A Great Game

by Stephen J. Harper

  So confident was Toronto of the NHA championship and the resulting Stanley Cup title that talk inside and outside the dressing room turned to the coming Cup defence against the Victoria Aristocrats. Before the season, the National, Pacific and Maritime associations had agreed to set up the long-contemplated “hockey commission” to regulate player rights, enforce contracts and schedule Stanley Cup games. Lester Patrick’s Victoria team had recently wrapped up the PCHA championship. They were already planning the trip east, bringing their wives and their Vancouver rivals with them.

  Nobody seemed much troubled when the Blue Shirts lost their next game in Quebec. They had played reasonably well on poor ice, and after all, the Bulldogs were the reigning champs. However, the Canadiens edged out the Wanderers in an overtime struggle at Montreal to move within a game of the leaders.

  So, for the Torontos, it all came down to their home match against the Wanderers. In fact, the fifth-place Redbands were coming to Mutual Street with excessively low expectations. Long a Cup contender, their season had been ruined by multiple injuries to key players. All of these had returned, though, and the Montreal club was again playing in top form.

  On March 4, the Wanderers did not just beat the Blue Shirts—by a score of 7–5—they completely outplayed their hosts. Truth be told, the Torontos stunk out the joint. With Holmes holding them in it, their play became increasingly feeble as the game progressed. Meanwhile the Canadiens, seeing the scores flash from the Queen City, made an extra push and overcame the Ontarios, 5–3. The race for the NHA regular-season crown had finished in a tie, with each of the leaders posting thirteen wins and seven losses.

  The Torontos’ supporters were furious about this turn of events. Particular anger was directed at Davidson, whose performance had progressively declined in the last half of the season. The Star was the bluntest: “Davidson was, to use the fans’ own picturesque phraseology, ‘absolutely putrid.’ ”9 The newspapers repeated widely circulated rumours about breaks from training and sobriety by Scotty and his young Blue Shirt teammates.

  But there was an even more serious charge: that the Torontos had thrown the game.

  The hypothesis was that the club wanted an extra gate from a home-and-home final with the Canadiens. The accusation was said to be pouring off the lips of the 4,000 streaming out of the Arena after the match.

  The Blue Shirts’ unexpected loss to the Wanderers would lead to a torrent of fan anger and accusations.

  Many in the media did question the conspiracy theory. Would the team really have thrown the game that would have clinched the NHA championship and the Stanley Cup just so that they could earn an extra gate? And why would anyone potentially squander an entire Stanley Cup series—the pending PCHA challenge—by deliberately putting the NHA title at risk? Nevertheless, the papers repeated the charge ad nauseam. As they did, the Blue Shirts’ Queen City survival suddenly seemed endangered by the same ghosts that had driven the old Toronto Professionals out of Mutual Street in 1909.

  The Blue Shirts organization had to be conscious of how dangerous this situation was. It would not take much to turn the fans back to pure amateur loyalty—particularly because the amateur Torontos were about to wrap up another senior provincial championship. For the second year running, Eddie Livingstone’s TR&AA had taken the John Ross Robertson trophy and was musing about a challenge for the Allan Cup.

  In reality, by backing themselves into the tiebreakers with the Canadiens, the Blue Shirts were taking a huge gamble. The “Flying Frenchmen” were definitely coming on. Montreal also promised to have Newsy Lalonde—who had missed a considerable chunk of the season with shoulder problems—back in their lineup for the series.

  Four years since his departure from the Ontario provincial capital, Newsy remained the player the fans loved to hate. His every appearance at the Arena Gardens was followed by accounts of his poor play. The following editorial comment in the midst of a midseason game report was typical: “Lalonde was the slowest man on the ice … Any hustling young player has ‘Newsy’ beaten nowadays before he starts; so much for a reputation.”10

  On the ice, Lalonde’s performance was consistently described as sluggish. His frequent scoring was attributed to “loafing” ahead of the play. His competitive spirit was dismissed as nothing more than crudeness. Periodic episodes of violent confrontation—most notably with Quebec’s “Bad Joe” Hall—were greeted with wagging fingers and shaking heads.

