After Guelph was expelled from the OHA senior series, the western district increasingly looked like a race between the defending champs and the Toronto St. Georges. On February 16, the two teams were to meet for a big showdown at Mutual. But before the game began, St. Georges pointed out that Berlin’s Jim McGinnis had never been cleared of Irving’s charges.
At this point, the OHA would clearly have preferred to forget the whole Irving investigation. Unfortunately, when questioned by league officials, McGinnis gave suspicious and contradictory answers. The OHA was compelled to make him sit out. The Dutchmen, without a spare man, offered to play the St. Georges six on six. The Toronto team demanded the game be played seven on six or defaulted.
For over an hour and a half the management of the two clubs yelled at each other while a big Saturday-night crowd grew impatient for the game to start. Rather than risk a riot by his customers, Miln finally stepped in and persuaded the teams to play an exhibition. Meanwhile, the matter was referred to the OHA executive.
Buck Irving had already been hanging around Berlin, laying the groundwork for a new pro team. Thus, when the OHA took the St. Georges’ side of the dispute and started expelling Berliners, things were ready to go. Two hundred people representing the management and leading patrons of the Dutchmen met immediately to pull their club out of the amateur association. The champions’ entire lineup went with them.
Joseph “Frenchy” Ouelette was renowned for his crouched skating style. The Guelph left winger was borrowed by the Torontos for a couple of their barnstorming matches of 1906–07.
In no time, the Toronto Professionals had set up home-and-home games with the Berlin Dutchmen. On February 26, they tied 7–all in Berlin, while the defending OHA champs won 8–3 at Mutual three nights later. The first game was particularly remarkable because 2,000 Berliners had waited two and a half hours for it to start after a wreck on the tracks had delayed the arrival of the Torontos’ train. The crowd then stayed till midnight, not leaving until the game had ended.
Berlin’s first professional game had featured great hockey. The Torontos, down 7–2 at one point, got their offence untracked and roared back in the second half. Bruce Ridpath, once again the star, scored his fourth goal of the night to tie the game with thirty seconds left.
The game in Toronto was not so great, but did supply an amusing tale. The home team was missing Liffiton, again away on business. When Miln’s expected recruits did not show, the team was a man short. Doing some quick thinking, captain Ridpath recruited the referee into the lineup. He was Bert Brown, another former Marlboro.
The newly converted professional did not help much. Outclassed, the Torontos fell behind 7–0, and this time there was no comeback. Truth be told, the last twenty minutes were played in virtual darkness when the lighting failed. One observer called the game “almost as tame and slow, in fact, as the average O.H.A. games we have become accustomed to seeing this winter.”18
That was not a statement John Ross Robertson or his followers could take any solace from.
Yet another defector from the Marlboro organization, Bert Brown was considered a good cover point. However, he appeared out of condition in his lone, last-minute appearance with the Professionals.
Through the ups and downs of their improvised first season, interest in the Toronto Professionals had remained keen. Part of the reason was the mediocre year transpiring in the OHA. One measure of that state of affairs was a disastrous OHA exhibition game played at Mutual on March 9.
On that date, a select squad assembled from Toronto’s senior Argonauts, Marlboros and St. Georges went down to the University of Toronto by a humiliating score of 25–6. A desperate OHA had pressed an aging George McKay into service. He was reported not to have played since the demise of the Wellingtons—a fate, by the way, soon to be met by the remnants of the Marlboro team.
While the humiliating amateur blowout was taking place, Toronto’s real hockey excitement revolved around the pending visit of the professional Montreal Wanderers. The Wanderers, despite having lost the Stanley Cup to Kenora earlier in the season, had taken the championship of the Eastern association for the third straight year. They would be headed west for a repeat showdown with the Thistles, again champions of the Manitoba league.
