A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  An accomplished stickhandler as well as a fast skater, tall, lean Howard Manson had played for the Ottawa Victorias in their January 1908 Stanley Cup challenge against the Montreal Wanderers. His play in Toronto was consistently rated as good.

  The born-again Torontos proved they were for real, literally crushing the front-runners. The 15–10 score was deceptive. The locals had gone up by a wide margin early, Brantford narrowing it somewhat only after the matter had become hopeless. Three hundred Dykeville supporters who had come down on the train grew silent as the “cakewalk”6 continued. The spectacular Ridpath, with seven goals that night, looked as if he could have beaten them single-handedly.

  The Professionals had also again bettered their amateur competition at the gate. The Toronto Athletics had faced the famed Montreal Victorias and their legendary star, Russell Bowie. The amateur squad was trounced in front of a small gathering at the Excelsior. Toronto hockey fans seemed to be in complete ignorance of the increasingly savage coverage of the professional league in most of their local newspapers. When ticket sales were stopped at Mutual, there remained a lineup stretching fifty yards down the street.

  Nonetheless, after four weeks of the OPHL season, the Torontos still found themselves in last place. However, their prospects had definitely improved. Including the eight defaulted games each team was credited against Guelph and St. Catharines, the official league standings were now:

  W

  L

  REMAINING7

  Brantford

  11

  2

  7

  Galt

  11

  2

  7

  Berlin

  11

  3

  6

  Toronto

  10

  4

  6

  The revitalized Professionals would face their next test almost immediately—on Monday, February 1, at Berlin. For that occasion, the Dutchmen would not feature Rolly Young. The former Toronto captain’s hesitancy about hockey had spilled over into the regular season. After debating whether he would play at all, his performance in Berlin had gone steadily downhill. Young had refused to practise between games and, as a consequence, he put on weight. Never fast to begin with, Rolly lost both a step and the edge to his physical game. He also failed to bring support from his Waterloo home over to his new club. Management finally decided to cut him. While he was rumoured to be interested in returning to the Ontario capital, Miln also decided to pass.

  The Berlin game was a rough, crude affair—something increasingly common in the OPHL that season. A raft of penalties finally culminated in a free-for-all. When Edward “Toad” Edmunds slashed Don Smith, Lalonde went after him. Then Uncle Gross came in, followed by Doran, and soon every player was part of a “tumbling, slugging pile.”8 It ended only when the police finally intervened.

  With the flow of the game destroyed, the Torontos’ offence was broken up. Without a strong attack—and periodically bogged down in penalties—the Professionals’ weak defence became their downfall. Berlin took it 6–3. Big Ezra Dumart shone in the tough going and scored a hat trick for the winners. As they rolled to victory, the hometown fans chanted their song, “Oh the Dutch companee is the best companee!”9

  Yet another recruit from Cornwall’s Federal league club, cover point Howard “Hank” Smith was studying to be a marine engineer.

  The Torontos headed back home, banged up and with their confidence shaken. Teddy Marriott declared that the players had performed “1,000 per cent worse”10 in Berlin than in their previous outing. They were thus eager to show the Mutual gallery that the recent run had been no fluke. The awaited opposition would be Galt, which had slipped into first place in a razor-thin race between the three country teams.

  After two games with the same roster, the Pros seemed almost overdue for a lineup change. This became necessary when Hank Smith returned to Cornwall to prepare for his exams for the marine service. Lambe was brought back in at point.

  By the time Thursday night came, the homesters had their form back. The offence opened the scoring with five unanswered goals en route to a 6–2 win on poor ice. In front of the usual big crowd, the visiting Indians were totally outplayed both ways.

  Lalonde led the offence, but all the forwards contributed. Lambe and Doran had unusually strong games on defence. Tyner also played well, but it did not really matter. As one writer wryly observed:

  The only excitement of the evening was caused by a couple of female rooters from Galt, who were stationed in the gallery, and who had many verbal encounters with male fans of the big city.11

  A disappointing season for the Toronto HC had now concluded its fifth week. While the usual critics of pro hockey had become bolder, the club still enjoyed significant goodwill among its many fans. Attendance had remained large and enthusiastic at all home games—even with play that had frequently been either rough or uninspired.

