A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  After this close win over the Dutchmen, the Professionals would never look back.

  Exactly one week after taking the OPHL lead, the Toronto Professionals hosted the Guelph Royals. The Royals’ downward spiral was accelerating. The year before, they had taken four of their five exhibition games, losing only narrowly to the Montreal Wanderers. By now, however, the Speed River club was in turmoil.

  Buck Irving’s management errors were beginning to add up. Each loss seemed to be followed by wholesale changes to player personnel and pay arrangements. This sense of panic undermined both employee and fan loyalty. Irving’s perpetual trick of getting spectators out through the false promise of a big new star was also wearing thin. Interests connected to the old Guelph Nationals were said to be actively looking for an alternative to Buck’s team.

  As they reached Toronto, though, the Royals were coming off their second win of the season—another surprise defeat of Brantford—and they gave the overconfident Torontos a bit of a scare. Early in the game, Guelph shot out to a 4–1 lead. Alas, although the visitors continued to play hard, the home squad gradually got untracked and eventually coasted to a 10–7 victory. Robertson’s Tely characteristically alleged a pro conspiracy, noting that “some were uncharitable enough to remark that they were playing for a close score.”6

  Lalonde added yet another five goals, ably set up by Ridpath with two of his own. The usually unheralded Corbeau and Mercer, who were returning from a stint as ringers in the Temiskaming league, got some plaudits. In fact, the point man scored his first of the season. Morrison also got two goals—as well as more biting criticism of his play.

  The following Tuesday, the Torontos were on their way to Berlin and another hugely important match against the Dutchmen. They were now holding a commanding lead in the OPHL race with seven wins and two losses. A road victory would virtually clinch the title for the Professionals.

  Berlin was a good team, and every game against Toronto had been a contest. Its record of five wins and four losses was also closer to the leaders than it sounded. A recent narrow loss to Brantford had been overturned by the league due to the Braves’ “borrowing” of a Guelph player. Thus, if the Dutchmen could win this one, they would have the same number of official defeats as the Torontos—and still be in it.

  Two and a half thousand people came to Berlin that night from all across southwestern Ontario. “Tumultuous applause”7 greeted Mayor Allan Huber as he dropped the puck wearing a silk hat, brand new for the occasion. The atmosphere was as tense as the stakes were high.

  Besides the tight race, there was ill feeling between the teams. Berlin’s star cover, Uncle Gross, had had a running feud with the Torontos—especially with his counterpart, Rolly Young—all season. However, Young, a Waterloo native, was ably supported by rooters from both his hometowns.

  It turned out to be the Berliners who had nothing to cheer about. The Dutchmen were given “an unmerciful drubbing,”8 on the losing end of a 9–1 score. The Torontos won in every category, including the battle with Gross. Young fought Gross “hammer and tongs”9 all night long, aided by partner Corbeau. Con at one point picked up a wooden plank that had (somehow) fallen onto the ice and hurled it at the Berlin player. Near the end, the banged-up Dutchman finally retired for the evening.

  For once, Morrison got grudging praise from the Toronto press. His six goals—including one with a two-man disadvantage—had earned him at least a bit of acclaim. More plaudits went to Ridpath, Young and Lalonde, who had done much of the playmaking. Berlin’s successful attempt to shut down the French Canadian centre had served only to shift the team’s attack to its rover.

  While technically still in it, Berlin was, for all practical purposes, now finished. Toronto would have to lose both their remaining games, including one to Guelph. The Dutchmen would have to win both theirs, as well as a replay against Brantford. After that, they would have to beat the Torontos in a tiebreaker—hardly likely after this thrashing.

  Recriminations were already beginning in Berlin, with some alleging that the team’s abysmal performance was a consequence of being out of condition and “too intimate with the booze.”10

  The Torontos would anticlimactically lock up the championship a mere two nights later at Guelph. Although it was too late to make any difference, the Royals were starting to improve. They held the leaders to a five-all tie in the first half before finally succumbing 8–5. Lambe replaced the travelling Morrison in what was a rough and dirty game. No fewer than five players were laid out on the ice during the contest.