As Kenora and Montreal haggled over the terms of their encounter—including controversial questions of player eligibility—Wanderer manager Tom Hodge came through Toronto to meet with Alex Miln. It was said that Hodge wanted his team to play at Mutual in order to prepare for the real possibility the Cup games could be held on the small Kenora rink. It was also rumoured that Miln had paid up to $900 for the honour. Whatever the reason, a date was set for March 11.
“Big Ezra” Dumart was a rugged forward with a hard, accurate shot. His 160 pounds would make him a large man for this era.
In the star-studded Wanderer lineup that night was “Hod” Stuart, widely considered the greatest player of the day. Stuart, who also played football, had left Ottawa and performed in the Western Pennsylvania and International leagues before ending up with the Wanderers. Stuart was the Bobby Orr of his era. Big, fast and rough, he dominated the game not just through superior skill, but by quarterbacking the offence from his own end forward. Playing that night with a broken finger, Stuart led the Redbands to an easy 4–1 lead before retiring early.
From there on, the game got tight. Though much smaller than their Montreal opponents, the Torontos, led by the determined Ridpath, threw themselves at the Wanderers with a fury. Riddy brought the crowd to its feet by decking the lanky Lester Patrick with a hard check. The game was quick, tough and intense throughout.
While generally clean as well, the contest also featured a notable fight. Wanderer Ernie “Moose” Johnson had given Hughie Lambe what his defence partner, Rolly Young, considered a cheap shot. Young went after Johnson, and several others joined in. During the excitement, one overwrought fan hurled his seat onto the ice surface. He was arrested, but, when later ascertained to be a Toronto supporter, he was promptly released.
The Torontos recovered from their early-game jitters to become increasingly confident. With eight minutes left, the Professionals had pulled ahead 9–8. However, having let the game completely open up, they could not keep pace with the Wanderers’ offence and eventually fell away by a count of 12–10. Charlie Liffiton, eager to show the Montrealers he still had it, was the best Toronto player, with five goals. But Ernie Russell, with an incredible nine for the Redbands, had sunk the local team.
There were differing opinions on what the game said about the Queen City club. Strengthened by Berlin forward Ezra Dumart, no one doubted that the Torontos had played well. Conversely, analysts pointed to Wanderer injuries, the soft ice, the small surface and an off night by Montreal goalie William Milton “Riley” Hern to suggest the visitors had perhaps done just enough to win. Subsequent events indicate that, in truth, the local pros were not that bad a team.
This midseason photo is the sole known picture of the first pro lineup. Goaltender Mark Tooze is the only regular who is absent.
By the time the Wanderers arrived in Toronto, the OHA stomping grounds, amateur hockey’s last bastion, had become home to no fewer than five professional hockey clubs. The latest was out of Belleville, still smarting from the Reddy McMillan fiasco. Guelph and Berlin were clearly the strongest, so that is where the Montreal gang headed next on their road trip.
The other Ontario pro games bore a strong resemblance to the Toronto affair. In Guelph, the visitors from Montreal had to come from behind to beat the Royals 5–3. In Berlin, however, they could not pull off the same feat for a third time and were edged out 9–8 by the Dutchmen.
It all proved a good warmup for the Wanderers. They took the Stanley Cup back from the Thistles less than two weeks later.
These games had shown, in a nutshell, that the new Ontario professional teams could hold their own against the club that reigned as champions of the Dominion. The message they took from it was undeni
able: they might themselves challenge for the Stanley Cup.
All things considered, the first professional hockey season in Toronto had been a fair success. The Professionals probably did not make money, and their record was only 2–5–1, but they had become the club of choice for a good chunk of local fans. As far as the city’s dreams of a first Stanley Cup were concerned, the Torontos were also the only choice.
To make this go, however, Miln needed more than a handful of exhibition games at Mutual. Next year, his Toronto Professionals would have to be in a league, for which he already had a franchise. But, the best-laid plans notwithstanding, that league would not be the International Hockey League.
