A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  As the Tecumsehs inched forward and the Blue Shirts recruited unknowns, the reaction of the Queen City’s OHA-controlled newspapers was predictably negative. Story after story talked about teams of “bushers” being built “on the cheap.”4 It was claimed that the other NHA clubs feared the league’s Toronto expansion was turning into a fiasco. Rumours were spread of emergency plans to come to the rescue of the uncompetitive fledgling entities. And any unsuccessful attempt to sign a local amateur player was quickly reported and immediately ridiculed.

  To this pro catastrophe, a solution was conveniently offered: OHA senior hockey. Toronto had a number of good clubs playing at the Arena Gardens that season, even if the champion Eatonias, deemed “professional” because of their connection with the department store, would not be among them. One was certainly the St. Michael’s College team. The Allan Cup champions of 1910 were always in the hunt. Another was, conveniently, a new amateur “Torontos.”

  The original amateur Torontos had been the Toronto Amateur Athletic Club. Back in the days of Alex Miln’s Torontos, the TAAC had used the same moniker and had also adopted dark red as their colour. Now, with the arrival of the NHA Torontos, the TAAC had reorganized. In the fall of 1912, under the leadership of Eddie Livingstone, they became the “Toronto Rugby and Athletic Association.” The TR&AA chose as the colours for these new “Torontos” none other than blue and white.

  The Blue Shirts had to have been worried about this amateur competition and the possible confusion around the team name and colours. Of the two Toronto pro clubs, the Tecumsehs, with their known players, certainly sounded the stronger. They also had an intimidating defence, anchored by the “Dynamite Twins,” the heavy-hitting McNamara brothers, and supplemented by spare rearguard Corbeau and goalkeeper Nicholson. Each of the quartet was said to tip the scales at almost 200 pounds.

  Conversely, the Indians’ forwards appeared decidedly slow in their preseason workouts. That was certainly not the case for Ridpath’s boys. Whatever the OHA papers claimed, the “railbirds” who took in their practices at the Arena came away saying the Blue Shirts looked surprisingly fast and skilled for a bunch of no-names.

  In fact, both Queen City pro clubs came out of the starting gate better than the local hockey powers had predicted. The Tecumsehs won three of their first five games and challenged for the league lead early in the campaign. Yet, while the rookie Torontos were generally competitive in their contests, they had only one victory in their first six.

  The young Blue Shirts seemed to have all the talent and energy in the world, but little team play, finish or confidence, especially in the tough going. Ridpath’s coaching was most commonly cited as the problem. He was said to be overusing the substitute rule—that is, changing players too frequently and often at the wrong times. Riddy was also reputed to be temperamental on the bench.

  In fairness, Ridpath acted quickly to address the issue. Shortly after the season began, he retained a respected veteran to help him coach the team. It was none other than Jack Marshall, the referee of the Blue Shirts’ December 25 home opener. While Marshall immediately brought a greater sense of stability to the bench and to practice, the team at first still failed to win.

  The club’s biggest problem was really Bruce Ridpath’s absence from the ice. Notwithstanding periodic rumours of his return, the after-effects of his accident—vision problems, unsteadiness—led him to quickly nip such reports in the bud.

  Toronto’s starters, with Bruce Ridpath looking more like a manager than a player.

  What were the Blue Shirts to do? Marshall publicly observed after the Christmas game that the Torontos had the makings of a solid team. He said they needed just one veteran on the ice to steady them. As it became apparent that Ridpath was never going to play, Marshall then offered a solution: himself.

  It was not an obvious choice. True, Marshall had at one time been a force on the ice. Indeed, back in 1902, he was the original “Little Man of Iron,” leading the Winged Wheelers of Montreal to their surprise Stanley Cup win over the Winnipeg Victorias. In fact, Marshall had played for a Vics Cup team even before that. When the Wheeler champions defected to the Wanderers, Jack had gone with them and had won Lord Stanley’s mug with that club, too. Alex Miln had also tapped him to be a key man when he was putting together the aborted Toronto pro club of 1905–06.

