In any case, professional hockey was ending the local season at a new low—just as the amateur game was on the rise. In the weeks that followed, St. Mike’s took the senior OHA championship and the John Ross Robertson Cup. The Queen City was on top for the first time since the Marlboro title of 1904–05. Although it turned out to be too late to challenge for the Allan Cup, the prospect of genuine national honours was capturing the public’s imagination.
Both the amateur and professional hockey champions of Canada were, for now, to be found in the nation’s capital. The Allan Cup was first held—albeit briefly—by the Ottawa Cliffsides, who had taken the Interprovincial title. Ottawa’s Silver Seven had won the Eastern crown and thus had finally taken the Stanley Cup back from the Montreal Wanderers.
With the Toronto Professionals’ season in tatters, it was understandably forgotten that they had beaten the new Stanley Cup champions just two months before. How quickly—and completely—things had changed.
Still, despite the disastrous end to the 1908–09 season, the Torontos had managed to complete their schedule. The club had not disbanded and there were no reports that it would do so. Indeed, as the city entered the fall, there were clear expectations that the Professionals would ice a squad in 1909–10. Supporters were already speculating that it would be a comeback year.
One warning sign, however, was the apparent lack of star players. Professional recruiting promised to be as competitive as ever. Alex Miln claimed to have a line out to several pro veterans, including defectors Dubbie Kerr and Bruce Ridpath. Yet fan favourite Riddy had spoken highly of his experiences in the north country and was showing no sign of returning.
The one top performer who had stuck with the club through thick and thin the past season was Newsy Lalonde. The malicious rumours that he would be a ringer for Brantford at season’s end being false, the much-maligned captain had instead travelled to Montreal. There, he had played on a hastily formed French Canadian all-star team. Reports had him staying with a Francophone club, likely the Montreal Nationals.
In early November, rumours about the club’s future began to circulate for the first time. These were sparked by Miln’s failure to appear at an OPHL meeting scheduled for Brantford. The reason was not clear, but the stories suggested the Toronto manager was again looking at taking his club into the ECHA.
Miln finally did show up at the league meeting that had been rescheduled for November 19. There, he stunned observers by wielding the axe. He was stepping down as president of the Ontario Pro league and withdrawing his club from the circuit. However, it was not joining any other league.
The final curtain for the Torontos came as somewhat of a surprise. Alex Miln would henceforth refuse to associate with pro hockey.
Three days short of its third birthday, the Toronto Hockey Club was no more.
The Mutual Street Rink manager went further. Noting that he was receiving numerous applications—professional and amateur—for the coming season, “Mr. Miln was of the opinion that the two brands of hockey did not mix, and he was desirous of giving the preference to the amateur clubs.”23 In other words, the boss of the former pro team was endorsing the separation principle of the amateur purists. More than that, he was saying professionals and amateurs could not mix, even in the same facility. It was a stunning and devastating rebuke of the commercial game from Toronto’s chief promoter of professional hockey.
Little is known about why Miln made such a sudden about-face without warning. There was nothing new about much demand for ice time at Mutual Street—it happened every year. Money doubtless had more to do with it. Miln suggested that, by drawing the big gates, the pro club had taken the profits out of local amateur hockey. Meanwhile, reports indicated the pro club itself had lost at least $1,500 in 1908–09. In truth, leaving aside the March 1908 Stanley Cup gambling takes, the Toronto Hockey Club probably did not make money on hockey operations in any of its three seasons.
Whatever Miln’s reasons, the advocates of amateurism were ecstatic. John Ross Robertson’s organ was the most eloquent:
It is not often that amateur hockey can chase the pro. article out of a city the size of Toronto. But that’s what has happened here. So many senior O.H.A. teams are in line that the pros. are crowded off Mutual street rink … The rush of amateurs is the healthiest sign any sport can show. It means that hockey in Toronto is on a healthy foundation, that O.H.A. supervision is universally satisfactory and that the future of the game is assured.24
Such self-congratulatory commentary underscored a sense of triumph among Toronto’s amateurs that was total. Just as victory was inexorably moving their way in the long Athletic War, so too had the battle for control of hockey in the Queen City. The field had been vacated. The professionals had been expelled, never to return.
