Against All Odds

by P. J. Naworynski

  Barbara Ann Scott squeezed in between the guys rinkside and joined them on their bench as the game began. One minute into the first period Wally Halder opened up the scoring parade. Reg Schroeter, George Mara, Patsy Guzzo, and Ab Renaud followed suit by setting up and unloading a barrage of shots that whizzed past the Austrian goalie. By the end of the first period the Flyers were ahead 5–0. Like their earlier match against Britain, this one was stopped so the players could periodically to shovel off the ice.

  For the first time in their dance at the Winter Olympics, the Flyers did not clock a single penalty all game. Although the boys in the powder-blue jerseys dominated control of the puck, both teams played a clean and friendly game. Murray Dowey was spectacular in net. From the bench, Roy Forbes marvelled at the young wizard’s talent in between the posts. “He was an absolute standout with that glove hand. He was just magical. The Europeans just didn’t know what to make of him.”

  Partway through the match, U.S. referee Walter Brown could no longer stomach the throbbing pain in his foot. Skating on borrowed blades that were too small for him, Brown had developed a sore and infected toe. He made his way to the Flyers bench, and Sandy promptly got out his medical kit bag and removed Brown’s toenail right then and there, much to the delight of the boys.

  Shift after shift, the points mounted; the Canadians hated running up the score against the Austrians, but it had to be done. By the end of the second period it was 10–0. Four minutes into the third, 12–0. The Flyers were knocking down their opponents like pins in an alley. As the Canadians bowled over the Austrians and chalked up their sixth win, Murray Dowey logged his fourth shutout.

  Two weeks earlier, bookmakers and hockey pundits had written off the Flyers and relegated them to the “also-ran” category. Now, heading into their final day of action, the “misfits” from Canada were sitting at the top of the standings. They were tied for first place with the superpower from Czechoslovakia. Both teams had registered six wins and a tie. The day before, the boys in blue had been cheering on Barbara Ann Scott as she captured Canada’s first gold medal at the Games. Could the Flyers make it two? To do that they would need to beat their nemesis, the Swiss—the team that had soundly taken them out at the knees in exhibition play, just days before the opening of the Winter Olympics.

  PART FOUR

  Per Ardua Ad Astra (Through Adversity to the Stars)

  The RCAF Flyers official team photo. Front row (left to right): Murray Dowey, Ted Hibberd, Orval Gravelle, Ab Renaud, Roy Forbes, Pete Leichnitz, Patsy Guzzo, Ross King. Back row (left to right): George McFaul, André Laperrière, Frank Dunster, Louis Lecompte, Reg Schroeter, Hubert Brooks, Andy Gilpin, Wally Halder, George Mara, Irving Taylor, Dr. Sandy Watson, Frank Boucher.

  Tom Schroeter

  Game 8. Muscling it up with the Swiss in front of Murray Dowey in net.

  Ted Hibberd

  THE QUEST FOR GOLD

  15

  Morning broke over St. Moritz with a brilliant winter sunrise. It was shaping up to be yet another picture-postcard day in the mountain playground for the world’s rich and famous. This was it, the final day of the Olympics. Afternoon temperatures were forecasted to climb to just over ten degrees Celsius. While some of the spectators sipped their drinks and basked on their open-air balconies, exuberant about the warm sunshine, Sandy Watson, Frank Boucher, and a few of the men of the RCAF Flyers were fighting back serious butterflies. Two key hockey matches still remained in the race for worldwide bragging rights. First up, the Czechs were playing the United States. Later, the Canadians were pitted against the Swiss. The Flyers game wasn’t due to get going until early afternoon. If the baking sun continued to beam its warm rays onto the ice, the players would be stepping out onto a swimming pool for their final match. The mildness of the weather, coupled with the fact that they were squaring off against the last team that cleaned their clocks, played havoc in the minds of a few of the boys.

  Up until now, they had kept their emotions in check and had not allowed the pressure to seep into their bones and get the better of them. As the boys were getting dressed and going through their last-minute preparations, George Dudley, secretary-manager of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, delivered an emotional pre-game pep talk. He told them, “You boys left Canada under heavy criticism by the newspapers and self-appointed hockey ‘experts’ and you sailed under a cloud of uneasiness and distress.” He and the rest of the nation knew they could pull it off and bring home the gold. But win or lose, Dudley wanted them to know they had represented Canada well, and he was solidly behind them.