  The revolving door of the dressing room had also been largely accepted. With unfortunate injuries and unforeseen defections, Miln’s many player movements had generally been regarded as bold and necessary. There was also increasing excitement and confidence in the team’s new lineup. The World flatly declared that the win over Galt “again demonstrated that the Toronto team have no license at the bottom of the league and with any share of luck they should even now tie Brantford for the championship.”12

  Initial reports on Ridpath’s departure suggested that he would be back. This article includes a rare picture of the Professionals’ 1908–09 jersey.

  In retrospect, however, the elements of a deep disillusionment were beginning to take shape. Fan patience was being pushed very close to a precipice. A couple of events would soon edge it over. Foremost was the reality that the championship was virtually out of reach, notwithstanding the wishful thinking of the World. It did not matter how good the team had become or how many games they had almost won. The closeness of the race was exaggerated by OPHL standings typically showing eight free wins for each team against their defunct rivals. In reality, with five losses in what was now effectively a twelve-game schedule (with their three remaining competitors), Toronto’s chances of finishing or tying for first were mathematically very slim.

  All this was being noticed by some—but most significantly by Bruce Ridpath. On Monday, February 8, a spreading rumour was confirmed: Riddy had signed with the Cobalt Silver Kings of the Temiskaming league. Bruce, who maintained a sporting goods store on Yonge Street, said he would be willing to come back to Toronto when available. However, he was being paid $500 to help settle the northern league’s tight race. Any return to the Queen City club therefore seemed like wishful thinking.

  It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the blow Ridpath’s loss dealt the franchise. A local boy, he was the team’s founder, key playmaker and most popular player. Since becoming a senior with the Marlboros in 1904–05, he had been miles away the city’s most exciting performer when at full throttle. The Star captured a sense of this, recounting a recent match when “a stentorian-voiced rooter made the rafters ring with, ‘Go it, you little rat, go it!’ ”13 as Riddy repeatedly led the attack.

  But now Ridpath was gone to hockey’s newest land of opportunity, the cash-rich mining towns of northeastern Ontario. It was not his first adventure into the Temiskaming Hockey League. He had, after all, gone there late in the 1905–06 season, when he had joined teammates Rolly Young and Harry Burgoyne to play under assumed names for New Liskeard against Haileybury. That infamous excursion had shattered the amateur Marlboros and paved the way for the formation of the Professionals.

  The Toronto papers, ever loyal to the OHA, had claimed that there had been deep revulsion in the north country against ringers as a consequence of the scandal. They could not have been more wrong. Indeed, the Temiskaming league began taking hockey “tourism” to levels never seen before or since. Lineups changed nonstop as players were literally hired game to game. On occasion, the personnel of clubs from ot
her leagues were recruited in their entirety to substitute for local talent.

  International Hockey League teams had been willing renters of their lineups to the Temiskaming clubs. However, the U.S.-based league was the ultimate loser in this dubious practice. Just as the IHL had once lured away promising Canadian prospects with the big bucks of the Michigan mining country, it then faced the same sort of competition in reverse. Northeastern Ontario was experiencing a mining boom in everything from cobalt to gold. Its hockey clubs quickly became key Dominion competitors in the economic struggle that eventually finished the IHL.

  Filled with well-paid young men lacking wives and mortgages, Canada’s booming mining communities had lots of money to spend on hockey. Huge gates fuelled runaway player salaries. For example, in the home opener of Ridpath’s new club, there were reportedly 4,000 rooters present—and Cobalt was a town of just 5,000 people. Yet the sum spent on tickets was only a small part of the cash haul. Wagers were plentiful and often very large. The total gambling in Riddy’s first home-and-home series against Haileybury was in the range of $50,000. Robertson’s Telegram was not exaggerating all that much when it claimed “up north they bet real money on hockey, and keep the mining stocks to sell to their friends.”14

  Miln sought James Irwin Mallen to help fill the hole created by the departure of Bruce Ridpath. Ironically, “Kid” Mallen was Ken’s older brother.

