A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  In high-profile cases like Ridpath’s, charges were being laid and the proceedings were intensely followed in the papers. Campbell had to post bail in the amount of $5,000—a substantial sum at the time. Also, for months to come, debate raged over speed limits, driver credentials, road lighting,11 signalling, mandatory crosswalks, the size of fines and prison terms, and even possible bans of the new mechanical menace. One writer pointedly asked, “how are the aged and infirm to escape when the most vigorous and alert fail to do so?”12

  Surprisingly, Ridpath bore the man who had nearly killed him no malice. When he could finally speak to the press, he assigned no blame. Bruce told them that “his injury was due to ‘nothing more than an unfortunate accident.’ ” He said the vehicle had its lights on, that there was no speeding involved and that the driver, Campbell, had had no chance to avert the accident.13

  The recovering Riddy was not forgotten. An immensely popular figure wherever he had performed, he had benefits held for him in Cobalt, Ottawa and Toronto over the course of the season. The largest was a Massey Hall extravaganza organized for May 2, 1912. Attended by all the city’s dignitaries and sports personalities, it featured tributes, musical entertainment and a free airing of a film featuring Bruce’s canoe exploits—a hit of Toronto’s early cinema years.

  Toronto’s Ridpath benefit had a significance, however, well beyond its charitable purpose. It showed how quickly and completely the cultural values of the sports world were shifting. The affair had been spearheaded by the city’s amateur athletic clubs, out in force with their colours on display. Try as the amateur bosses might, the star professional athlete was no longer an outcast to his amateur brethren. On the contrary, he was in an elite category to which most of them aspired.

  The loss of Ridpath was obviously a huge blow to the fledgling new Torontos. To temporarily take his place, Quinn hired as manager his fellow referee Chaucer Elliott—one of the men associated with the efforts to organize a Toronto pro hockey club in 1905–06. Percy also made lacrosse star Eddie Powers the team’s captain.

  Soon, however, both the Toronto Hockey Club and the Tecumseh Hockey Club were in serious jeopardy. Their entire season depended on a new arena, and that facility showed few signs of being ready.

  Toronto was experiencing a historic boom in construction activity, with intense competition for approvals and crews. Demolition of the old Caledonian building itself did not begin until August. No sense of nostalgia would greet the landmark’s death. The Star even went so far as to proclaim: “Good-bye, old Mutual Street Rink! Farewell! At last! At last! We are going to have a real hockey rink!”14

  When the structure finally came down, the architects were dumbfounded by what they found. So decayed were the stonework and woodwork of the foundation, it was a miracle the old barn had not just collapsed of its own accord. Indeed, during demolition some parts did, injuring several workers.

  Once work began, it seemed to just crawl along—with seemingly one serious accident after another. In mid-November, the NHA released its schedule, which had the Blue Shirts and Tecumsehs on the road until well into January. By then, the clubs were frantically looking for backup plans. They were checking out rinks in Toronto and neighbouring Ontario cities. They briefly toyed with the notion of playing the entire season out of Montreal or even Boston.

  Finally, on December 16 at a league meeting in Montreal, the NHA dropped the Torontos and Tecumsehs for the 1911–12 season. The league went further, seizing their $500 deposits as a fine for the inconvenience caused. Quinn and Querrie were furious. Coming on the heels of the Tecumseh dispute over their franchise and the (ongoing) Blue Shirt one over Ridpath’s rights, bad blood was already developing between the pro association and its Toronto clubs. The consortium building the new artificial-ice arena was said to be contemplating the formation of an alternative “International League,” with similar ventures in the northeast United States.

  In spite of the lack of a permanent facility, the two Toronto clubs did not give up entirely in 1911–12. They decided to move over to the Excelsior Rink and began to look around for other options. However, with the OPHL gone, there were no plausible leagues to play in. They then looked to barnstorm, but soon had to face the fact there were no other pro clubs at any reasonable distance.

  The successful manager of the Tecumseh Lacrosse Club was initially in charge of the hockey team as well. However, Charlie Querrie ended up on the outside when the NHA returned to Toronto in the fall of 1912.

