybe a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother? Plenty of other commenters thought that was possibile … but it doesn’t appear so according to these two comments from somebody else:
No he is not Jewish. I went to school with his father at a German Baptist college in Alberta.
Bernie’s family (of origin) attended Baptist church, so not Jewish. His ethnicity is German and he speaks (some) German. I went to school with him during our late teens.
But fear not, Jewish sports fans, there’s plenty more Jewish sports content in the rest of what I’m going to write. Admittedly (though I’m not much of a basketball fan) I was intending to write this in celebration of Canada’s first basketball medal since 1936. That drought continues, but still…
From the pages of The Jewish Standard in 1931. (Courtesy Michael Hayman.)
The common Jewish stereotype is that Jews are sports fans, but more likely to be team owners than athletes. But back in a time when Jews mostly lived in the inner city, sports were seen as a way to assimilate. Even a way to a better life. Back in the day, there were Jewish track stars, Jewish boxers, and Jewish basketball players too.
The 1936 Olympics had been awarded to Berlin in 1931, a few years before Adolph Hitler came to power. As the time drew closer, there were those who were pushing for the International Olympic Committee to move the Games somewhere else. Apparently, the most the IOC was willing to do was to push the Germans to include one token Jewish athlete on their Olympic team. Many Jewish athletes from around the world refused to go to Berlin and planned to attend The People’s Olympiad in Barcelona instead, but this leftist-inspired competition was called off shortly before it was to start due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Note the thoughts on Jews and basketball! From the pages of The Jewish Standard in 1931. (Courtesy Michael Hayman.)
Still, a handful of Jewish athletes did attend the Berlin Olympics … including two members of Canada’s basketball team which won a silver medal at the first Games where basketball was a full medal sport.
It’s often said that Canada was represented in basketball at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by the Windsor Ford V8 team. That’s only mostly true. The Ford V8s were the 1935-36 Canadian Senior Basketball Champions, but for the Olympics they picked up four members of the runner-up Victoria Blue Ribbons. (Windsor, Ontario – said to be because of its proximity to the United States – and Victoria, British Columbia, were the hotbeds of Canadian basketball at this time.) The Windsor team included two Jewish players: Irving “Toots” Meretsky and Julius “Goldie” Goldman.
The 1936 Canadian Olympic basketball team.
Though he had moved to Canada when he was two years old, Goldman had been born in Mayesville, South Carolina, to Lithuanian immigrant parents. Being American-born, he wasn’t allowed to play for Canada, so instead served as an assistant coach and the team’s representative on the 1936 Olympic Basketball Rules Committee. It was in that capacity that Goldman would modernize the game by suggesting the jump ball to restart play after every basket be eliminated … although this rule change would not be implemented until after the Berlin Olympics.
Irving Meretsky was born in Windsor in 1912 and lived his whole life there. When he died in 2006 at the age of 94, he was the last surviving member of the 1936 Olympic basketball team. A 2015 story by Tony Atherton of Postmedia News on the web site of Canada Basketball tells an anecdote Meretsky must have told many times in his life about seeing Adolph Hitler at the Opening Ceremonies:
Close up on Irving “Toots” Meretsky.
Down on the field, among the ranks of athletes from 52 nations, a skinny 24-year-old in a red blazer and white ducks, a Maple Leaf upon his breast, couldn’t keep an impish smile from spreading across his face. “He looks like Charlie Chaplin!” Toots Meretsky told himself. And no doubt felt better for it.
Toots was a Jewish kid from Windsor, Ont., standing in the heart of Nazi Germany, staring up at Hitler – on Shabbat, no less. He had passed ranks of crimson, swastika-emblazoned banners on his way into the arena. Now, he was hemmed in by an honour battalion of the German army. Everywhere he looked there were brownshirts, blackshirts, and blond, ecstatic Hitler Youth. He knew of the systematic oppression of German Jews since the Nazis had come to power three years before. He knew about the boycotting of Jewish businesses, the revocation of citizenship, the edicts against intermarriage, not to mention the random vandalism, beatings, and intimidation.
But Adolf Hitler looked like Charlie Chaplin. So Toots had to smile.
Hitler and Charlie Chaplin. (Courtesy of Michael Hayman.)
Basketball was almost an afterthought at the Berlin Olympics. The Germans didn’t think fans would care to watch, so the games were played on a modified outdoor clay tennis court. Mainly because of the jump ball rule, the lack of a 24-second clock (which wouldn’t come to be until the 1950s) and the fact that goaltending wasn’t against the rules, basketball was much more lowing scoring in this era. En route to the gold medal game against the United States, Canada posted the following victories:
24–17 over Brazil 34–23 over Latvia 27–9 over Switzerland 41–21 over Uruguay 42–15 over Poland
James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, was a guest of the Americans in Berlin in 1936, but was happy to pose with the team from his home and native land.