  In early morning action, the Czechs played their final game against the United States and beat them 4–3. The Czechs were now clearly out ahead in first place. To snatch the gold away from them, the Flyers needed to not only beat the Swiss but to win by at least two goals. The complexity of the round-robin scoring meant that even if the Flyers won, the Czechs could still take the gold medal if the Swiss scored too many goals. The boys in blue needed to win, but they also needed to keep the Swiss from scoring against them.

  At 1:00 p.m., thousands of rabid Swiss fans swarmed into the Olympic Stadium to watch their hometown national team once again crush the mighty underdogs from Canada. They packed the wooden bleachers, while thousands more spilled out of the stands, pressing shoulder to shoulder on the cliffs and hills that surrounded the rink. Down at ice level the space along the boards was jammed four-deep with newspaper reporters and photographers. Meanwhile newsreel cameramen were positioned on makeshift platforms behind both nets and at strategic locations around the ice and in the stands. Spectators donned sunglasses to mitigate the glaring sun that continued to roast the arena. Many were in just sweaters with their sleeves rolled up; others were decked out in snazzy light sports jackets.

  The atmosphere was electric. The stadium hummed like a hive in anticipation of the puck drop. As the teams were readying to take to the ice to warm up, Patsy Guzzo crossed paths with Swiss hockey icon and national idol Bibi Torriani. Torriani tried an old trick to psych Guzzo out. He told Patsy the Swiss were going to take it easy on the Canadians as they hated the Czechs and wanted the Canadians to win the gold. Had it been Patsy’s first day in Switzerland he might have actually fallen for Torriani’s ploy, but he saw right through the ruse.

  The entire Canadian contingent, along with the Flyers’ most vocal cheerleaders, Barbara Ann Scott and Bea Grontved, wedged themselves in among the masses of hometown fans. The Swiss crowd was whooping it up and making quite the ruckus, shaking cowbells and chanting to their Swiss hockey heroes. Murray Dowey and the men about to take to the ice for the first shift could hardly hear Coach Frank Boucher’s soft-spoken final edict. They huddled in close and hung on his every word. “I’m not interested in a lot of goals, as long as Murray can keep them out of the net. If you get an opening, you can go, but you must come back when your play is finished. That is a must! Remember. Defence, defence, defence.”

  With his trusty cap blocking out the sun, Murray led the boys as they stepped onto the rink for the match of their lives. The instant they crossed the threshold, their blades sunk into two inches of mushy, snowy ice. Afternoon temperatures now pushed thirteen degrees Celsius. Carrying the puck was going to be next to impossible.

  Pumped up with adrenaline, both teams went on the offensive right from the start. The Swiss trotted out their nasty stick work, slashing and hooking at will. The Flyers played the body but were conscious of not giving the referees anything to call them on.

  Four minutes into the first period, Wally Halder deftly took the puck from the Flyers zone, literally ran over the length of the slushy rink, and teed up a low corner shot at Swiss goalie Hans Banninger. The Swiss netminder kicked out a rebound straight at Halder, which he grabbed and rifled back at the net as three Swiss players descended on him. Banninger booted the puck behind the net, where Reg Schroeter was waiting to pounce. Schroeter snatched the puck away from the Swiss defence and fed it back out to Halder in front of t
he net. Wally whirled away from the Swiss defenceman and flicked in a beautiful backhand goal that put the Flyers out ahead 1–0. It was Wally’s twenty-first goal of the Olympics.

  Moments later Louis Lecompte got hauled off for a two-minute penalty when a Swiss player took a dive after bouncing off the big defenceman. On top of the bad ice, the Flyers were clearly up against terrible refereeing that was pointedly in favour of the hometown Swiss team. Officials Eric De Marcwicz of Britain and Van Reyshoot of Belgium called penalty after penalty against the Canadians. As Bunny Ahearne had predicted way back in London, the European refs turned a blind eye to the chippy slashes, jabs, and spears the Swiss players inflicted on the Canadians, whereas anything the Flyers delivered that looked remotely like a bodycheck would result in a penalty.