  All of that, however, was now many years in the past. Since then, Marshall had added dozens more scars and wrinkles to his battle-hardened face—one of which represented a serious injury that had caused the loss of some vision in one eye. On top of all that, “Jawn” was now thirty-five years old.

  None of it mattered. The moment Marshall stepped on the ice in a Torontos uniform—January 15, 1913—it was as if he had discovered the fountain of youth. Just four days earlier, the Blue Shirts had been beaten convincingly by the Tecumsehs, 5–2. This time, with that one veteran to steady them, the contest was no match, and the Indians went down to a 6–1 defeat.

  “The cause of the startling reversal in form: not far to seek—Jack Marshall’s brains and Jack Marshall’s grit,”5 was how the Star succinctly put it. Marshall had anchored the defence and occasionally contributed to the attack. More important, in his foghorn voice he had quarterbacked the lineup and called out the plays. It was a commanding performance.

  An outstanding athlete in virtually every sport, Jack Marshall was spending more and more time around Toronto. He refereed the Blue Shirts’ first game in the NHA, observing that, with just one veteran to steady the young team, they would be hard to beat.

  That game was the turning point of the season. The Tecumsehs soon plateaued and then began to falter. Rather than looking big, they started to look just slow. Instead of looking experienced, they became old. Beyond a strong defence corps, there really was not much. Their scoring became anemic. Nicholson’s goaltending, never great to start with, became chronically weak.

  On the other side, the Blue Shirts began to come together as a team. There were still ups and downs, but the trend line was unmistakably pointing skyward. With Marshall in the lineup, the youngsters would win eight and lose just five. The indispensability of the ageless rearguard was shown in the one game he subsequently missed owing to a death in the family: the young Torontos got shellacked 11–2 at home by Quebec City’s Bulldogs.

  How totally it had all turned around was demonstrated on the last night of the season. On March 5, the hapless Tecumsehs were beaten at the Mutual Street Arena 10–3 by the Montreal Wanderers and finished in the cellar of the six-team league. At the same time, in Montreal, the Blue Shirts bested the Canadiens 6–2 to end up third. They finished well back of Quebec, who had just won eleven straight games to take their second consecutive Stanley Cup, but the result was good enough for most local fans to proclaim, “Wait until next year.”

  All in all, it was a pretty successful year for the professional Torontos. When the dust settled, the club had almost broken even. The loss of a mere $300 represented a decent first-year bottom line for Montrealer Frank Robinson, Torontonian Percy Quinn and their fellow investors. The fine showing after such a shaky start, however, was not quite enough for them to leave management alone.

  In truth, the manager should have seen what was coming. As the season wore on, there had been a growing tendency in reports to see every Blue Shirts’ victory as the coach’s. Yet, when they lost, accounts talked about the coach’s boss. In other words, it was Marshall’s men who won hockey games, but “Ridpath’s roustabouts”6 who went down to defeat. Given Jack’s complete command of the squad, this was perhaps not surprising. Nonetheless, it was Bruce who had assembled them all—Marshall included.

  In any case, when the Toronto Hockey Club assembled at the King Edward Hotel for its annual meeting on November 6, 1913, Marshall had become both manager and coach. Ridpath had quietly vanished. Oddly, though, he did turn up in December for the Blue Shirt tryouts. To everyone’s surprise, Bruce was trying to make a comeback as a player. Press reports of his per
formance were, for a few days, quite positive, even noting Riddy’s strong performance in scrimmages. Then, just as quickly, his name again disappeared from the dailies. No explanation was ever offered.

  More than just Bruce Ridpath would depart the Toronto pro hockey scene prior to the 1913–14 season. So would the Tecumseh Hockey Club. With attendance plummeting near the end of the previous year, the Indians had lost $2,500—not an enormous amount, but substantial just the same. W. J. Bellingham had had enough, and he unloaded the organization.

  The Tecumsehs’ problems at the gate underscored a difficulty for the NHA in Toronto. Amateur advocates claimed the Queen City was simply not a pro town. There may have been a grain of truth there, but attendance figures do not entirely bear the argument out. Both the Blue Shirts and Tecumsehs had played before big crowds—even at prices substantially higher than for the OHA—for much of the season. The latter’s attendance really tailed off only once the team fell hopelessly out of contention.