The U.S. got a bye in the first round when Spain withdrew, and then won:
52–28 over Estonia (Bye through the third round) 56–23 over Philippines 25–10 over Mexico
Rain would mar the championship game on August 14, 1936.
Years later, [Canadian] team member Gord Aitchison would describe the scene to the Windsor Star. “On the opening play, an American player raced down the court, caught a pass as his feet went from under him and completed the last 15 or 20 feet to the basket sliding on the seat of his shorts, water spraying out from both sides.” The rest of the game followed suit.
Sam Balter, a U.S. point guard (and the only Jewish-American medal winner in 1936) regretted the circumstances of that game for the rest of his life, he told Sports Illustrated. “A comedy of errors and unfortunate circumstances had combined to make a sandlot affair of what should have been the greatest basketball tournament ever,” he said.
Game action from the 1936 Final.
The jump ball rule meant the height advantage of the American team would have been big at any rate, but on a soggy court where dribbling was impossible and even passing the ball was difficult, it proved a huge advantage. The U.S. led 15–4 at halftime, and while the Canadians played them even in the second half the final score was 19–8.
Unfortunately, the Olympic Committee had only minted seven medals of each color for the basketball competition. The Canadians drew lots to determine which of their players would receive a silver medal. Toots Meretsky didn’t win … however, after a media stir about the oversight, the IOC minted a new silver medal for Toots in 1999 from the original mold.
“Our group of guys were the greatest in the world,” Toots told a sports website sometime before his death in 2006 broke the last direct link with Canada’s only Olympic medal winning basketball team. “We all helped one another, we worked together, we played together.”
I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone to learn I’m watching plenty of Olympics. Not a ton, but still plenty. Watching sports I don’t usually watch, like fencing, where Eleanor Harvey won a bronze medal for Canada in Women’s Individual Foil…
And Women’s Rugby Sevens, where Canadian women earned a silver. Canada had a chance, but I think the better team – New Zealand – won. The game was exciting, but it’s always a bit strange to “lose” the silver medal…
Part of the enjoyment of these Olympics for me is that Lynn and I were in Paris in May (my first time), and it’s been fun to see some of the sites we just recently saw.
But, so far, Olympic-wise, I think I’ve had even more fun watching the film of the 1924 Paris Summer Games, which was reconstructed from French and British archives. (It was one of several official Olympic films that aired on Turner Classic Movies the night the 2024 Paris Olympics opened.) The film is, of course, black and white. It’s silent too, with title cards. Running time is nearly 3 hours, and while I admit I watched plenty of it on fast-forward, it’s pretty fascinating stuff! So, I hope you’ll enjoy the little still-image synposis that follows.
The opening shots set the scene with footage from the Opening Ceremony on July 5, 1924:
We then move inside for the parade of athletes. The first title card you’ll see mentions 45 nations, though most web sites seem to say there were only 44. Wikipedia lists 3,089 athletes, of which 2,954 were men and 135 were women. Female athletes competed only in swimming, diving, fencing, and tennis. They were not permitted to compete in track and field events until the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.
France, as the host nation, had the biggest team in 1924 with 401 athletes. The Americans were next with 299.
I combined two images into one here to give a sort of panoramic look at the Olympic Stadium, which, by the way, is still in use in Paris and will host the field hockey tournament this year.
The tradition of the Olympic oath began at the Antwerp Games in 1920 and continued in Paris in 1924. The text, originally written by Pierre de Coubertin, has evolved. Since the 2000 Games in Sydney, it has included a sentence committing to sport without doping. These days, as well as on behalf of the athletes, the Olympic oath is taken on behalf of the officials and coaches. (Way to go, Canadian soccer officials!)
There were 126 events in 23 disciplines, comprising 17 sports, on the Olympic program in 1924. The full film shows most (but not all) of them. This little “slide” display will concentrate mostly on the famous athletes who took part, and mostly just in track and field, AKA Athletics:
Paavo Nurmi of Finland was the biggest star of 1924 Games. I probably first heard of him in the lead up to the Montreal Olympics in 1976, as I know our family bought a couple of books about those Games and the history of the Olympics that year. “The Flying Finn,” as he was known, ran with a stopwatch to help him control his pace. (You can see him checking his stopwatch in the third image.) A middle and long distance runner, Nurmi had already won three golds and a silver medal at the 1920 Olymics, and would add another gold and three more silvers in 1928. In Paris in 1924, he won gold in five different events: the 1,500 meters; 5,000 meters; Individual Cross Country, Team Cross Country, and Team 3,000 meters. That’s Nurmi approaching the finish line in the last image.