  Lalonde’s apparently inexplicable success in hockey was usually chalked up to his manoeuvrings off the ice. In an era of unrestrained commercial competition, he had proven to be the ultimate master at playing leagues and owners off each other for his services. Even the new hockey commission had not stopped him. By cross-negotiating his contract as a star lacrosse player, Newsy still managed to attract competing bids. In 1913–14, as in many seasons before and after, he was the highest-paid athlete in Canada.

  Nonetheless, the opinion of Toronto fans was clear. Except for being the highest-paid, often highest-scoring performer in the business, Newsy Lalonde was not much of a hockey player. Other than being one of the fiercest, most effective leaders on the ice, he added little to his team.

  The two-game, total-goals series to decide the NHA championship and the Stanley Cup did not begin well for the Blue Shirts. In Montreal for game one, the Torontos lost 2–0 on mushy, water-covered ice. They simply could not keep pace with the bigger Frenchmen under such conditions. Lalonde, playing with what was reported after the series as a partially separated shoulder, had not been much of a factor, but he did bring confidence to his club.

  Returning to Toronto, the Blue Shirts thus became definite underdogs. Despite a healthy demand for tickets, betting was strongly against the home side on that fateful night of March 11, 1914. Almost a hundred fans had come up from Montreal. Indeed, it was widely suggested that it would take only one goal to bring the Queen City crowd behind the Canadiens.

  Whether that was true or not, the hypothesis never got tested. On the cold, hard artificial ice, the Torontos came out flying. And the Canadiens made an age-old mistake: playing defensively and sitting on the 2–0 lead they had brought with them from Montreal. With no more than two French forwards ever moving up, the Blue Shirts’ defence joined the rush. After two periods of relentless attack, they had the series tied at 2–2.

  Finally, early in the third, Marshall confidently carried the puck up the ice and deep into the Montreal end. As the Canadiens’ attention shifted to him, he faked a pass to Walker and then sailed it over to Davidson. The big forward blasted the rubber into the net, the 6,000 present exploding into bedlam with the series lead.

  The Canadiens tried to turn up the heat on offence. However, trying to reverse the flow at this point only caused their game to collapse into chaos. By the time it was over, the Blue Shirts had whipped them 6–0 (for an aggregate score of 6–2), giving Toronto its first national professional hockey championship.

  The News, reflecting the city’s sense of triumph, proclaimed that “Torontos settled all argument last night as to their superiority.”11

  The Stanley Cup, twenty-two years after it had first been presented, had finally come to the Queen City.

  The Blue Shirts had been rehabilitated. Although it was Toronto’s first Stanley Cup, the mug was not presented that night. It was still in Quebec City, awaiting transportation. For now, the players had to be content to hoist the O’Brien Trophy, emblematic of the NHA championship. Besides, unless the Torontos dealt successfully with the upcoming challenge from Victoria, they would not be champions for very long.

  The Toronto Hockey Club, Stanley Cup champions of 1913–14. The young club, assembled by former manager Bruce Ridpath, was thought to have a great future ahead of it.

  The best-of-five playoff between the NHA and PCHA was the subject of considerable hype in Toronto—the “World’s Series,” no less. That moniker was rather at odds with trustee William Foran’s recent declaration that he would not allow any club out
side Canada to play for the Stanley Cup; all the same, there seemed to be great interest. Fans flocked to the Arena Gardens to watch the western outfit practise.

  The Victoria team consisted largely of well-known and well-regarded veterans. Patrick himself and Walter Smaill were old Wanderer champions. Dubbie Kerr was remembered as a Toronto Professional and Ottawa Senator. Of course, no one could forget Bobby Rowe, the Barrie player at the epicentre of the OHA crisis of 1906 and, more recently, one of Renfrew’s Millionaires. Most unusual was spare forward Jack Ulrich, probably the first deaf man to play hockey at such a high level.

  The enthusiasts who turned out at the Mutual Street warmups were impressed by what they saw. It was true the Aristocrats were not as fast as the Blue Shirts; they were, however, highly skilled, disciplined and diligent. In workouts, they displayed team play that was far more developed than anything the Blue Shirts had shown.