  The two organizations were thus left with just each other. So they decided they would meet in a “city professional hockey championship” of three games. Even that, in due course, got whittled down to a single match.

  For that match, the Torontos and Tecumsehs would have to come up with players. However, the few name players signed had already moved elsewhere. Only Edwin “Mag” McGregor, an OPHL veteran and the interim Tecumseh captain, had opted to stay. His decision was not hockey-related—he was studying at the city’s dental college.

  Because neither the Blue Shirts nor the “Indians” had ever been significant hockey powers, they now had to create on-ice squads mainly from their lacrosse teams. Strangely, the Tecumseh lineup did not include either Lawson Whitehead or Harry “Sport” Murton. These two lacrosse men were both good enough to have tried out for Miln’s old team, with Whitehead having played in one game. Conversely, the Torontos rehabilitated a former Professional, thirty-year-old Jack Carmichael, as a link to the past. In goal, they placed local amateur star Harry Holmes, who would prove to be their connection to the future.

  Thus, on January 25, 1912, the two clubs entered the Excelsior Rink with a collection of marginal players, untested on the ice and discernibly out of condition. To kick off this new professional era, the teams played NHA-style six-man hockey in three periods. The Toronto Blue Shirts beat the Toronto Tecumsehs, 5–3. The Indians had the overwhelming margin of the play, but goalkeeping was the determining factor. The game was anything but pretty.

  Although hotly contested, the match was severely limited by the deficiencies of its participants. Unable to play quality hockey, the lacrosse rivals became increasingly aggressive. Referee Lou Marsh—another journalist deeply imbedded in the sports he covered—seemed incapable of containing the escalating violence. The News, marvelling that no one was seriously hurt, gave a taste of the evening:

  McGregor was all but put out of business by what looked like a deliberate cross-check by Morrison. Six teeth fell out of his mouth when he was bumped like peas out of a pod, but he picked up the gold one and skated off the ice. He showed his gameness by returning, but his real reason for coming back apparently was to get “even.”15

  Despite the irony of poor toothless McGregor studying to be a dentist, there was, in all this, a silver lining to be found. The long-standing lacrosse rivalry between the island Tecumsehs and the mainland Blue Shirts had sustained their supporters’ interest in the contest.

  When the gong had finally rung, the fans went home looking forward to next season.

  Some question remained as to what that next season would look like. While an offseason reconciliation took place between Quinn and the NHA, Querrie continued his war of words with the association throughout the spring and summer of 1912. His threatened International league did not look entirely idle.

  This conflict was doubtlessly egged on by the virulent anti-NHA campaign of the local OHA-controlled newspapers. John Ross Robertson and his allies had by no means given up their battle against professionalism in the city. Story after story complained about the NHA’s treatment of the Ontario capital. The press also bemoaned its “bobtailed” (or “curtailed”) six-man game. This innovation appears to have been genuinely unpopular in both Toronto and Ottawa—Ridpath being one of the leading critics. Most seriously, amateur interests alleged that match fixing was common in the professional league.

  The rigging accusations seem to have been based on nothing more than the fact that the 1911–12 NHA season ha
d been a close one. The suggestion was vigorously denounced by respected hockey man Jack Marshall. The veteran—a member of the aborted Toronto pro practice squad of 1905–06—was spending much time around town. The official reason was to referee local matches, as he had all but retired as an active player.

  In any case, by the fall of 1912, the NHA had managed to patch things up with the owners of the new arena. Solman helped smooth things over by authorizing the transfer of the Tecumseh Hockey Club to Billy Bellingham and Eddie McCafferty, leaving Querrie out in the cold when the International scheme fell through. But this would not be a relationship built on love. The spats of 1911–12 foreshadowed almost constant tension between the association and its Toronto interests over the subsequent five years. In the meantime, both the league and its local owners decided their shared interests lay in a secure plan for use of Toronto’s new hockey shrine.

  Quite a palace it was. While the Arena Gardens is now remembered as the inadequate old place eclipsed by Conn Smythe’s Maple Leaf Gardens, it was one of the continent’s top facilities in its day. An amphitheatre capable of seating more than 7,000, with numerous contemporary amenities, eastern Canada’s first artificial-ice rink was an impressive monument. The steel-and-brick structure covered a significantly larger area than its wood-and-stone predecessor. Yet it soon picked up a colloquial designation almost identical to that of the old Caledonian building: the “Mutual Arena.”