Track and field at the 1924 Olympics featured two British runners made famous (again) in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. One of them was Harold Abrahams, who won the 100 meters in an upset of 1920 Olympic champion Charley Paddock of the United States. Abrahams was an amateur athlete who controversially employed a professional coach. His father was a Jewish immigrant to England from Polish Lithuania, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Abrahams also won a silver medal in the 4 x 100 relay in 1924.
Eric Lidell was a devout Christian, born in China to Scottish missionary parents. He refused to compete in the 100 meters at the 1924 Olympics because the preliminary heats were held on a Sunday, and he did not run on the Sabbath. Lidell later won the 400 meters and earned a silver medal in the 200 (in which Abrahams finished sixth).
Perhaps the most famous athlete to compete at the 1924 Paris Olympics was American swimmer Johnny Weissmuller. Weissmuller won gold in the 100, 200 and 4×200 meter freestyle events, and earned a bronze medal with the U.S. water polo team. He’d win gold in the 100 meters and the 4 x 200 in Amsterdam in 1928, but is probably best known for playing Tarzan in 12 movies between 1932 and 1948 after his retirement from competitive swimming. There are no individual shots of Weissmuller in the 1924 Olympic film, but that’s him out in front in lane four in the third picture, and you can see his “wake” at the finish well in front of the swimmers in lanes one, two, and three in the fourth shot.
There’s tons more great footage in the film from most of the other sports. Notably for me was the high jump and pole vaulting, whose competitors look even more ancient in comparison to today’s athletes that do the sprinters. Diving too. Barely a twist or a tumble. It looks like a well-executed cannonball from the high tower could have won! There’s also soccer, rugby, fencing, yachting, rowing, canoeing and tennis. Perhaps I’ll add some of that later during the Olympics, but perhaps not. (Putting this together was way more labour-intensive than I’d imagined!) But, I’ll conclude today with this:
There were hardly any Black athletes to be seen in the 1924 Olympic footage. Hardly any athletes of any colour but white. William DeBart Hubbard is not someone I’d heard of previoulsy, but he became the first African-American to win a gold medal with his victory in the long jump in 1924.
Wikipedia reports that DeBart Hubbard qualified for the Olympics in the broad jump and the triple jump. It also references an NBC News story from earlier this month in which Hubbard’s nephew says he qualified for the 100 metres and the high hurdles too, but was not allowed to compete in those events because they were for whites only. Camille Paddeu, a curator at the Musee municipal d’Art et d’Histoire in Colombes, the Paris suburb where the main stadium was located, confirmed Hubbard was not permitted to compete in some events. You can read more about that here if you’d like.
We might see history made tonight. Then again, in a way, we’ve already seen it. (That being said, you can count me as one who isn’t sure “the first time since…” really constitutes making history — even though it’s often expressed that way these days.)
When the Edmonton Oilers beat the Florida Panthers on Friday night, it marked the first time since 1945 that a team who had lost the first three games in a best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final came back to force a seventh game. The Toronto Maple Leafs had taken a 3–0 lead only to see Detroit win the next three before Toronto salvaged the series in Game Seven.
And, of course, if the Oilers win tonight and complete the comeback, they’ll be the first team since 1942 to successfully rally all the way back from a 3–0 deficit in games. It was also Toronto and Detroit in the Stanley Cup Final that year, as the Red Wings opened up with three straight wins before the Maple Leafs rattled off four in a row.
Stuart Skinner and Zach Hyman after the Oilers’ win on Friday night.
I’ve written about the 1942 series before, in 2017 and in 2022. You can check those out if you’d like, as I’ll try to keep this recap brief. The Leafs famously shook up their lineup after three straight losses, benching veterans Gord Drillon and Bucko McDonald. Younger and faster Don Metz and Hank Goldup were inserted into the lineup, and Gaye Stewart was summoned from the farm team in Pittsburgh. That, apparently, gave the Leafs the spark they needed … although there’s also the fact that Toronto had been a much better team than Detroit throughout the regular season, and probably should have beaten the Red Wings anyway!
There’s long been another story told about what sparked the Leafs famous 1942 comeback. It’s the type of “hockey legend” I rarely believe without proof. And, at first, the proof seems a little shaky.
As best I could find, Hap Day first tells the story in a feature by Toronto Star sportswriter Red Burnett for The Star Weekly on March 12, 1955. (Though perhaps it appears earlier in some other source, such as a Maple Leafs program?) “Hockey has been wonderful to me down through the years,” Day told Burnett. “I have two Stanley Cups that stand out in the six triumphs I shared in, one as a player and five as a coach.”
The Toronto Star from April 18, 1942 … the day of Game Seven.
The standout memory from his playing days came in 1932, when Day captained the team to its first Stanley Cup championship under the Leafs name. “But the incident which lives the most vividly in my memory is a letter from a 14-year-old girl.”