  None of this should imply that the hockey played in the Temiskaming league was farcical—far from it. From 1906 on, the circuit’s calibre grew steadily. By 1909, increasing numbers of established stars were being pilfered permanently from the clubs of big-city leagues like the ECHA and OPHL. Even before Ridpath’s recruitment, the Silver Kings had beaten the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Wanderers 6–4 in an exhibition match earlier that season. Yet, because of progressively stricter residency rules in place for Cup competition, the bush league had virtually no chance of playing for Lord Stanley’s chalice.

  Miln, however, had apparently not given up on the championship. On the contrary, he again had his wires out and acted with speed and skill in frantic efforts to replace the hole left by Ridpath. Alex first elected to dump Fred Young, whom he had relegated to being a goal umpire. He then recruited Jimmy Mallen. Mallen, on his way out of the dissolving West Penn League, was from good stock. His brother, former Toronto Pro Ken Mallen, was a widely sought-after performer.

  Mallen was not available for the game to be played the following evening, so Miln also brought in Herb Fyfe. This refugee from Guelph was a steady performer who had practised with the Torontos in the 1907–08 preseason. In the end, though, it would not matter who took Riddy’s place on left wing.

  The contest was another of the year’s key turning points involving Brantford. Fittingly, the showdown would take place at its address on Waterloo Street. The Torontos went down by a score of 12–4. However, they did not just lose big—they lost ugly. It all unravelled when Newsy Lalonde’s hypercompetitive nature got the better of him.

  Toronto had been outplayed in the first half and trailed 4–2. The young captain sensed the season was slipping away. So, when Brantford goal judge Charles Carson allowed a dubious fifth marker early in the second, Lalonde simply lost it. He went after Carson with his fists, causing a mad rush of players, fans and police officers to enter the melee. Although not thrown out of the game, Newsy’s heart was not in it after that—and thus the blowout began.

  It was clear that Lalonde would be facing charges from the Brantford authorities. No matter how much roughness was sometimes tolerated in hockey in those days, the line had always been drawn at attacks on officials. More critically, Lalonde’s image had shifted. Newsy had always been a tough—and occasionally dirty—hockey player. As a star scorer who spent much time near the goalmouth, it was an occupational requirement. However, his behaviour had been borderline before—for example, he once pummelled a Galt fan who had attempted to interfere with the on-ice play. Toronto may not have been as pure about hockey violence as the OHA pretended, but fans did draw a distinction between an on-ice “policeman” and a thug.

  So the fan favourite was gone. The captain was under a cloud. Team play had largely been lost through the constant shuffling. And the championship was now unequivocally out of reach. The Torontos were approaching a point of no return.

  Before resuming league play, however, the club would take the train to London for an exhibition contest that Friday. This OPHL expedition, canvassing a potential new market after the loss of two franchises, was certainly going against the grain. The Garnet and Grey met up with Galt and lost 7–4. A well-filled Princess Rink witnessed a lacklustre effort on both sides—hardly a move to inspire interest in a London franchise. If nothing else, though, the match did confirm that the Miln-Irving business partnership remained intact despite the league’s boardroom battles.15

  The following Tuesday, February 16, the Torontos went on to Galt itself, where they again lost, the final count being 16–11. At this point, Lalonde seems to have embarked on a score-settling campaign. His aggressive play led to another fight with Dusome. This followed his appearance earlier that day in front of a police magistrate in Brantford. There, the Toronto centre got off with a fine for assault and abusive language.

  Newsy’s reign of terror moved back to Mutual Street on Thursday night. In a contest marked by the terrible refereeing of Buck Irving—who was generally known to be a terrible referee—Lalonde took after Berlin’s Edmunds and Gross with vicious stickwork. The hometown fans loudly jeered him when he was finally thrown out of the game. The Globe observed the seriousness of the situation:

  The headlines were getting ever worse. In particular, captain Newsy Lalonde’s rough play was making him increasingly unpopular with Toronto fans.