  Roy Forbes gritted his teeth in frustration on the bench. There was nothing he could do but watch. With both teams playing all out, he witnessed Wally Halder getting tackled, grabbed, and slashed left, right, and centre by the Swiss during one shift. Forbes was beside himself. He could not fathom the officials’ reluctance to call anything against the hometown favourites. When Wally tried to lay an open-ice hit against one of the Swiss, he missed his target and fell flat. The Swiss player promptly took a dive. Amazingly, Van Reyshoot thumbed Wally off the ice with a five-minute major penalty.

  Canadian Press reporter Jack Sullivan later wrote: “The ice conditions and the refereeing were so bad that at times the game threatened to develop into a farce.” CAHA big shot George Dudley was stewing behind the Flyers bench. He paced back and forth, chain-smoking. Sandy Watson was on a razor’s edge. Frank Boucher remained the calm in the storm. There was nothing they could do about the refs or the ice but play the game to the best of their abilities, and Frank knew what his boys were capable of.

  Despite the partisan refereeing, the boys in blue held the line and shouldered the Swiss attacks. Murray rebuffed their repeated shots, and the short-handed Flyers silenced the Swiss gunners and wrapped up the first period with a 1–0 lead.

  Three minutes into the second period George Mara and Patsy Guzzo launched another Canadian assault. In a fast break up centre ice, George golfed a sweet pass up to Patsy. Despite the heavy slush, Guzzo was flying at top speed. He raced around his opposing wingman and split the defence. The Swiss goalie came out to try to cut down the angle, but Patsy faked him out and fired a high shot over Banninger’s shoulder that neatly tucked itself into the top corner of the net. It was Patsy’s prettiest goal of the entire Olympics and his biggest thrill of the Games. Mara and Guzzo celebrated mid-ice with a bear hug as the boys on the bench erupted over the team’s second back-breaking goal. They had hit the magic two-goal margin.

  On the Swiss bench, Coach Wyn Cook was perplexed. He could not get his guys to penetrate the Flyers’ wall of defence even on the power play. Whenever they did manage to press the Canadians and crank out a few decent shots, Murray Dowey continued to stonewall them. The baking afternoon sun was turning the ice into a thick layer of slush. Every ten minutes the action had to stop so the players could shovel and scrape the rink. Swiss fans were becoming more and more agitated as the game progressed.

  As the second period came to a close the game was turning into a spectacle, with the Flyers drawing twice as many penalties as the Swiss. Ted Hibberd was cross-checked from behind and slammed heavily face forward onto the ice by Swiss defenceman Heinrich Boller. Remarkably, the refs awarded Hibberd with a penalty along with Boller for the cross-check. But the “no-hope Canadians” kept up the pressure and headed into the third period with a 2–0 lead. If the Flyers could hang on, the gold medal would be theirs.

  Midway through the third period, the Swiss were on life support. Reg Schroeter raced in, split the Swiss defencemen, and hammered off a bullet. Reporter Jack Sullivan remarked that Schroeter’s shot “skipped like a stone over water, then skipped over the goalie’s stick.” The Canadian boys on the bench hung over the boards, banged their sticks in euphoria, and cheered. The Flyers were up 3–0. The gold medal was now within arm’s reach. On the cliffs and terraced hills above the rink, some among the Swiss crowd began to gather handfuls of snow from the ground.

  Standing in net, bent over and watching the play up ice, Murray Dowey was shocked when a snowball whizzed by his head, then another and another. And then one hit him, smack dead in the side of his head. Bewildered, Murray called over to the ref and complained. “What’s going on here? You have to stop this.” The refs ignored him. They just let the game continue. They didn’t stop play and talk to Wyn Cook or Frank Boucher or any IOC officials. Meanwhile, the irate Swiss fans pelted more snowballs at the Flyers, hitting Patsy Guzzo and a few other Canadian players.

  With just minutes left in the game, Heinrich Boller, the same Swiss player who delivered the dirty cross-check to Teddy Hibberd earlier, crowded into Murray’s crease. A scramble broke out in front of the net, and Boller slashed Frank Dunster in the head with a two-hand chop. Dunster went down and Boller spun around and punched Murray Dowey in the face. Boller was given only a two-minute penalty. Incensed, Murray quickly checked to confirm he wasn’t bleeding and decided to keep his hands down and his mouth shut. The Flyers had put up with a boatload of terrible refereeing. Murray figured if he said anything he would probably get called for talking back to the ref.