Day explains that he received the letter just before Game Four of the Final in 1942. “I was at my wit’s end trying to figure out what angle I would take with the team that night when along came this letter. The little girl wrote that she still had faith in us and was praying for our success.
“It was a wonderful letter and I read it to the boys before that all-important game. I didn’t have to say another word. Dave Schriner, one of our veterans, got to this feet and said: ‘Coach, you don’t have to worry about this one. We’ll win it for that little girl.’ After the first shift on the ice I knew I had a hockey team. Before the game was over I sensed that Cup history would be made, that we were going to win four straight for the biggest comeback in the game’s history.”
Hap Day seems to have first told the story of the letter in this article.
Day told the story again to Allan Abel of The Globe and Mail on May 16, 1983. Twenty-eight years later, the girl was now 15 years old but the rest of the story is essentially the same.
Over the years, it seems, the girl — Doris Klein — has been reported as 11, 14 and 15 years old. It’s been said she was a Toronto girl living in Detroit and taking an awful ribbing from her new friends. Or, she was a girl from Toronto who was either embarrassed by, or feeling sorry for, the team.
With all the different variations, it’s easy enough to wonder if the story was true at all. However, an account from Leafs goalie Turk Broda to sportswriter Jim Hunt for The Star Weekly on March 31, 1962, would seem to confirm that it was.
“I can … still remember Hap reading us a letter from a 15-year-old girl before the fourth game,” said Broda while reminiscing about the 1942 comeback. “The girl was pleading with us to win and it was pretty dramatic. But I think Hap added a little and then as the final dramatic touch showed us the letter which he claimed was stained by her tears.”
Turk Broda gave his take on the letter story here.
The tear-stains have become part of the legend too. But, as Roy MacGregor wrote in The National Post on April 26, 1999, “[s]ome others – and count me among these skeptics – believe the letter was written by a middle-aged NHL coach…. [Hap Day] scribbled it on hotel stationery, folded it, stuck it in an envelope, and wrinkled it a bit for authenticity – then he headed off to Game Four.”
So, is the story true at all? Or did Day write the letter himself?
I asked friend and colleague Jonathon Jackson — who has written a dissertation about Hap Day he’s hoping to publish as a biography — what he knew about the story. Not surprisingly, Jonathon had read all the variations which had caused him to question it too. But he had come across one account from the time that seems to indicate the basic story is true. In The Toronto Star on April 15, 1942, among the recap of the Leafs’ 9–3 trouncing of Detroit in Game Five the night before, there is a series of photographs and this caption:
That pretty girl on the right is Doris Klein, Toronto maiden whose ‘pep’ note to the Leafs in Detroit drew her their admiration and honor seats at the game with her father as the team’s very special guest.
This is the young woman identified in the Star as letter-writer Doris Klein.
So, it seems, there was a girl, and she did write a letter.
Or else Hap Day went to a lot of trouble to convince his team she had!
Most of the posts I write for this web site — and much of the work I’m known for — is about finding the true story behind old sports tales. This story isn’t as old as many of those. Still, it dates back 53 years now, to the very beginning of my personal hockey memory. But this one is very different from what I usually write. Instead of searching for the facts, this story is sort of speculative hockey fiction.
I attended my very first NHL game (my very first hockey game of any kind) on December 30, 1970. California Golden Seals versus Toronto Maple Leafs. I have no hockey memories from before that date. That spring, the 1971 Stanley Cup Final between the Montreal Canadiens and Chicago Black Hawks was the first one I ever watched. So, I was at least slightly aware of some of what was going on as the NHL Draft approached on June 10, 1971. For example, I knew who Jean Béliveau was. And many of his Montreal teammates. Béliveau retired after a brilliant 20-year career the day before the 1971 Draft. I may have known that, but I didn’t know anything about the drama behind who the Canadiens would find to replace him.
Montreal had the first pick in the 1971 NHL Draft. This is usually attributed to the brilliance of Canadiens GM Sam Pollock. Pollock was most certainly a hockey genius, but in this case there was plenty of good luck along with his good management. Yes, Pollock may have fleeced the Golden Seals at the end of the 1969–70 season, when he sent them Montreal’s first-round pick in 1970 (California used that 10th choice to select Chris Oddleifson) along with farmhand Ernie Hicke. In return, Montreal received former Canadiens prospect François Lacombe (who they had dealt to the Seals in 1968, and who they then exposed in the 1970 Expansion Draft to be chosen by Buffalo). They also got cash and California’s first pick in 1971.
Pollock would have been well aware that two French Canadian junior superstars — Marcel Dionne and Guy Lafleur — were going to be available in the 1971 NHL Draft … but he couldn’t have known the Seals pick he acquired would wind up being number one. California was a playoff team in 1968–69 and 1969–70 and wasn’t expected to be last overall in 1970–71. But they were, which gave Montreal the first pick.