• CHAPTER SEVEN •
THE PROS ON THE MARCH
The Ontario Professional Hockey League Is Formed
All the hockey world is laughing at a so-called professional hockey league that can only get players that real professional leagues don’t want. It’s not a professional league at all. It’s a disqualified amateurs’ league.1
—Toronto Telegram
As 1907 progressed, Alexander Miln was putting together the next phase of his plan: a shot at the Stanley Cup for his Toronto Professionals. We can only guess, however, as to what he was thinking about developments in the sports world around him. There can be no question that he was acutely aware of them. This was the era of the Athletic War, a vicious power struggle between elites in Montreal and Toronto over control of the country’s amateur sports, not just hockey. Miln’s team was operating in the epicentre of amateur purism, Toronto, and in the backyard of its most zealous advocate, John Ross Robertson’s OHA.
It is hard to exaggerate the incongruities and absurdities that grew out of Canada’s Athletic War. Historically, the promoters of professional sports had often been seen as suspect characters. But, by the fall of 1907, it was the governors of amateur athletics who were increasingly viewed as disreputable. Rival “national” sports bodies—the Toronto-based Canadian Amateur Athletic Union and the Montreal-based Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada—were stuck in a quagmire of mutual disqualifications. So savage was the squabble that the very capacity of the Dominion for self-government—at least in sports—would soon be called into question.
There could be no doubt that the CAAU was gradually gaining the upper hand in the battle for sports supremacy. Already the larger and more established organization, it embarked on an aggressive campaign to organize Canadian athletics from coast to coast. Key to its efforts was the creation of a series of provincial wings that mirrored the federal nature of the country. Amid competing charges of hypocrisy, it seemed only fitting that the Union would be organized as a federation, while the Federation was a unitary body.
However, the CAAU, infused as it now was with John Ross Robertson’s ideology, was also plagued with all the governance disputes that had racked the Ontario Hockey Association under his leadership. As in the OHA, lacrosse players were expelled from the Union en masse, with no exceptions. During the year, there were on-again, off-again ruptures with associations governing skating, canoeing, bowling and, most notably, rugby football. The last occurred after the CAAU thought it had scored a big coup in the country’s rising summer game.
The new Interprovincial Rugby Football Union, also known as the “Big Four,” had been formed under the auspices of the CAAU. It would consist of the Montreal (AAA) Winged Wheelers and Ottawa Rough Riders in the east and the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tigers in the west. Almost immediately, however, the CAAU and IRFU descended into an ugly scrap. The issue was the amateur status of Montrealer Ernie Russell, who also happened to be a member of the (professional) Stanley Cup champion Wanderers. The IRFU and the Argonauts—home club of the chair of the CAAU’s registration committee, J. G. Merrick—promptly left the organization.
As a consequence, though, the CAAU began to manage such disputes more pragmatically. Knowing that an affiliation with the Federation was lurking round the corner, the Union started to resolve rule conflicts by agreeing to forgive past transgressions in exchange for future adherence. This was a significant deviation from its own strict amateur code, but the CAAU was clearly prepared to do so if it would strengthen the organization. Such expediency would prove particularly troublesome in one high-profile case.
That would involve the sensational aboriginal runner Tom Longboat from the Six Nations reserve near Brantford, Ontario. The Onondaga runner had gained notoriety by winning area races while still a teenager. He was six weeks short of his twentieth birthday when he entered the Boston Marathon for the first (and only) time—and he went on to win in 2:24:24, shattering the previous record by a remarkable five minutes.
Tom Longboat was now a national hero, but this champion long-distance runner was about to become the highest-profile pawn in the Athletic War.
Longboat’s win in Boston had been phenomenal. Running with a bad cold, in rain and chilly weather, the youngster quickly won over the crowd that braved the elements. As the Boston Globe reported, “they saw in Tom Longboat the most marvellous runner who has ever sped along our roads. With a smile for everyone, he raced along and at the finish he looked anything but like a youth who had covered more miles in a couple of hours than the average man walks in a week.”2
There was a problem, though. Through the eyes of those who wish to see nothing but amateur purity, the kid the Canadian newspapers were calling “the noble red man”3 sure looked like a professional athlete. Accused of irregular training, he had no evident occupation other than running. His manager, the flamboyant promoter Tom Flanagan, claimed he controlled all the cash and paid Longboat only expenses.