  The Flyers poured on the pressure. Then the final whistle blew. Bursting with pride, all the boys cleared the bench and rushed the ice in a swirling mass. They leapt onto Murray Dowey and smacked each other in glee. They were oblivious to the jeers of the bitter Swiss fans as they celebrated in the middle of the ice. The final score was 3–0.

  Despite all the obstacles—from the snowballs, to their rushed preparations, to their shaky start back in Ottawa, the “misfit” Canadians had achieved the impossible. The RCAF Flyers had taken down the mighty Swiss national team in a decisive victory in front of a hostile hometown crowd, and they had scored enough goals to push the Czechs into second place. After eight Olympic games, the Flyers remained undefeated. They tallied sixty-nine goals against their opponents while allowing just five in their blistering run to the podium. In the process, they followed Barbara Ann Scott’s lead and captured Canada’s second gold medal at the Games of Renewal.

  With beaming smiles and sticks raised jubilantly in the air, Sandy Watson, Frank Boucher, and the rest of the boys lined up on the ice arm in arm and posed for photographers as the new world and Olympic champions. As the reporters snapped pictures, the boys waved over CAHA boss George Dudley and Canadian Olympic Association heavy Sidney Dawes to join them in the euphoric celebrations. Against all odds they had accomplished what no one thought was possible just a couple of months earlier. And they did it in record-setting fashion.

  Murray Dowey logged his fifth impressive shutout at the Games. By allowing just five goals over eight games, Murray posted a breathtaking 0.62 goals-against average. His remarkable skill in the cage earned him an Olympic record. To this day, Murray’s record stands unbeaten.

  Wally Halder scored twenty-one goals and George Mara seventeen. They still hold the number-two and number-three positions for most goals scored in one tournament at the Olympics. The number-one position is held by big Czech gunner Vladimir Zabrodsky, who fired in twenty-seven goals. The Czechs were victims of the round-robin numbers game. They too played fantastic hockey in St. Moritz and finished up with seven wins and one tie. Although they were a powerhouse at scoring, it was the Flyers’ stellar goals-for/goals-against quotient that bumped the Czechs down to silver.

  As the fifth Winter Olympics drew to a close, the boys in blue lined up two by two and climbed onto the temporary wooden pallets assembled at centre ice for the medal presentation ceremony. Murray Dowey was standing next to George Mara. Amid the cheers and the din of the Swiss and the Czech players sidling up on either side of them, George leaned over and said to Murray what every one of the boys was feeling: “This is the proudest moment of my life.” Tough guy Frank Dunster was grinning from ear
to ear. Marcel Heninger, chairman of the Swiss Olympic Committee, presented each of them with a gold medal in a burgundy leather case. The Swiss orchestra launched into the Canadian national anthem, and the emotion of the moment overtook many of the hardened warriors, bringing virtually all of the boys to tears.

  The Flyers were in a daze. As they scooted for the dressing room at the stadium, members of Canada’s other Olympic teams grabbed at them and cheered them on. They blew kisses to the crowd, thrust their arms in the air, gave the thumbs-up, and excitedly yelled to reporters, “We’ve done it, boys!” Reg Schroeter, André Laperrière, and Frank Dunster chimed in, “We couldn’t be happier.” Thirty-three-year-old defenceman Louis Lecompte had his arm in a sling, the result of a brutal slash during the hard-fought match. He added, “I never thought an old man would be an Olympic winner.” In the melee of bodies Patsy Guzzo had tears running down his face. Red Gravelle kept repeating over and over, “Am I proud! Am I proud!” Sandy Watson called out, “It’s the best team in the world!” When one of the boys called on Frank Boucher to make a speech, the room went dead silent. Frank calmly looked around at each of the guys and said: “Fellows, I am proud of you. I want to thank you all, and that goes for the boys who didn’t play. You’re a great gang and I knew you’d do it.” Later back in Ottawa, Frank would confide to his wife that it was the biggest accomplishment of his life.