As another example of Pollock’s genius, it’s been said that when it looked like the Los Angeles Kings might actually fall behind the Golden Seals in the 1970–71 standings, the Canadiens GM sent Ralph Backstrom to Los Angeles to bolster the Kings’ roster. In point of fact, Pollock had only dealt Backstrom because the veteran player had requested a trade to a warmer climate … and the Kings were the only team to make him an offer.
So, shrewd moves for sure, but a bit of luck too.
Having acquired the top pick, newspapers in the days leading up to the draft were fairly certain the Canadiens would select Guy Lafleur. In truth, the Canadiens were undecided between Lafleur — who’d scored 103 and then 130 goals in his last two seasons with the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Junior Hockey League — and Marcel Dionne, who had won two straight scoring titles in the tougher Ontario Hockey Association. Dionne had plenty of supporters in the Canadiens’ front office, but ex-coach-turned-scout Claude Ruel championed Lafleur as the heir apparent to Béliveau. In the end, Ruel’s enthusiasm carried the day and Pollock selected the Quebec league star with the Seals’ pick.
But what might have happened if the Canadiens chose Marcel Dionne? Does Dionne go on to become the beloved star of a Canadiens dynasty? Is Lafleur destined to become a high-scoring phenom playing mainly in obscurity and the greatest player never to win the Stanley Cup?
Newspaper coverage in The Montreal Star (left) and The St. Catharines Standard.
Both Dionne and Lafleur became superstars who went on to Hall of Fame careers, so this isn’t like the Canadiens choosing Doug Wickenheiser with the first pick in 1980 when they could have had future Hall of Famer Denis Savard. Still, how might hockey history have changed if the Canadiens picked Marcel Dionne and left Guy Lafleur for the then-dreadful Detroit Red Wings, who later traded him to the Los Angeles Kings?
It’s impossible to know for sure, but I hoped this would be an interesting thought exercise for those who had some experience with the two men. So, I reached out to several hockey people I know, and got some further help when some of those people (most notably Bob Borgen, former L.A. Kings TV producer) reached out to others on my behalf.
First on my list was Scotty Bowman, who, of course, coached Guy Lafleur on the great Montreal teams of the 1970s. He wasn’t really willing to play along, but he did share an important fact with me. Scotty was officially hired as the new Montreal coach on the morning of the 1971 NHL Draft, but he’d known Sam Pollock (and worked for him in the Canadiens system) since the 1950s. Scotty confirmed that the Montreal brass really was undecided as to who to pick between Lafleur and Dionne, but told me the Canadiens actually hoped to draft them both! “Pollock tried to acquire the #2 choice from Detroit,” Scotty said in a email, “and came so close to pulling off a huge trade the night prior to the 1971 Draft.”
I had only just heard the possibility of this when I first started reaching out to people. Turns out, the Montreal Gazette, on the day of the draft, reported the Canadiens had offered either goalie Rogatien Vachon or Phil Myre plus a defenceman to Detroit, so it wasn’t a secret. And I obviously wasn’t the first person Scotty had shared this with. Former L.A. Kings TV analyst and longtime Nashville Predators play-by-play man Pete Weber told me that Scotty had told him the story at the start of this season. “Think about how that might have gone,” said Pete, “and what that would’ve been like in Canadiens land!”
As to Montreal’s ultimate decision to go with Lafleur over Dionne, “All in all it was a good choice,” says Scotty, “but not an easy one.” When it came to my question about how their careers might have flip-flopped if Montreal chose Dionne instead, Scotty would only say: “A lot of hypothetical views for sure…. There was never a question as to the strength of the Canadiens roster compared to Detroit or Los Angeles, so my answer will always be IF IF IF.”
Rookie Cards for Lafleur and Dionne.
Another name high on my list was Dick Irvin, who covered those great 1970s Montreal teams on television. Dick also thought the strength of the rosters was the key. “My not-so-deep-thinking opinion,” he told me, “is that the Canadiens would still have won Stanley Cups and the Red Wings not. Dionne would have had better help such as good wingers (like Steve Shutt) and power-play help (like Jacques Lemaire) plus better offensive help from the Big Three on defence [Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, and Guy Lapointe]. Lafleur would not have had the same calibre of support in Detroit. He would have been their best player, but the team didn’t have nearly as many ‘best players’ as the Canadiens did.”
Most people I spoke to also assumed Dionne would have thrived in Montreal. Ron McLean said, “I think Marcel was a playmaker a la Wayne [Gretzky] and would have fed [Steve] Shutt the way he fed [Mickey] Redmond in Detroit and [Charlie] Simmer/[Dave] Taylor in L.A.”