  When a local crowd hisses and hoots the captain of the local team for brutal attacks on opposing players, the same captain having been fined a few days ago in the Brantford Police Court for beating a goal umpire, his usefulness in promoting the game of hockey seems to have reached the limit.16

  Unfortunately for the Professionals, the bad news did not end there. They had again lost—this time 8–5—and had played very poorly. The crowd was a small one, and even those fans were dissatisfied. The reviews were universally bad, the following being typical: “If the players received real money for playing a hockey game, they got it under false pretences. It wasn’t even shinny. Alex Miln, himself, admitted that.”17

  To compound matters, some serious local competition to the pro team was emerging. It was not from the Interprovincial Union, where the Toronto Amateur Athletic Club had finished the season winless, but from the good old Ontario Hockey Association. The TAAC’s entry in the old association was having a decent season, but the new senior club from St. Michael’s College was doing even better. For the first time in several years, the possibility of a senior championship was generating real amateur hockey excitement in Toronto.

  Queen City fans were also being reminded daily of their departed pro celebrities. Reports from the mining country heaped praise on the exploits of Bruce Ridpath, now the darling of Cobalt, lifting his team ahead of Haileybury’s Skene Ronan and Con Corbeau to take the local championship. And Dubbie Kerr was emerging as a new star of the Ottawas, hot on the trail of the Eastern league title.

  The Toronto Professionals’ final game of the season would be at Mutual on Tuesday, February 23—and it would be another seminal moment against Brantford. By now, the Torontos were merely limping towards the finish line, both on the ice and at the box office.

  The events of that evening would make things far worse for the organization.

  Despite the previous three losses, the Torontos’ lineup was starting to come back together. Lambe had been returned to spare status while Lalonde was moved to the cover point position. This had allowed forwards Mallen, Manson, Smith and Fyfe—all decent hockey players—to be put on the ice as a unit. The team again had a solid attack, while Tyner in goal and an improving Doran at po
int covered the back end.

  Indeed, the Torontos did look like the better team against Manager Roy Brown’s outfit that evening. Yet every time they appeared ready to roll ahead, the players seemed to either pull back or permit a soft goal. In the end, they let Brantford turn a 7–6 deficit into a 9–7 victory. The few hundred diehards present were vocally displeased.

  It is evident from all reports the next day that many suspected the game had been thrown, if not rigged outright. Even the News, the club’s most sympathetic organ, testified that “there were those at the rink who said openly that the locals wouldn’t take it as a gift.”18 John Ross Robertson’s Telegram, which regularly implied that pro hockey was fixed, gleefully proclaimed “professional hockey got a bad black eye in last night’s game.”19

  The criticism focused on two players: Lalonde and Tyner. Lalonde was unusually passive and, very uncharacteristically, failed to score. Tyner let in an abnormal number of soft ones. According to nasty but widely circulating rumours, the pair, after deliberately losing the game, were going to play for Brantford to help them overtake Galt in the homestretch.20 Miln was even said to be in on the scheme.21

  The Torontos’ last game was a public-relations disaster. They were widely suspected of throwing it—confirming the worst stereotype of professional athletes.

  There can be no doubt that this conspiracy theory, combined with events on the ice that night, did real damage—but was it true? Maybe Chuck, who had been inconsistent all season, just had an off game? Maybe Newsy did not score because he was playing defence? Was the public not demanding he rein in his aggressiveness anyway? In the end, Tyner and Lalonde never did suit up for the Braves, as the Indians coasted to the pennant in the closing games.22

  For Lalonde, the criticism must have been especially wounding. The captain, whatever his faults, had been a consistent competitor. He had stuck with the club despite the offer of big money from the mining league up north. He had also thrown himself into recruiting work as the club struggled with defections. This partly explains why so many newcomers had come from Cornwall and other parts of eastern Ontario.