  The Torontos, finishing the season with ten straight victories and wrapping up the first OPHL championship, were already looking ahead.

  The Professionals’ last game of the regular season was at home against Brantford on February 29. It would be a testament to the growing popularity of the team. Clearly, it was a nothing contest. As well, Roy Brown was notorious for his tedious delaying tactics against a fast opponent. The house was nevertheless packed to the rafters that Saturday night.

  The game was a testament on the ice as well—to the rising Toronto powerhouse. Even with their goaltender playing well, the Braves were demolished by a score of 12–3. Lalonde led the way with eight goals and a fight. His brawl with Brantford right winger Jack Marks ended only when the police finally came on the ice—a first for the Queen City.

  The reviews were stellar nonetheless. Billy Hewitt’s sports pages at the Star, usually so skeptical, declared that “the local ‘pros.’ never showed up in Toronto so well as they did Saturday night.”11 Some reports even praised Morrison’s play. With their tenth-straight victory, the Torontos’ OPHL campaign could not be ending on a higher note.

  Miln picked up Donald Smith from Portage la Prairie of the Manitoba league. Donny was from Cornwall, where he had played on the forward line with Reddy McMillan and the late Bud McCourt.

  At the same time as the Toronto Professionals were wrapping up the provincial championship, they were also lodging a Stanley Cup challenge with the trustees. Alex Miln contacted P. D. Ross and William Foran12 in his capacity as president of the Ontario league, and they awarded his team a two-game, total-goals series set for March 14 and 16, conditional on the Montreal Wanderers successfully defending against the Winnipeg Maple Leafs on March 10 and 12.

  Considering that Miln’s team had existed for less than a year and a half, the Mutual Street manager had every reason to savour the moment. Almost immediately, however, there was a serious complication. The trustees issued a decree barring from Cup competition all those who had played for more than one team during the season—an unprecedented intervention prompted by the rampant shifting of men and the hiring of ringers. After the outcry around moves by the Kenora Thistles and Montreal Wanderers in March 1907, Ross and Foran told the senior leagues that restrictions had to be put in place.

  The trustees explained their actions in a public statement condemning “the promiscuous buying and selling of players” and “dishonorable [sic] violations of contracts.” Further, they decried that “the present condition of hockey points to the Stanley Cup becoming merely a gate-money asset to the club executive which is willing to gamble highest and most shamelessly in the purchase of players.”13

  Unfortunately, every Toronto Professional except Ridpath and Lambe had played for another squad during the year. So, no sooner had the Wanderers wrapped up the ECAHA title than they filed a protest against the participation of Toronto players Mercer, Morrison, Tyner and Young in the Stanley Cup series.14 The trustees backtracked significantly, but still banned Morrison, who had played a game with the Montreal Shamrocks even after the OPHL challenge had been accepted.

  Notwithstanding the constant press criticism, Bert’s absence from the Torontos’ lineup would leave a significant hole to fill—he was the club’s second-highest scorer. Acting again on Jimmy Murphy’s advice, Miln secured Cornwall’s Donald Smith to play rover. At a reputed 130 pounds soaking wet, Smith was small even for his era. However, word was that his
speed and skill more than compensated.

  Three days before the first Cup game, the Torontos would have the opportunity to test out the new man. It would be in an “all-star game.” The Pros, it was announced, would face a team collected from the other three OPHL clubs.

  Like all-star games before and after, the affair was a soft, high-scoring one. Referee E. J. “Eddie” Livingstone—a man destined for both fame and infamy on Toronto’s pro hockey scene—had little to do. The permanent club rolled over the Ontario All-Stars 16–10, Smith showing up very well with five goals.