Dionne was a star from the start of his career, but had a breakout year with the Red Wings in his fourth season of 1974–75. He had 121 points (47 goals, 74 assists) to finish third in the NHL in scoring race before moving on to Los Angeles. Conversely, Lafleur struggled in his first three seasons in Montreal to the point where people thought he was a bust. His breakout came that same 1974–75 season when he had 53 goals and 66 assists for 119 points. (Bobby Orr led the NHL that season with 135 points, ahead of teammate Phil Esposito who had 127).
“Guy emerged, it is, said when he ditched the helmet,” wrote Ron of the Lafleur legend that says the added element of danger in playing bareheaded brought out the best in him. If their careers had been flipped, “Hollywood would have nudged that,” thought Ron, “but in Detroit who knows?”
Stan Fischler was a big part of the hockey scene during the careers of Dionne and Lafleur. Though he never covered them directly, he believes Dionne would have thrived in Montreal and been welcomed by the fans there both for his francophone heritage and for his talent. He also feels Lafleur would have succeeded in L.A. because the Hollywood crowd would have welcomed him as as they later did Gretzky. “Genius will out,” says Stan.
But I wasn’t sure. “I definitely think Dionne is a star in Montreal. Less sure how Lafleur makes out. Yours is a good theory, but Gretzky brought his star to L.A. Would ‘The Flower’ have blossomed in Detroit first?”
The back of Lafleur’s Rookie Card.
“Good question,” said Stan. “So much also depends on linemates; media treatment. As my Dad would say, ‘You can guess til the cows come home.’”
And really, guessing is all anyone can do. Still, a few people were unsure how Lafleur might have fared if he’d started in Detroit.
Roy MacGregor has covered plenty of hockey in his long career as a journalist and author. (The Washington Post once declared him to be “the closest thing there is to a poet laureate of Canadian hockey.”) He’s written features on both Lafleur and Dionne, and mentioned on the phone how insecure Lafleur was as a young player. He needed the intensive coaching he got in Montreal — and the star talent around him — to bring out his best. Feeling there was no way he would have gotten that if he’d begun his career in Detroit, Roy wondered if Lafleur may have withered as a Red Wing.
Ted Mahovlich doesn’t think so. The son of Frank Mahovlich (and author of a book about him), knew Lafleur mostly as a young fan when his father played in Montreal and later got to know Dionne (and write a book about him) while travelling with the NHL Oldtimers. Like the others, he feels the big difference between the two players was the talent they played with.
“In Guy’s first eight seasons with the Habs, how many Hall of Famers did he play with? In Marcel’s first eight years in L.A., how many Hall of Famers did he play with?”
Even so, Ted believes Lafleur’s talent would have made him a star in Los Angeles. He also believes that, even if they might not have worshipped Dionne and his more workmanlike superstardom in the same way they lavished their acclaim on Lafleur’s showmanship, Montreal fans would have loved Dionne differently. “Think about the people you’ve loved in your life. Did you love them all the same way?”
Stu Hackel offered a more critical voice than anyone I spoke to. Stu is a former NHL executive — Director of Broadcasting, Publishing and Video — a lifelong hockey fan and a longtime hockey (and music) writer who I got to know during my years working for the NHL in my publishing role with Dan Diamond and Associates. “I think both careers would have been different,” wrote Stu, “and history might have been somewhat different too.”
The back of Dionne’s Rookie Card.
Like Roy MacGregor, Stu wondered what would have become of Lafleur if he’d been drafted anywhere but Montreal. “As you know, he wasn’t GUY LAFLEUR during his first three seasons in Montreal and there [were] even rumours they’d trade him. There’s been lots suggested about how and why he came into his own, from taking off his helmet to personal maturity, his marriage to Lise and birth of his first son Martin, on and on. But I think the reason has more to do with the Canadiens commitment to developing him, making him better, working him tirelessly during and after practice, and his own desire to improve.”
Especially important were the long hours put in by Claude Ruel in helping Lafleur reach his full potential and greatness. “The question,” said Stu, “is would the Red Wings or Kings have done that, or even been able to do that, considering the relatively ramshackle nature of those franchises compared to the Canadiens? There’s only one answer. No.”
Stu believes Ruel is “the secret ingredient” and a necessary one in Lafleur’s rise to greatness. “Plus,” he adds, “Lafleur had the greatest head coach of all time behind the bench and Scotty knew exactly how to handle Lafleur. (He didn’t pressure him.) I can’t imagine that happening in Detroit, where they seemed to change coaches every few months…. I don’t think whatever other club he theoretically might have played for as a young man other than Canadiens would have had the benefit of his superstardom.”