At least that’s what John Ross Robertson and his followers wanted to believe.
• CHAPTER ELEVEN •
THE OLD ORDER RESTORED
The Era of Amateurism Returns to the Queen City
They learned nothing and forgot nothing.
—TALLEYRAND1
The 1909–10 Toronto hockey season was opening not just without the professionals, but also amid a genuine renaissance in the amateur game. The OHA champions, St. Michael’s College of Toronto, had their eyes set on the national glory of the Allan Cup. At the provincial level, there would be as many as ten local senior amateur clubs crowding the Mutual Street Rink, and, proclaimed the Tely, “still the list of aspirants for the J. Ross Robertson Cup grows.”2
In fact, amateurism was ascendant everywhere. Led by the revived Olympic Games of Pierre de Coubertin, its purists were gaining a worldwide reach. The London Games had particularly captured the public’s imagination, despite a controversy during the opening ceremony when American flag bearer Ralph Rose refused to dip his colours before King Edward VII. The Games had lasted more than six months—the longest in Olympic history—thanks to the addition of four figure-skating events held later in the year. All in all, they were widely hailed as a great success for amateur sport.
Canadians’ most poignant memory, however, had been the disastrous showing of Tom Longboat in the marathon. And yet, even that was a blessing to the amateur ideologues, for it had marked the beginning of the end for the pragmatists.
CAAU president James Merrick spoke magnanimously about the merger with the Federation. However, there was little doubt the Union had won the Athletic War.
In the spring of 1909, this was confirmed when the Montreal-based Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada came to the Toronto-based Canadian Amateur Athletic Union seeking peace. The Union, by now rid of its most intransigent leaders, responded positively to the Federation’s overtures. The country’s three-year-long Athletic War was coming to a surprisingly amicable conclusion.
On Labour Day, the two bodies officially established the new Amateur Athletic Union of Canada. It would be led by CAAU president James G. Merrick, a Toronto disciple of John Ross Robertson. Montreal men were also given positions of prominence. In particular, the AAFC would form the basis of the AAUC’s Quebec branch. Merrick declared the battle over with quintessential Canadian diplomacy:
The Federation, as represented by the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, the proudest and most powerful club in Canada, was perfectly sincere in its idea of amateurism in sport, and just as ready to jealously guard it as we are. With both bodies working for pure amateurism it was only a matter of time until the points of difference were satisfactorily adjusted, and the schism bridged.3
A bit of flexibility had been shown on the amateur definition. A broad amnesty on past bans was instituted. Transitional measures were put in place for hockey and lacrosse. As well, a few athletes—golfers, cricketers and bowlers—would be allowed to play against professionals. Nonetheless, there was no illusion about who had won this Canadian civil war. Exceptions were just that. Going forward, an ironclad, no-mixing amateurism would generally apply, just as John Ross Robertson would have wished.
The “peace, order and good government” of Canadian athletics would be under the AAUC, with Toronto, not Montreal, as the national capital of amateur sport.
The advocates of amateur purity were also in the process of creating their own parallel national structures. The Mann Cup was introduced to displace the Minto Cup in lacrosse, just as the Allan Cup aimed to upstage the Stanley Cup. Of course, the separation of amateur and professional athletics was already in effect in hockey. With professionals now gravitating towards purely professional leagues, this led to significantly fewer eligibility conflicts in organizations like the Ontario Hockey Association. It only further convinced Robertson and his cohorts that their approach had been the right one all along.
There were, however, a few early warning signs.