  The team was scheduled to depart for Montreal the next morning. By then, assessments of its chances were coming in fast and furious. Not surprisingly, the most negative were found in Toronto’s OHA newspapers, John Ross Robertson’s Tely being the harshest:

  For the quintessence of gall commend us to this aggregation of false alarm hockey statesmen, who have wired a challenge for the Stanley Cup: to wit and namely the Toronto professionals. There can be no doubt but that the Wanderers upon receiving the wire last night laughed themselves to sleep. Surely the pros. have no idea they can hope to win, so that we may put this proposed trip down more to pot hunting than the glory of Canada’s great winter sport.15

  More balanced assessments of the challengers—including from Montreal’s own observers—were consistent. The Torontos were judged to have as strong, fast and cohesive a forward unit as any, although, except for Lalonde, it was a bit on the small side. The challengers’ weakness was in their back end—heavy, but lacking in consistency and teamwork. Corbeau contributed little on offence while Young was erratic defensively. Tyner was thought to be a fine goalkeeper, but had been mediocre in the latter half of the season.

  Miln had a few options to shore up his club. The spare man, Lambe, could be used on defence. Yet, despite fan preference for the local player over Corbeau, there seemed little prospect of a switch. Given the risk that Morrison might stay out, Alex decided he also needed an additional spare forward.

  The manager’s solution was to ask all-star Jack Marks to come east with the team. Besides being a solid player, Marks had some Stanley Cup experience. He had scored two goals for the New Glasgow Cubs in their losing effort back in 1906. Still, what Miln really wanted was neither Smith nor Marks, but to get Morrison back in the lineup where he played best: on the large ice surface of the Montreal Arena.

  John Joseph “Jack” Marks was one of the OHA’s involuntary professionals, but he became a consummate one—big and tough, but also clean and hardworking both ways. At one time a minor-league baseball player, the Brantford winger had previously performed in the Federal, Maritime, International and Western Pennsylvania hockey leagues.

  Miln had been paying close attention to the Wanderers’ grumbling about the Stanley Cup playoffs. Frustrated by numerous challenges, the champs had been complaining there was too much work and not enough money in holding the mug. Wanderer president William Jennings even claimed that “most of us feel inclined to send the cup to Toronto, and let them have it, and be done with it.”16

  More than a century later, with the Stanley Cup perhaps the most revered trophy in the sporting world, such a comment seems incomprehensible to hockey fans.

  Miln shrewdly figured out the real story. There was no way the Wanderers actually wanted to part with the Cup. Even then, being in the playoffs was gravy for a professional team. In truth, the problem was that the second game of the Toronto series conflicted with the Redbands’ plans for their annual—and lucrative—barnstorming pilgrimage to the States.

  The Wanderers were slated to take their Montreal Shamrock rivals to New York for a St. Patrick’s Day match. Following that, they would play a “World Championship” against the winners of the Pittsburgh league. Cleveland’s brand-new artificial-ice rink would be their final stop.

  With this knowledge, Alex wired the Cup trustees. He had previously refused the Wanderers’ request for a sudden-death game. However, through Foran and Ross, he now offered the Wanderers a one-game series in exchange for permission to play Morrison. The Montreal club’s options being limited, they took what was a reasonable deal. Morrison was back in the Torontos’ lineup.

  Bert was already in Montreal and joined the team and a small band of supporters watching the final game of the Winnipeg Maple Leaf challenge. The Torontos were not discouraged by their look at the champions. Despite losing badly, the Leafs delivered a full load of physical punishment to the victors. Montrealers bemoaned:

  If the Toronto professionals are human … they must have chortled with glee last night when the Maple Leaf lot hammered, slashed, and thrust at Wanderer players. The net result of the affair was this: Wanderer won by the substantial score of nine goals to three; but practically every player of the cup team left the ice marked, and two of them, Cecil Blachford and Walter Smaill, carried off liberal loads of adhesive plaster as facile [sic] ornaments.17

  Whether it was from having Morrison playing or the Cup champions hurting, Alex Miln was getting into a confident frame of mind. His encounters with the press in the rotunda of the Windsor Hotel, where he was renting a palatial suite, became increasingly cocky. Dismissive of key Wanderer stars, he rated his team as, man for man, equal to the champs and even better on offence. And he bragged:

  I haven’t managed championship teams for nothing. Every man I’ve taken in hand has won a championship, and every one has been a good one. Our boys are all good, can skate, stick handle and shoot, and I’ll be the sorest man in America if we don’t win out.18

  This was certainly not the consensus. The betting pools leading up to game time had the Wanderers as 3–1 favourites. Odds were 2–1 that they would double the score on the Ontario representatives.