  That was, as they say, in practice. The Torontos simply skated past the Victorias, 5–2, in the first game on Saturday night, March 14. According to the local papers, the match was neither close nor interesting. The winners, they said, had triumphed even while playing noticeably below par.

  The Blue Shirts were winning again, and even the Star was on board—up to a point.

  No one could quite say what was wrong with Lester’s men. They were certainly well trained and well rested. Yet the contest had been lopsided enough for the referee to publicly declare the Blue Shirts certain to win the series.

  This referee was none other than the famous Montreal hockey man Russell Bowie. It was Bowie who had similarly declared the Wanderers the better team after their 1908 Cup match against the Toronto Professionals. This time, though, Bowie was rendering a prediction on games yet to be played, in which he would be the referee. No wonder complacency set into the city, causing attendance for the series to begin to slide.

  Those who stayed away from the rink probably should not have, because Victoria had a marked advantage in game two. According to the agreement between the leagues, the even-numbered matches would be fought under Pacific Coast rules. That meant, first and foremost, seven a side on the ice, with the return of the rover. Yet the young Blue Shirts had played the older style fairly recently and did not anticipate much problem in adapting to this wrinkle. In fact, the NHA had used seven-man hockey in the middle of the 1912–13 season, after its Ontario teams insisted the experiment was essential to their box-office survival. The Tecumsehs and Torontos were locked in an intense competition for fans with the OHA, which had preserved the rover. Very quickly, however, the rule change proved to be wildly unpopular in Montreal and Quebec City, while Toronto and Ottawa patrons appeared at worst indifferent. After little more than a week, the NHA had gone back to six men once and for all.

  The Patricks’ other changes—on offsides and penalties—were much more problematic for the Torontos. That season, the PCHA had brought in the blue lines—and with them, unlimited forward passing in the neutral zone. This was something no Toronto player had ever seen. On the other hand, the western league’s penalty system was more traditional, meaning time in the box for infractions. The NHA used what the OHA papers ridiculed as the “wig-wag”12 system for misdemeanours. The offender received a fine, ranging anywhere from $2 for a minor to $25 for a match and expulsion. McGiffin had led the league with $116 worth of sanctions, the Torontos being a heavily penalized team. In short, the Blue Shirts were a physically aggressive bunch, yet unaccustomed to power plays or shorthanded situations at the professional level.

  To top it all off, the Torontos had some health issues. Cameron had dressed but not played a single shift in the first encounter. In addition, Davidson had been consigned to bed by the doctor after the game, suffering from a bad cold that had developed into influenza.

  That second match, the following Tuesday, proved to be the key to the series. Befuddled by all the rule modifications and novel situations, the Blue Shirts fell behind for most of the game. Yet they refused to let up, skating hard and checking persistently throughout the contest. While Holmes kept them in it, the Torontos pecked away. In the third period, they came back from two goals down to tie it up at 5–5.

  Then came the heroics.

  The unlikely star was McGiffin. All night, he had followed Marshall’s instructions and zeroed in on Victoria defenceman Bobby Genge, a dominating two-way player. Genge was also big, at nearly 200 pounds. McGiffin bounced on and off him all night like a dog off a bear. Finally, the larger man slammed and butt-ended Minnie, knocking him out cold.

  Despite this, in overtime, McGiffin came back out on the ice. Battered, bruised and with blood still streaming down his face, he at last managed to get a hold of the puck. Eighteen minutes in, he shot it into the net for the winner. It was his second of the game and the crowd went wild.

  The Aristocrats were finished. Entering game three on Thursday, Patrick even talked as though he knew it was over. Still, the veteran club did not lie down. In one of the most physical, violent games ever seen in Toronto, the Pacific champions fought for dear life. At one point, a punch-up between Genge and Davidson (who were actually first cousins) nearly became an all-out brawl. That brought the police into the dressing rooms, warning the players they were close to being charged.

