Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  A SCANDALOUS SEND-OFF

  Eagleson remained as the NHLPA’s main man until the 1990s, negotiating several agreements that improved the players’ conditions and benefits. He was replaced as executive director by Bob Goodenow, then Eagleson was convicted with theft and fraud involving association affairs. While his players’ association time ended in disgrace, he did negotiate important gains for the players.

  * * * * *

  “Call them pros, call them mercenaries—but in fact they are just grown-up kids who have learned on the frozen creek or flooded corner lot that hockey is the greatest thrill of all.”

  —Lester Patrick, defenceman, coach and a founding member

  of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association

  THE REAL MILLIONAIRES

  The Ottawa Valley town of Renfrew once had the highest paid team with the most stars in hockey: the Millionaires.

  The first decade of the 20th century was a great time to be a hockey player. Teams that paid players to play—the term “professional” was used sparingly—popped up across Canada with no structured administration to supervise the various circuits. As a result, players could sell themselves to the highest bidder and, for a few seasons, many did precisely that: sometimes changing teams in midseason or signing on for an important series.

  DESPERATELY SEEKING CYCLONE

  Fred “Cyclone” Taylor was an extremely fast, highly skilled attacker who was eagerly sought by several teams. “It was the best time to be a player because we could jump all over the country, going where the money was the best,” said Taylor in a 1973 interview when he was 89 years old. “It wasn’t like a later time, starting in the 1920s, when one team could tie up your professional rights for life. We knew we were lucky but we also knew that it wouldn’t last. The costs of a competitive team were much more than the income produced by the small arenas. We players tried to get all we could before the owners got sick of losing money.”

  A SPENDING SPREE OF SILVER

  The battle for playing talent was a mild one compared to the personal rivalries between team owners, including several very wealthy men who enjoyed sport as a diversion from their money-making businesses. M.J. O’Brien was a silver magnate, regarded as a “dapper dandy” right down to his pearl-buttoned spats. His son, J. Ambrose, talked his father into backing the Upper Ottawa Valley League, featuring teams in the silver-mining town of Cobalt; Pembroke; and Renfrew, the dairy town an hour north of Ottawa where O’Brien’s team, the Creamery Kings, won five consecutive championships.

  SICK OF HOCKEY? TRY LIVING IN MONTREAL IN 1910

  The Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association had turned into the Canadian Hockey Association to squeeze out Sam Lichtenheim, who feuded with the other owners over gate receipts. The O’Briens, hoping for a shot at winning the Stanley Cup, applied for membership in the new league. When they were turned down, they found a strong ally in Lichtenheim. Together they formed the National Hockey Association and when it was obvious that the money behind the new venture gave it the edge, the NHA and the CHA merged. The new circuit had six teams: Ottawa, the Montreal Shamrocks, Montreal Wanderers, Renfrew, and the mining towns of Haileybury and Cobalt. J. Ambrose’s idea to add one more club representing French Montreal, known as the Canadiens, received the backing of the other two Montreal clubs. Thus, the NHA opened the 1910 season with seven teams.

  LOOT LURES LUMBER BARONS

  Because the O’Briens wanted their Renfrew club to be the NHA’s powerhouse, they spared no expense in assembling a team. Goalie Bert Lindsay, already a Creamery King, was rated the best in the game. The Patrick brothers were lured from the west, where they had combined hockey with the family lumber business: Lester for a top salary of $3,000 for a 12-game season and Frank for $2,000. This was big money considering many good players earned less than $1,000 per season. Renfrew forwards Larry Gilmour, Herb Jordan, and Bob Rowe had been top amateurs and Fred Whitcroft and Hugh Millar had been Lester Patrick’s teammates with the Edmonton club that had lost a Stanley Cup challenge to the Wanderers the previous year.