  While the purpose of the Arena Gardens had always been to house professional hockey, its owners were under no illusion about the high level of local support for the OHA. After all, the old association still had most of the city’s newspapers in its hip pocket. The arena thus granted the use of the facility to no fewer than eight amateur clubs that first year. They were also handsomely rewarded at the box office for doing so. The amateur bosses, after a miserable year split between the Excelsior and west-end Ravina Rink—where Teddy Marriott now toiled as the icemaker—no longer had any qualms about this sort of “mixing.”

  Also, as much as the local papers liked to run down the NHA and its Toronto clubs, press coverage at the end of 1912 began to shift as surely as snow started to cover the fallen leaves. Stories of boardroom battles and rumours of inevitable implosion were giving way to reports on the race to sign players. A recovering Bruce Ridpath was back in the saddle as manager of the Torontos and in the thick of the hunt. So was his Tecumseh counterpart, veteran goalie Billy Nicholson.

  Ridpath and Nicholson missed getting Fred “Cyclone” Taylor by a whisker. The Queen City clubs had bid the highest amount of money, but, because the NHA continued to designate the superstar as Wanderers’ property against his wishes, Cyclone left for the West Coast. In going to British Columbia, Taylor secured the status of the PCHA as a second “big league” for many years to come. However, with salaries again rising because of the bidding war, the number of circuits continued to diminish. Only the Maritime league seemed to (at least temporarily) buck the trend. The Saskatchewan League finally closed up shop, as did the New Ontario one. They had been raided out of existence by the stronger bodies.

  The Toronto Blue Shirts were still occasionally known by the same moniker as Alex Miln’s club. Manager Ridpath, who had still not practised since the accident, appears in skates, but not in uniform.

  In mid-December, the two local teams began their tryouts. Montreal’s pro clubs also got into the act, coming up from Quebec to get some early-season practice on the new artificial ice surface. On December 21, the Wanderers and Canadiens even played an exhibition match in Toronto to show off the more open six-man game. It was a fast, spirited contest before a big crowd, with the French team featuring former Professionals Donald Smith and Newsy Lalonde. The latter was conspicuously at the centre of yet another violent confrontation, this time leading to charges against Wanderer tough guy Sprague Cleghorn.

  The Montreal Canadiens launched the modern hockey rivalry with Toronto on Christmas 1912. Newsy Lalonde and Don Smith returned to Mutual Street as visitors.

  At last, on December 25, 1912, the reborn Toronto Hockey Club played its first game in the National Hockey Association. The team lost 9–5, but that would prove to be incidental. It had played before a gathering 4,000 strong and in a first-class facility. It had done so as part of Canada’s leading league, which pitted the country’s biggest cities against each other in pursuit of the highest prize in the game.

  An important step was taken that Christmas night at the Arena Gardens. A Toronto team in blue faced a Montreal team wearing the tricolore. One of the clubs even wore the maple leaf that evening. Ironically, it was the visitors.

  Both teams, as has been noted, were descended from the very same franchise Ambrose O’Brien had created in 1909. More important, they had a common future, now over a century old. While it was far from obvious at the time, Toronto’s greatest hockey rivalry—the struggle with the Montreal Canadiens—had begun.

  • CHAPTER THIRTEEN •

  THE NEW ORDER IN HOCKEY’S SECOND CITY

  The Blue Shirts Take the Stanley Cup

  Little chance of any great hockey developing in this game.1

  —Toronto Telegram

  On Christmas Day 1912, the Toronto Hockey Club re-emerged as part of an established sports organization, housed in a modern rink and playing in a stronger league. That league included a crosstown competitor and clubs in Montreal, Toronto’s great national rival. Yet despite the large and enthusiastic crowd that had turned out, the pros still had ahead of them a serious battle for support and survival in the Queen City.