Based on accumulating evidence—and perhaps some jealousy—Longboat ran afoul of American authorities. James E. Sullivan, the powerful boss of the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, wanted him declared a professional. The CAAU’s nationalistic defence of Longboat quickly became another factor in worsening relations with the American body. Finally, the AAU severed its link with the CAAU and affiliated with the AAFC instead. The already complex world of athletic sanction and censure now became doubly so for any Canadian contestant crossing the border.
There was, however, an even bigger complication on the horizon: the Olympics. The Summer Games of 1908 had originally been awarded to Rome, but would now be held in London. Relocation had been deemed necessary due to increased concern over volcanic eruptions.
Italy, it turned out, was not the only country where the Games were being threatened by explosion. Back in Canada, it was dawning on people that a team had to be named—but by whom, and including whom? All the country’s top athletes had been banned by either the CAAU or the AAFC—or both. Technically, the responsibility for it all fell on the British Olympic Committee, which still had formal jurisdiction for the Dominion. Wanting nothing to do with this “colonial” problem, the British assigned the task to the governor general, Earl Grey, who in turn passed off the unholy mess to his secretary, Colonel John Hanbury-Williams, who then turned for help to prominent Ottawa publisher P. D. Ross. And Ross, of course, just happened to be a Stanley Cup trustee. As such, he had long been annoyed with the rigid CAAU and insisted that it had to work with the more flexible AAFC.
Throughout the winter, Hanbury-Williams struggled to put together an arrangement. Every time a deal seemed close, one side or the other would balk or face internal dissension. Petty and pompous public denunciations rang back and forth between the two groups of Edwardian gentlemen. The Union accused the AAFC’s leaders of being “professionals.” The Federation replied that the CAAU men were “shamateurs.” During it all, Hanbury-Williams publicly articulated useful, if somewhat condescending, pearls of wisdom in an effort to encourage an agreement. In exasperation, he observed simply that “this is a big country, and we have to have big minds and big views to settle difficult points.”4
However, while the great debate over amateurism dragged on, the hockey world had already moved on. As the 1907–08 season approached, professional hockey
was no longer a curiosity—anywhere. It had become a reality in every part of the country. Nor were there any serious attempts to hide this professionalism from view. It was a proud and open world of competition.
The country’s elite hockey organization, the Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association, still paid lip service to the formalities of amateurism. The league, home to the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Wanderers, would meticulously publish lists of its amateur and admitted pro players. But except for the also-ran Montreal Victorias, the league was essentially professional.
All around the ECAHA were competitor leagues that practised professionalism pure and simple. Also based in eastern Ontario and Quebec, the Federal league was still crawling along. Farther west and north, there was the ascendant Upper Ottawa Valley circuit. Even farther west and north, the Temiskaming league paid out money—in wages and wagers—by the wheelbarrow.
Pro leagues had also set up shop in the farther-flung sections of the Dominion. Manitoba, long a hockey power in its own right, had a credible association that stretched from Brandon to Kenora. The New Ontario Hockey League pulled together the other towns in the northwestern portion of the province. In the former territories of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Interprovincial league had been established. Efforts were being made to do the same in the Maritimes.
All of this made the job of the Stanley Cup trustees increasingly complicated. Any pro league in the country could file a challenge for the trophy. Even the Canadian Soo team of the U.S.-headquartered International league was eligible if it could take the title. In December, the trustees mandated a semifinal for the first time, requiring the champions of the Federal league, the Ottawa Victorias, to take on the Upper Ottawa Valley’s Renfrew Creamery Kings before they got a shot at the Wanderers.
A Great Game Page 12