Professionalism was hardly disappearing. On the contrary, in some sports it was emerging as not only a separate, but also a higher, tier. For instance, it was already noted that amateur running meets were becoming a training ground for those aspiring to be the next Tom Longboat. The aboriginal runner was now achieving great success in his new career as an open professional. In a rematch of the London Olympics staged at Madison Square Garden, Longboat easily prevailed. In 1909, again in New York City, he won another contest that declared him “Professional Champion of the World.”4
The first evidence of the same phenomenon could also be seen in hockey. There was, for example, talk in Ottawa that hockey’s Cliffsides would amalgamate with the Senators’5 second squad. This would, in effect, make them a pro farm team, even if their players remained officially amateur.
Yet, in the fall of 1909, it was the future of the stand-alone world of professional hockey that was very much in doubt. Merrick, and amateur leaders like him, had long predicted that the paid game could not survive detached from its amateur roots. With pro leagues and teams folding faster than new ones could spring up, many thought he was right.
Alex Miln had suddenly and surprisingly joined these growing ranks of pro hockey doubters. Faced with the prospect of another unprofitable season in the Ontario Professional Hockey League, he had decided to fold his Toronto Professionals rather than take a gamble by joining the premier big league, the Eastern Canada Hockey Association. Looking at the high travel costs of the Eastern league, the small markets of the Ontario one, and rising player salaries everywhere, he may well have concluded that pro hockey simply could not be viable. With an unprecedented commercial crisis about to beset the ECHA, Miln’s decision looked prescient.
A direct descendant of the original Amateur Hockey Association of Canada, the ECHA and its predecessors had always been the country’s top league. Its most recent victors, the Ottawa Senators, were Stanley Cup champs and kings of the pro hockey world. Indeed, the league had almost always held the trophy.
Below the surface, however, it was a deeply troubled organization.
Pro hockey continued to be racked by contract jumping, unruly on-ice behaviour, unresolved off-ice battles and, especially, escalating payrolls. However, the ECHA had a unique problem. Since the return of the Montreal Wheelers and Montreal Victorias to the amateur ranks, the imbalance of the remaining four-team league had become glaring. The Eastern league had only two real contenders: the champions from Ottawa and the Montreal Wanderers. The Montreal Shamrocks and Quebec Bulldogs were increasingly poor also-rans. It meant the championship would invariably boil down to the games between the two elite clubs. Such predictability was not a recipe for commercial viability. Even as winners of the Stanley Cup—long considered the golden goose of the box office—the Ottawas had lost money in 1908–09.
As the 1909–10 season approached, these pressures began to unwind the long-standing business alliance between the Ottawas and the Wanderers. The clubs agreed changes in the league needed to be made, but could not arrive at a consensus as to how. The proverbial stuff really hit the fan, however, when the Redbands decided to move to a newer but smaller rink, the Jubilee Arena. The other teams believed this would cut into their dwindling gates. Led by Ottawa, they began to plot against the Wanderers.
Finally, on November 25, the Senators, Shamrocks and Bulldogs withdrew from the ECHA and formed a new league, christened the Canadian Hockey Association. The CHA promptly admitted two new clubs. The Montreal Nationals were brought in to appeal to the Francophone market. A new English organization named All-Montreal was recruited to replace the stranded Wanderers.
The other eastern pro clubs may have decided they did not want the Wanderers, but it was not a judgment the Redbands were prepared to accept.
However, if any club knew how to play the game of league hopping, it was the Redbands. They would almost immediately enter into talks with the leagues up in the northern “bush.” Although run by wealthy interests, those towns’ Cup ambitions had long been frustrated by anti-ringer rules and forced exclusion from the “big-league” circuit. It was not surprising that the principals of the Temiskaming league—businessmen like Noah Timmins of Haileybury and T. C. “Tommy” Hare of Cobalt—wanted their clubs in the upper echelon of hockey.
They were backed by an even bigger player: Michael John O’Brien of Renfrew.
M. J. O’Brien was an increasingly rich and powerful railroad and mining baron, with holdings in various parts of the country. His hometown Renfrew Creamery Kings had long been the rulers of the Upper Ottawa Valley league. The previous season, they had moved into a reinvigorated Federal league, where they were also champions. These organizations shared the Temiskaming league’s entrepreneurial hockey culture and played regularly against its clubs.