  In the end, the Torontos held on to win 2–1. They had swept the western contenders in three straight to hold the Stanley Cup, technically taking it for the second time in 1914.13 The Maritime winners, the Sydney Millionaires, decided not to challenge. Thus, on March 19, 1914, before all the key people in professional hockey, assembled there at the Arena Gardens, the Blue Shirts had been declared the undisputed champions of the world.

  Toronto was finally on top. Its club not only was the best, but seemed as complete as a team could be. A local panel picked Jack Walker as the most valuable man over the season. Frank Foyston was judged the star of the final series. Along with Cameron, Davidson, Holmes, McGiffin and Wilson, these young Blue Shirts were a group not yet even close to their prime. Only Marshall, the man credited with making it all happen, was looking at the end. Having just celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday, old Jack declared that he had played his last hockey.

  It seems that most Torontonians were pleased as punch—most, but not all.

  John Ross Robertson’s Telegram remained distinctly restrained in its enthusiasm. While Robertson himself was not quoted, the former promoter Tom Flanagan doubtlessly echoed the boss when he wrote in his column that the professional Stanley Cup was “dragging the national game to the mud.”14

  The Tely did not stop there. Its Stanley Cup analysis repeatedly emphasized the skill of the Victoria players and the dirtiness of the local ones. It regularly rolled out commentary like this for the final match: “Little chance of any great hockey developing in this game.”15 Most strikingly, it gradually dropped virtually all reference to Lord Stanley’s chalice. Its story about the final game noted only that the Blue Shirts had won what it called “the InterLeague Professional Hockey Series.”16

  All mention of the Stanley Cup championship vanished from the Tely’s grudging coverage of the Blue Shirt victories.

  Robertson may not even have been in the city when the Blue Shirts made Toronto hockey history. He had other things on his eclectic mind as 1914 began. Having long since been made a very wealthy man by his publication, he devoted ever more time to the charities close to his heart, especially the Hospital for Sick Children.

  The world around Robertson was one of change and contradiction. When King Edward VII died in the spring of 1910, his funeral became “the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place.”17 His son, the new king, was a duller but serious man, preoccupied with matters like state honours and grappling with issues of constitutional change. He would definitely reign rather than rule; the victory of the Commons over the Lords in the parliamentary crisis of 1911 ensured that once and for all.

  Socialism and organized labour continued to rise, alongside expanding industrialism
and mass production. The social purity movement continued to toil away. Women were demanding, and sometimes getting, the vote. Art circles were in a tizzy over an exhibition of Cubism in New York City. Republicanism in Ireland and nationalism in India were gaining strength. More than anything, the power of Germany and its allies was increasingly testing the primacy of Britain and its friends.

  In Canada, Robertson was still a giant. The renowned writer and critic Augustus Bridle was researching the book he would soon publish, Sons of Canada: Short Studies of Characteristic Canadians, which featured the local legend. While weightier matters preoccupied him, the book made clear that Robertson had not turned his back on hockey. “The genial boss,” Bridle wrote, “goes to the games; sits in his fur-lined greatcoat at the rinkside, hawk-eyeing the players of to-day, remembering as in a Homeric dream the experts of long ago.”18

  In the midst of the commotion of any era, it has never been obvious what is truly transformation and what is just fashion. With the triumph in the Athletic War and his OHA about to spearhead the formation of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, Robertson no doubt felt the amateur order was secure. He could not have known, and would not have believed, that the Blue Shirts’ Stanley Cup was the beginning of something else in hockey’s second city. Yet in retrospect, it is clear: Toronto’s new order—the professional order—was finally beginning to emerge.

  As the new pro Torontos were making their drive for the mug, Robertson and his Telegram editor, Black Jack Robinson, travelled together to Britain. People worldwide were speculating ominously on a coming war. In the mother country, Robertson was struck by the military parades and the confident spirit of the people. If hostilities were indeed coming, he predicted, they wouldn’t last three months.19

  He would be wrong on that one, too.

  OVERTIME

  AN ERA FADES AWAY

  Livingstone was always arguing. No place for arguing in hockey. Let’s make money instead.1