As for Dionne in Montreal, “[He] would have made them a different team,” Stu believes. “Think about their top centers in Lafleur’s first few seasons and his prime: Jacques Lemaire and Pete Mahovlich. One of those top centers would have to go in favour of Dionne. I don’t know how they’d decide which one. Lemaire was such a smart and complete player and Pete had size that Dionne did not. Going head-to-head with the other top teams of the time, the Flyers, the Sabres, the Bruins, I don’t think the matchups are as favourable to Canadiens without one of Lemaire and Mahovlich, despite Dionne’s motor and excessive skill. Those are all big and physical clubs. I don’t think Dionne fares as well as either Lemaire or Mahovlich against them. He’s no slouch, of course, so maybe the Habs still win a few Cups. But five? And four in a row? Seems to me unlikely.”
My old boss, Dan Diamond, who’d spent some time in Montreal during the Canadiens ’70s dynasty, disagreed with Stu. “Lafleur would have found a way to be a top star,” Dan believes, “and Dionne would have played a different but powerful role with a differently configured Habs team on which the top forwards would assume slightly different roles. [Ken] Dryden, Scotty and the superior defence unchanged.”
Most of the opinions so far have been somewhat Montreal-centric.
So, what about the view from Los Angeles?
Bob Miller spent 44 years as a play-by-play announcer on radio and TV with the Kings from 1973 until his retirement in 2017. Like the others, he believes the key difference was the supporting cast Lafleur had in Montreal that Dionne lacked in Los Angeles. “Lafleur was surrounded by numerous Hall of Fame candidates as his teammates,” says Bob. “When Dionne joined the Kings, he and Rogie Vachon were the only true superstars.” But Dionne “had unlimited passion, drive, and desire,” and Bob believes that would have served him well if he’d landed in Montreal.
“In my opinion,” writes Bob, “Marcel would have been equally as revered as Lafleur because Dionne was also a native of Quebec and was a TRUE goal scorer and superstar. He may not have had the speed of Lafleur, nor the ‘flowing locks,’ but with the popularity and publicity the Canadians received in Montreal and Quebec he would have benefited from that publicity blitz and from the success the team enjoyed.”
As for how Lafleur would have fared in Los Angeles, “I believe Kings fans would have been thrilled with his talent and especially his goal scoring ability,” says Bob, “but, off the ice, since I didn’t really know him that well, I wonder how he would adapt to the overall reception in L.A.? With 12 pro teams and two major college teams, the widespread notoriety he received in Montreal might not be the same as in that hockey-crazed market.”
Bob further wondered about Lafleur’s relationship with the fans in Montreal and how that might have translated to Los Angeles. “Was he involved, approachable, friendly and down to earth? Or was he aloof? At that time, it was very important that he join the efforts to try and promote the game in the L.A. market.”
Would Marcel Dionne have been the heir had the Canadiens picked him?
I didn’t know the answer to that, but I knew who would.
“Guy Lafleur, early on in his career, had a very shy personality,” said Scotty Bowman, “but he was always the most pleasant guy you could ever imagine.”
Dick Irvin elaborated. “Lafleur was terrific with the fans. In my experience, I never heard of him refusing to sign an autograph or not showing up at a charity event. I was involved in organizing a few of those over the years and whenever Guy was asked he showed up right on time. And not only in Montreal. I recall the first time the Canadiens played in Calgary when, after the game, security finally had to get him out of the mob of autograph-seekers so the team bus could leave for the airport to get on their charter. He was signing everything for everybody.
“I am sure he would have worked very hard to help sell the game in L.A.,” said Dick.
There’s no real way to know how their careers — and hockey history — might have been different, but Bob Miller sums it up nicely when he says: “Montreal could not go wrong whether they picked Lafleur or Dionne. Both are all-time great players.”
I received another email from Don Weekes recently. He’s the guy who got me going on the Fred Waghorne story two months ago. This time, Don was asking about the derivation of the hockey term ‘deke’ … which isn’t used as much as it used to be since the cool kids decided they prefer the term ‘dangle’ (which I don’t like!).
For those who don’t know, the word deke (or dangle) refers to when the puck-carrier makes moves to fake out the goalie or another opposing player. The easy answer to where the word comes from is that it’s a short form of the word decoy.
The longer answer is a little more interesting.
What do Turk Broda and Ernest Hemingway have in common? The word deke.
According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary:
Deke originated as a shortened form of decoy. American writer Ernest Hemingway used deke as a noun referring to hunting decoys in a number of his works, including his 1950 novel Across the River and into the Trees (“I offered to put the dekes out with him”). In the 1940s, deke began appearing in ice-hockey contexts in Canadian print sources in reference to the act of faking an opponent out of position—much like how decoy is used for luring one into a trap.
The Oxford English Dictionary has things happening later, noting a Time magazine story about Dickie Moore in 1960 as the source:
On the ice, Moore is one of the league’s best players in the split-second art of faking a goalie out of position. ‘I’ve developed a little play of my own,’ he says. ‘It’s a kind of fake shot—we call them “deeks” for decoys’.