  The amateur game in the Ontario capital retained its big traditional following, its powerful media allies and a strong national symbol in the Allan Cup. In the winter of 1911–12, the city had been transfixed by the (ultimately doomed) Toronto Eatonias and their run at the Canadian championship. In comparison, the professional encounter between the Torontos and Tecumsehs had been a pathetic competitor.

  But Toronto’s amateur hockey order had a persistent Achilles’ heel. Much as John Ross Robertson and the other Ontario Hockey Association moguls might protest otherwise, the greatest prize in the game was still the Stanley Cup, and it was contested by professional teams.

  The Stanley Cup had not become a trophy for professional hockey because its trustees were committed to the principles of playing for pay. On the contrary, they had been reluctant converts. However, given that the original viceregal gift had come with no stipulation that the Cup be awarded solely to amateurs, the trustees had decided that the winner would be the very best team and players, regardless of how they were organized. As trustee William Foran explained, “The Stanley Cup is not hung up for either amateur or professional hockey in particular but for the best hockey.”2

  If Toronto wanted one thing, it was to be the best. And being best, of course, meant being better than archrival Montreal, which could claim sixteen Cup titles since Lord Stanley’s trophy was first awarded back in 1893.3 That was what its pro managers, the Tecumsehs’ Billy Nicholson and the Blue Shirts’ Bruce Ridpath, told the fans they would get. To win the Stanley Cup, they would set out on diametrically opposite recruitment strategies for their first National Hockey Association season.

  The Tecumsehs aimed to build their winner from established professional ranks. In fact, it was this club, not the new Torontos, that offered openings to veterans of Alexander Miln’s original pro squad. In the course of their December tryouts, Herb Birmingham, Harry Burgoyne, Con Corbeau, Charlie Liffiton and the elusive Bert Morrison all fought for places in the lineup.

  Of these, only Corbeau was successful, although Ezra Dumart also returned to the Queen City during the course of the season. Dumart had played a single match for the old Toronto Professionals—their March 1907 exhibition against the Montreal Wanderers. As a longtime fixture on the Berlin Dutchmen, he was, though, the top goal scorer over the four-year history of the Ontario Professional Hockey League.

  Naturally, the Tecumsehs’ hunt for veterans did not confine itse
lf to Toronto. Gradually—indeed, at a shockingly slow pace—the team began to ink contracts with a number of familiar pro journeymen and the occasional former star. These regulars would ultimately include Horace Gaul (originally from Ottawa), Ernie Liffiton (brother of Charlie, from Montreal), George and Howard McNamara (brothers of former Toronto Pro Harold, from the Canadian Soo), Harry Smith (Ottawa), Art Throop (Ottawa), Steve Vair (Barrie) and Nicholson himself (Montreal).

  It is interesting to note that Ridpath took a pass on his old teammates from the original Torontos. In fact, the only holdover from the old Mutual Street Pros was the trainer, Frank Carroll, who had at one time been a boxer of some note, winning the Canadian welterweight championship in 1906. Bruce did, however, give tryouts to the Blue Shirts’ one-game “city championship” team of the previous season—the gang that had been drawn from the ranks of the Toronto Lacrosse Club. Of those men, Ridpath signed only goalkeeper Harry “Hap” Holmes, previously a comer on the local amateur hockey scene. Among those he dropped was forward Ed Longfellow, who then landed a place as a spare with the Tecumsehs.

  The OHA-centric Toronto press spared no ink in predicting that new NHA teams would be uncompetitive disasters.

  The bigger surprise was Riddy’s decision to forgo almost entirely any attempt to sign known professionals (excepting, of course, Cyclone Taylor). Most of his regulars would be players only two years out of the junior ranks. They included Allan “Scotty” Davidson (a Kingston graduate playing in Calgary), Frank Foyston (of the dissolving Eaton’s team), Roy “Minnie” McGiffin (of Teddy Marriott’s Simcoes), and Carol “Cully” Wilson (Winnipeg). Bruce also grabbed youngsters Harry Cameron and Frank “Dutch” Nighbor from Port Arthur—part of the NHA raids that finished off the New Ontario pro league. This left just Archie “Sue” McLean, enticed away from the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, as the only previous big-leaguer among the new Torontos’ starters.