  The now-defunct Montreal Star printed this rare photograph of the Toronto Professionals’ starting lineup, absent Rolly Young, on the eve of their Stanley Cup appearance. The misspellings betray how poorly the players were known in the champions’ hometown.

  On the evening of Saturday, March 14, 1908, the big rink at the corner of St. Catherine Street and Wood Avenue opened its doors to an eager crowd. When the Toronto Professionals took the ice to polite applause from the half-full stands, it marked the moment when hockey had come full circle. It had been some twenty years since the sport had first been played in Toronto. Now Canada’s upstart commercial centre was taking on Montreal’s best at its own game. Back home, fans waited patiently at the Mutual Street Rink for the wires from the Montreal Arena. Local sentiment was rallying around the pro team—with the notable exception of Robertson’s Tely.

  If the fans in Toronto were wound up, the same could hardly be said for Montreal. It was clear from news coverage that the locals did not take the Ontario champions seriously. Still, the crowd of about 3,000, if hardly a sellout, was better than expected. However, it was also readily apparent that the ice was in awful shape. The mild weather had created vast pools—mini-lakes, actually—on large parts of the slushy playing surface.

  The Montreal Wanderers—Stanley Cup holders for most of the past three years—had lined up a cast replete with future Hall of Famers. William “Riley” Hern occupied the nets with Art Ross and Walter Smaill forming the defence in front of him. Frank “Pud” Glass would play rover behind centre Ernie Russell, while captain Cecil Blachford and Ernie “Moose” Johnson filled right and left wing respectively.

  The challengers—Chuck Tyner, Con Corbeau, Rolly Young, Bert Morrison, Newsy Lalonde, Walter Mercer and Bruce Ridpath—were comparatively young, inexperienced and relatively unknown. All the same, if the challengers from Toronto were intimidated, they did not show it. The hometown fans were stunned as the Torontos came out fast and aggressive. Only three minutes into the game, Ridpath fired a quick shot that eluded Hern. Hockey-savvy Montrealers, instantly recognizing a future star, gave Bruce “a lusty cheer.”19

  The early lead did not last. Only a minute later, Russell finished a Montreal rush by putting a hard one past Tyner. Toronto disputed, albeit weakly,
whether the puck had actually gone in before returning to centre ice for the faceoff.

  Although the Wanderers continued to be noticeably outplayed, they stayed even with the Torontos throughout the half. With just four minutes left, Ridpath made an end-to-end rush—the best individual play of the night—but it ended when Hern handled his shot comfortably.

  Almost from the outset, the horrid ice conditions started to become a major factor in the game. Opposing players bogged down into scrums as they tried to control the puck and force it through the water. They were drenched from head to toe, as were the fans on the rails. At such close quarters, offsides were frequent, numerous penalties incurred and even more fouls committed as tempers grew short. Russell and Mercer had the first scrap of the night.

  The first big controversy took shape just near the end of the half. Russell went down, favouring a knee. The Redbands immediately sought to substitute Bruce Stuart, younger brother of the late Hod and a star in his own right. But even the local fans were not buying the authenticity of the injury. They shouted “incredulous remarks”20 as Russell left the ice. Toronto protested against the use of Stuart. He was not allowed into the game, and Toronto’s Mercer went off to even up the sides.

  After the halftime break, during which frantic efforts were made to soak up some of the water, the dispute immediately resumed. Stuart again came on the ice. This time, referee Frank Patrick and judge of play Russell Bowie permitted the change. They argued that the intermission constituted the ten-minute break necessary before substitution for injury could be made under eastern rules.

  The Torontos were irate at the decision. Not only did they disagree with the ruling, but they did not believe Russell was hurt. The Wanderers, they were convinced, wanted only to replace a player whose performance had been subpar. The Professionals even threatened to leave the ice, but compromised when they got to make a substitution of their own. Jack Marks was moved in for Mercer, who, though playing adequately, was fighting a cold and favouring an ankle.