Apparently, The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles Online says it took a few more years for the word to be spelled as deke.
But that certainly isn’t the case.
The Toronto Star, February 9, 1937. Page
The story about Dickie Moore and deek/deke made the rounds again after his death on December 19, 2015. His obituary in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper resulted in four straight days of letters to the editor that attracted the attention of writer Gregory Bryce, who commented on it in his WordWatching column for the Whitehorse Star on January 8, 2016.
Bryce reports that the first letter quoted the Oxford English Dictionary and the 1960 Time story. The second letter writer argues that “Dickie Moore may have invented the term ‘deek,’ but he most certainly did not invent” the move. The third letter was from a woman who said that, as a young girl in a small Ohio town in the 1950s, she played tackle football with the boys and “was always picked for a team because of my speed and ‘deaking’ ability.”
The fourth letter states: “While several dictionaries do indeed date the term’s first appearance in print to the Nov. 21, 1960 edition of Time, it was feinting its way through hockey’s lexicon long before that. Writing in the Toronto Daily Star on March 3, 1937, for instance, Andy Lytle described Toronto Maple Leafs owner and manager Conn Smythe watching his team practise, ‘squirming in sympathy as Apps or Conacher would burst through and “deke” [Leafs goalie Turk] Broda.”
Turns out that letter, which appeared in The Globe on January 1, 2016, was written by my friend and colleague Stephen Smith, and when I went looking for the term in newspapers after receiving Don’s email some eight years later, I also came across that 1937 story. So, it certainly seems that “deke” is older than the 1960s, the 1950s, and even the 1940s.
But how old?
Using the terms “deke” and “hockey” together, I found hits in Canadian newspapers going back to the 1890s, American papers to the 1880s, and British newspapers to the 1830s. And yet, in most of those early hits, the article was as likely as not to be about someone whose last name was Hockey … or Rockey … and instead of “deke” it was often Duke.
Even into the 1900s, when the search term “hockey” almost always hit on the ice sport, you’d get Duke, or desk, or disk, or duck for “deke”. And when you did actually get the word deke, it was almost always someone whose name, or nickname was Deke, or a reference to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, whose sports teams — and even whose general members — were often referred to as the Dekes.
The Toronto Star, February 10, 1937. Page 1
But when all was said and done, the earliest usage of deke as a hockey term really does seem to come in 1937 … although a month before that March 3 Toronto Star article.
In an earlier column for The Star on February 9, 1937, Andy Lytle quotes a conversation he’d had with Turk Broda in which the Leafs rookie goalie rated Neil Colville and Cecil Dillon of the New York Rangers near the top of his list of troublesome opponents.
“That Colville,” says Broda, “he dekes me.”
“He what?” responds Lytle.
“Dekes me,” Broda explains. “D-e-k-e-s. You know. Makes me take the first move then makes a sucker of me.”
Now, Lytle had been a newspaper man in Vancouver since about 1914. He wrote for the Vancouver Sun starting around 1921 and was their sports editor for years before moving to Toronto in 1934. So, he knew hockey … but he doesn’t appear to be familiar with the term “deke.”
Lytle was obviously enamoured of the new word, and used it in his lede the next day after the Rangers’ 5–1 victory over Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens. “Five times last night,” writes Lytle, “Lester Patrick’s Rangers ‘deked’ our Mr. Broda and all we got back in return was a third period goal by Gordon Drillon.”
Dickie Moore would deek. Paul Thompson deked.
So, clearly, NHL players were using the word deke as early as 1937. It’s hard to believe Broda was the only one … unless he’s the one who actually coined the phrase. (No proof of that yet.) Still, it doesn’t really seem to become prevalent in hockey writing until the 1940s.
The earliest reference to deke in a Montreal paper appears to come in a Dink Carroll column in The Gazette on December 31, 1941. In that column, Paul Thompson (who was then coaching the Black Hawks) speaks of his improvement as an NHL player in Chicago from 1931 to 1939 after struggling in New York from 1926 through 1931:
“You get smarter as you go along,” said Thompson. “Instead of freezing when you get inside a defence and find you’ve got only the goalie to beat, you start using your noodle…. You take a good look first and see if there’s an opening. If there isn’t, you try to make one by faking the goalie out of position. ‘Making a deke,’ we call it. If you can get him to make the first move, you’ve got him beat…”
Interestingly, the first use of the word deke I found as an actual short form for decoy in a story about ducks comes in The Modesto Bee (of Modesto, California) in 1940. So, perhaps the hockey players actually beat the hunters — and Hemingway! — to this one.
But probably not… Deke as a short form of decoy just seems to make too much sense.