  LESSONS UNHEEDED BY THE PRE-LOCKOUT NY RANGERS

  But Renfrew’s big catch was Taylor, who had starred for the 1909 Cup-champion Ottawa Senators. “I was making good money with the Senators plus I had a civil service job for the other nine months of the year,” Taylor said. “But the O’Briens offered me an incredible amount, $5,250 for a two-month, 12-game schedule. You have to remember how much money that was in 1908. My father was a salesman for a farm implement company and the most he ever made was $90 a month.” The Creamery Kings, appropriately, were renamed the Millionaires, but were known in Renfrew as the Boarding House Gang because they shared lodgings in the same residence. The famous players became the focal point of Renfrew’s social life and the rich O’Briens enjoyed spending time with the players. When the team was whipped 7–2 by the Wanderers to open the season, Lester Patrick summed it up well: “Unfortunately, the opening of the season interfered with our Renfrew social activities.”

  NOT EVEN NEWSY, ODIE AND SPRAGUE…

  Despite the midseason addition of the great Newsy Lalonde from the Montreal Canadiens—he scored 22 goals in five games—the Millionaires finished third behind the Wanderers and Ottawa. The team made a postseason trip to New York for a three-game exhibition series against a club that combined Wanderers and Senators players, attracting attention for the game in the U.S. The Patricks left Renfrew for the 1911 season and were replaced by sniper Don Smith and another brother duo destined for big things, Sprague and Odie Cleghorn. But the result was the same. The Millionaires finished third and the O’Briens, who had lost $50,000 in the two seasons, decided that was enough hockey.

  FOR A GOOD TIME, NOT A LONG TIME

  “We had very good talent in my two years in Renfrew but, first, the Montreal Wanderers and then the Ottawa Senators were better teams,” Taylor said. “But I had a great experience there. I got to know the Patrick brothers and listen to them talk about the game of hockey around the dinner table at the boarding house. Much of what they discussed there became the basis for the modern game.” J. Ambrose O’Brien never expressed a single word of scorn about his failed efforts to win the Stanley Cup. “To have the chance to know well and watch that many great players on one team was worth whatever it cost us,” he said.

  THE RICHARD RIOT

  A high-sticking incident leads to chaos in Montreal.

  HIGH SPIRITS AND HIGH STICKS

  Most people think of March 17th as St. Patrick’s Day, but in Montreal it is commonly remembered as the anniversary of the Richard Riot. In 2005 the world marked the 50th anniversary of a black day for hockey fans. And it all stems from a suspension of a man know as “The Rocket.”

  The week before, the Habs were in Boston playing the Bruins. Even then, before the great Boston–Montreal rivalry of the 1970s, the Bruins had an inferiority complex when it came to the Canadiens. At this point of the 1954–55 season, the Bruins were in fourth place and had clinched a playoff spot. (The Habs eliminated the Bruins in the playoffs later that year.) During a game on March 13, Bruin defenceman Hal Laycoe, a former Canadien, walloped Montreal’s star player Maurice “Rocket” Richard with a high stick, cutting his face. The Rocket could see the blood trickling down his face, and responded in kind…giving Laycoe a lumber facial of his own.

  YOU JUST PUNCHED THE WRONG GUY

  Next, with sticks swinging all around, rookie linesman Cliff Thompson did something unprecedented for an official. He jumped on the Rocket’s back, and Richard swung and punched Thompson. In any sport no matter the era, it has long been considered taboo to touch an official. It was known the Rocket was going to be punished, but for how long was yet to be determined.

  GOD VS. SATAN, TONIGHT AT THE FORUM

  According to Montreal GM Frank Selke Jr., “the owners told [NHL president Clarence] Campbell that you give him the proper penalty or your job is on the line.” Three days later, the verdict came down. Rocket Richard was suspended for the fin
al regular season game and for the entire playoffs. Famed hockey writer Stan Fischler once said of this sentence, “Now, that’s like sentencing a pickpocket to the electric chair.” The French hockey fans were outraged at this perceived (correct or not) indignity being thrown toward their hero. Campbell was suddenly in the forefront of an ethnic clash between Francophone and Anglophone—and then, Campbell sprinkled salt into an already-deep wound.

  A PRESIDENT LACKING POLITICAL SAVVY

  Saturday night, March 17, 1955. The Habs were scheduled to play the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, with whom an intense rivalry had developed in the 1950s. President Campbell was a regular attendee at the Forum, and he was asked by the then-mayor of Montreal Jean Drapeau not to attend the game. The mayor did not want an already excitable situation to boil over into something calamitous. However, Campbell did not listen.