  Though the amateurs might claim otherwise, many Torontonians were persuaded that the NHA franchises had put them in the big leagues.

  This was not a problem for Toronto’s OHA clubs. Whereas the NHA teams played a twenty-game schedule, the amateur “regular season” consisted of small round-robins of just four to eight games. After that, the winners of the various groups participated in a series of two-game, total-goals playoffs until only the champion remained standing. In short, an OHA team never really had to sustain fan support over a losing season. Any such campaign ended very quickly.

  What this pattern did highlight was the importance of winning for Toronto’s pro clubs. If they were not winning, their campaigns at least had to generate some intensity. This may have been what the NHA had in mind when the Tecumsehs were sold, although it would not have been immediately evident.

  The franchise was bought by Tom Wall, a Montrealer who was manager of Spalding’s Canadian operations. With no longer even a tenuous link between the NHA team and its Tecumseh Lacrosse Club namesake, Wall decided a rebranding was in order. Thus, the Indians became the Ontario Hockey Club. To run it, Wall brought in one of his Toronto business partners, the famous Jimmy Murphy.

  Jimmy Murphy was renowned in hockey as the longtime coach of St. Michael’s College. Under his direction, St. Mike’s had captured the senior OHA championship in 1908–09 and 1909–10. In the latter year, they had also taken the Allan Cup, giving Toronto its first national hockey title. A few observers might also have remembered Murphy’s even earlier life as a sometime advisor and coach to Alex Miln’s Toronto Professionals.

  A more intriguing part of Murphy’s background was on the lacrosse side. Murphy was president of the National Lacrosse Union. Before that, he had been manager of the Toronto Lacrosse Club. When that team’s ownership changed, he had been replaced by Percy Quinn, who had gone on to run the Dominion Lacrosse Association after its split from the NLU.

  Thus, the relationship between the Queen City’s two pro hockey clubs had morphed. The Torontos–Tecumsehs version had been based on a crosstown lacrosse rivalry. The one between the Torontos and Ontarios was also a lacrosse feud, but it was internecine, rooted in two factions originating within the Toronto Lacrosse Club itself. With members of each group surrounding Quinn and Murphy respectively, the newspapers predicted a heated relationship between the two shinny organizations.

  A stormy battle for local pro hockey supremacy in 1913–14 may have been expected, but it was not to be. The Ontarios were no match for the Blue Shirts. It soon became evident that the Ontarios were worse than their predecessor, the Tecumsehs, had been the previous season.

  In hindsight, Billy Nicholson’s failure as a manager should not have been a surprise. Nothing in his background indicated any obvious special talent for the role. Also, frankly, the goaltender’s position is not an ideal one from which to organize and coach a team—especially in the heat of a game.

  In the case of Jimmy Murphy, however, greater things were genuinely anticipated. He began the year by, quite expectedly, retaining only three previous regulars: Steve Vair and the McNamara brothers. After that, his recruitment strategy seemed to strangely mirror Nicholson’s. He ever so slowly gathered a number of unsigned pro veterans, most of whom were well into the back nine of their careers.

  A couple of Murphy’s signings were good men. Jack McDonald of Quebec, recovered from the PCHA, was a perennially reliable scorer. Fred Lake had at one time been a star defenceman in Ottawa and still had some goods to sell. Nonetheless, beyond these it was largely a collection of has-beens and never-weres.

  The sum total was an Ontarios lineup that again had a fair back end but a pathetic offence. They did not merely lack scoring punch; they regularly came up short on what the papers then called “ginger”—i.e., aggressiveness—whether on the attack or backchecking. The team was simply old, heavy and slow—just like the year before.

  The Ontarios were consistently lacklustre and on their heels. Despite some competitive games early in the season, they lost seven of their first eight. They then rallied to win three in a row before going into a slow descent for the rest of the campaign.

  After nine more consecutive losses, their 4–16 record was again the worst in the NHA—and three games worse than the Tecumsehs had finished the year before.