M.J.’s aspiring hockey-manager son, John Ambrose O’Brien, and his partner, J. G. Barnett, had been making ever more serious attempts to get into hockey’s big time. The established interests of the ECHA were making it just as obvious that they were not interested, despite the league’s deep financial trouble. As its clubs conspired to expel the Wanderers, it also made the young O’Brien sit in the lobby of Montreal’s Windsor Hotel—rejecting his application without even the courtesy of hearing him out. It would turn out to be a mistake of historic proportions.
The O’Briens’ wrath was about to alter the world of professional hockey forever.
Ambrose did not simply leave the building as the ECHA thought he would. Instead, he continued to patiently wait and ended up intercepting the furious, cursing bosses of the ostracized Wanderers as they left the meeting. And so they began to commiserate with each other.
The two sides quickly discovered a natural partnership. The Wanderers needed a league; the O’Briens needed the Montreal market. Thus, a mere week later, the Wanderers combined with the Federal champion Renfrew Creamery Kings, the Temiskaming champion Cobalt Silver Kings and their close rival, the Haileybury Comets, to form the National Hockey Association. To compete with the CHA among Francophones, Ambrose created a new franchise for the NHA—to be called les Canadiens.
The O’Briens, father (Michael John) and son (John Ambrose), were becoming one of Canada’s most powerful families. Shunned by the sport’s establishment, their rival league, the National Hockey Association, would lay the foundation for the modern pro hockey business.
From rooms only a few doors apart in Montreal’s Windsor Hotel, the NHA and CHA began planning for all-out war. In fact, the split in the ECHA would be followed by the most rapid rise of salaries in hockey history. The two pro associations went after key players with vengeance and desperation. The most spectacular signings were made by Renfrew, an organization soon to be famously dubbed the Millionaires. Powered by the O’Briens’ virtually limitless bankroll, Renfrew sought the best players in the country. Their recruiting efforts made the infamous spending of the Edmonton pros look like small change. They lured the game’s biggest star, Fred “Cyclone” Taylor, from Ottawa for a reputed salary of $5,2506—close to triple what top players had previously been earning. The deal made him, on a per-game basis, the highest-paid athlete in the world.
The NHA was set up by outcasts who hailed ma
inly from small towns. Nevertheless, it was the basis for today’s pro hockey order—and it spawned “a new club,” the Montreal Canadiens.
Overall, the new league was pulling ahead in the recruiting sweepstakes. Led by the Taylor signing, Renfrew was out-recruiting Ottawa—although the Senators did pull Bruce Ridpath from Cobalt. The Wanderers were generally holding their lineup against All-Montreal. And, after court battles over broken contracts, the Canadiens succeeded in stealing the best French players, including Newsy Lalonde, from the Nationals.
All observers agreed that this was a fight to the death—and that it could not last long. The Globe, for one, confidently predicted that “there is not the slightest probability that they [the NHA and CHA] will go through the season they have mapped out in their schedules.”7 It was particularly noted that the central war zone of Montreal had five professional clubs competing for fans.
The Montreal market was actually saturated well beyond this commercial conflict. The two pro groupings would also be competing for fans with three amateur associations of Allan Cup calibre: the Interprovincial, Intercollegiate and a new entry, the St. Lawrence. All told, the city was now home to ten senior-level hockey teams.
It was the Stanley Cup champions who blinked first. The Ottawa Senators came to the NHA, looking for an armistice. On January 16, after some brief negotiations, the new league admitted them and the Montreal Shamrocks. What remained of the competing circuit was not viable, and the CHA folded.
This historic battle, fought between the traditional, middle-class hockey managers of the CHA and the rising industrialists behind the NHA, had been no contest. The power of the bankroll had trumped the vaunted legacies of the older organization and its clubs. After twenty-four years (under various names) as Canada’s most prestigious hockey league, the CHA was no more.8
A Great Game Page 20