  HABS HYSTERIA

  Not only did Campbell show up at the game, Campbell showed up about halfway through the first period, as though to draw extra attention to himself. The crowd did not respond well. Fans booed, hissed, and threw things such as tomatoes at Campbell and his guest. At the end of the first period with the Canadiens trailing 4–1, a younger male reached to shake the president’s hand, and as Campbell reached out his hand, the youth threw a punch at Campbell. Then, out of nowhere, a teargas bomb went off inside the Forum creating mass hysteria. Fans stampeded toward the exits, and things spilled over to St. Catherine Street. Trolley cars were turned over. Newspaper stands burned. Shops were looted. Many shopkeepers lost everything. (Thankfully, no one was killed in the chaos.) The Habs forfeited the game to the Red Wings 4–1, but that was the least of the problems in downtown Montreal.

  A VOICE FROM THE HEAVENS

  There was only one person who could subdue the violence: Richard himself. Richard, who was in attendance at the game, was stunned and appalled by the reaction of the rabid Montreal fans. Richard spoke on radio and television, both in French and English, to appeal to the citizens of Montreal to stop the rioting. Once they heard the pleas of their idol, the fans acquiesced and the violence soon ceased. According to the Rocket’s son, Maurice Richard Jr., “maybe it was the first time my father realized that he was so important.”

  HOW COULD YOU BOO “BOOM-BOOM”?

  Rocket Richard would end up losing the scoring title to his teammate Bernie “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion by the slimmest of margins. Geoffrion, also a Francophone, was hurt and stunned when the Forum fans booed him for passing the suspended Rocket and claiming the title. Also, the Habs and the Red Wings would indeed meet in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Red Wings would win in seven games, and it was widely thought that if the Rocket had suited up, the Red Wings would not have won the series.

  ROCKET SPOOLING

  The Rocket and the Habs went on to win an unprecedented five straight Stanley Cups from 1956 through 1960. The Rocket retired during training camp of the 1961 season. After his NHL career, the Rocket played on the old-timer’s circuit, and then he had a major split with the Montreal Canadiens franchise over what his duties should entail. He attempted to become the head coach of the WHA Quebec Nordiques. He didn’t even make it to the first game, and was replaced by Jacques Plante. He then had his own mail-order fishing and spooling business, but that didn’t last for too long.

  STANDING-O

  Then, in the 1990s, the Canadiens got new owners, and they hired Richard as a goodwill ambassador for the team. On March 11, 1996, the final game in the Forum was played and all the great Canadiens were brought back. The fans showed they hadn’t forgotten Richard by giving him a ten-minute standing ovation. Legendary broadcaster Dick Irvin said of the fans, “as the ovation went on and on, I looked around and thought to myself 75 to 80 percent of the crowd never saw him play. Never saw him score a goal even on television. He hadn’t scored a goal in 37 years. And people were crying.” The Rocket even signaled to the fans to sit down, but that was only to hide his own tears of knowing that he was still appreciated.

  MODELS OF CONSISTENCY

  Separated by more than 80 years, the Ottawa Silver Seven and New York Islanders sustained longtime excellence. Their eras were a lifetime apart, their only common bond a consistent display of skill and grit.

  THE OTTAWA SILVER SEVEN was hockey’s first “glamor” team from 1903 to 1906 when the embryonic sport was fighting to get indoors and from the outdoor rinks. The Seven won ten consecutive Stanley Cup challenges, the right to contest hockey’s biggest prize granted to teams across the country.

  THE NEW YORK ISLANDERS were part of NHL expansion from six to 21 teams in 13 years in a bid to make hockey a major U.S. team game. Brilliantly constructed from draft choices, shrewd trades and the wise employment of European players, the Islanders won four consecutive Cup crowns from 1979–80 to 1982–83. From the first playoff round in 1980 until a loss in the 1984 final to the Edmonton Oilers, the Islanders won an astounding 19 playoff series in a row.