  By contrast, the Torontos picked up where they left off. They entered training camp with virtually the same roster. The only changes were Sue McLean and Frank Nighbor. McLean had been dropped the year before once Marshall became a regular. Nighbor, though a solid young forward throughout the previous season, had been lured away to British Columbia.

  The loss of Nighbor was more than compensated for by the return of Jack Walker. Walker was another prospect who had been recruited the previous season from Port Arthur. He had, however, gone to the Maritime league after just one game with the Blue Shirts.

  Fan interest in the Blue Shirts built steadily in 1913–14.

  Reading the reports from the season, one is struck by the degree to which hockey was changing. A contender like the 1913–14 Toronto Hockey Club would very much resemble a top team of future eras, and presented a striking contrast to the game of just a decade before.

  For example, the Blue Shirts were not wedded to old theories about complex patterns of “combination” offence. They kept their passes short and sparse. They were fast, but they used their speed as much for checking as for attack. Their forwards bore directly in on the net, rarely circling in mid-ice. They harassed and hit the opposition relentlessly, keying on its main men. And they were not afraid to take penalties as long as they were a consequence of tough, hard work.

  The team also had magnificent balance—great stars and solid role players. Holmes kept maturing as a reliable, consistent goaltender. Cameron was the flashy, rushing defenceman. In Davidson there was a power forward and with Foyston a quiet, classy centre. Walker was simply sensational as both an offensive threat and a persistent forechecker. For reliable relief, the team could call on Wilson as a utility man.

  And then there was McGiffin.

  Roy “Minnie” McGiffin—his nickname was said to be short for Minerva, the goddess of warfare—was the most controversial member of the club. Hockey histories now tend to describe him as the original “goon.” More accurately, he was the prototypical “agitator.” Minnie was actually quite small, at a reputed 127 pounds, but he was always willing to mix it up.

  Though in fact Minnie rarely fought, he was regularly penalized. At his worst, he took dumb, dirty and retaliatory penalties—or undeserved ones imposed by old-fashioned refs who just wanted him off the ice. At his best, he checked ferociously and energetically, driving opposing players to distraction, lifting his teammates and notching the odd marker himself.

  Behind it all—indeed, often barking instructions to the boys—was old Jack Marshall. At thirty-six, he tended to play back, but he still occasionally led the charge. As Cameron spent much of the season fighting a separated shoulder, Marshall recruited
a couple of old hands to help him. One of these was Con Corbeau, the former Toronto Professional who was secured from the Ontarios just before the campaign started. The other was George McNamara, sold for cash by the irrelevant Ontarios in midseason. The truth was that Toronto now had only one team that mattered—and they had the big white “T” on their blue sweaters.

  These Toronto Blue Shirts had a great season—and a lucrative one—but it was no cakewalk. The Montreal Canadiens (with ex–Toronto Pros Newsy Lalonde and Donald Smith) and Ottawa Senators (with ex–Toronto Pro Skene Ronan) also had very good teams and were contenders most of the way. The defending champion Quebec Bulldogs (with ex–Toronto Pro Jack Marks) likewise seemed always close behind and threatening. The Blue Shirts were usually at the top, but rarely alone in that position.

  That began to change on February 21. On that Saturday night, the Blue Shirts edged the Canadiens 3–2 at the Arena Gardens to assume sole possession of first place. The next Wednesday, they blew past the Ontarios by a count of 6–1. The small crowd was actually paying more attention to the out-of-town scoreboard, which showed the Senators, who had been fading in recent games, surprising the Canadiens 6–5 in overtime at the national capital.

  The victory seemed to put the Blue Shirts over the top, adding to the city’s growing excitement. Even Billy Hewitt’s Star seemed to be shunting aside its amateur adherence. The appearance of the legendary amateur Princeton star Hobey Baker in Canada that month7 could not compete with its focus on the Toronto pros. Almost from the beginning of the campaign, its coverage of the team it dubbed the “Blue Streaks” had been expanding. Now it was unreservedly jumping on the bandwagon, proclaiming, “Torontos Sure of Championship.”8

  After all, with a two-game lead in the NHA race, just two games left to play and a favourable remaining schedule, what could go wrong?