  McGREAT!

  From a distinguished Ottawa family, Frank McGee had lost the sight in one eye when struck by a stick in a pickup game. But he became the dominant player of his era, playing the rover position for the Silver Seven. McGee scored 14 goals in a Cup challenge game, eight in a playoff game and had seven five-goal games in his brief four-season career totalling 71 goals in 23 schedule games, 63 in 22 playoff contests. His uncle, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, was a Member of Parliament and Father of Confederation, part of the 1867 meeting in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, when Canada was founded as four provinces. Frank’s father, J. J. McGee, was Clerk of the Privy Council, a key position in the Canadian government.

  WE’LL LICK YOU IN HOCKEY, FOOTBALL, POLO…

  Like most of his Silver Seven mates, McGee was a fine all-round athlete, playing lacrosse in the summer, football in autumn, hockey in the winter. Goalie Bouse Hutton is still the only athlete to play on Canadian championship teams in the three sports in one year. Point (defence) Harvey Pulford was an exceptional football player, a classic stay-at-home defenceman for the Seven, who seldom scored but smothered the opposition. The Gilmour brothers—high-scoring Billy and Suddy—Harry Westwick, Alf Smith, and cover point Art Moore rounded out the lineup. McGee, Pulford, Hutton and Billy Gilmour were among the first players inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and, in 1950, a poll of Canadian newspaper sports editors named the Silver Seven as the Country’s Team of the Half-Century.

  SEVEN NUGGETS…McGREAT!

  The team name was conceived after the 1902–03 season when the “Ottawas,” as they were known, won two-game, total-goals challenges from the Montreal Victorias and the Rat Portage (later named Kenora) Thistles. To commemorate the Cup victories, the club directors gave each player a silver nugget, inspiring the Silver Seven nickname. In the 1903–04 season, the Seven withstood three challenges (Winnipeg Rowing Club, Toronto Marlboroughs, Brandon) and a shortened series with the Montreal Wanderers. In 1905, the Dawson City Nuggets made an arduous 6,000 km, 23-day trip from the Klondike to lose 9–2 and 23–2, McGee scoring 14 times in the second game.

  AND NOW “TUBE SKATES”?

  The second Rat Portage challenge in March, 1905, was the toughest the Seven would face. With a top star in Tom Phillips and using the new tube skates, the visitors won the first game 9–3, a big shock for the Ottawa club, which was without the injured McGee. When the teams played the second game of a best-of-three series, the ice mysteriously was soft—rumors claim salt was applied the surface—making the tube skates ineffective. Ottawa won 4–2, with McGee scoring the winner in 5–4 third-game victory.

  In 1906, the Seven won challenges from Queen’s University and Smith’s Falls, before their streak ended with a 12–10 two-game loss to the Montreal Wanderers. McGee retired after that season but continued to play football. A lieutenant in the Canadian Army in World War I, he was killed action in France at age 37.

  OVERSEAS EXPANSION

  Having joined the NHL in a 1972 expansion, the Islanders were based on Long Island,
a huge bedroom community for New York. Bill Torrey was named general manager and while half the players claimed in the NHL expansion draft signed with the rival World Hockey Association, Torrey did land goalie Billy Smith and forward Ed Westfall. In the team’s first entry draft, Torrey claimed Billy Harris, Lorne Henning, Bob Nystrom, and Garry Howatt, all of whom served roles in the team’s success.

  A BRILLIANT DRAFTSMAN

  While the Isles won only 31 games in their first two seasons, Torrey made maximum use of the entry draft, selecting defencemen Denis Potvin and Dave Lewis in 1973, forwards Clark Gillies and Bryan Trottier and defenceman Stefan Persson (plus landing the NHL rights to winger Bob Bourne) in 1974, wingers Mike Bossy and John Tonelli in 1977, and Duane and Brent Sutter in 1979 and 1980.

  Coach Al Arbour masterfully turned the young talent into solid NHL players and the team improved steadily through the decade. When it appeared the Isles were ready for serious Stanley Cup contention, they suffered two shattering losses to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1978 and the New York Rangers in 1979. But management did not panic, assessing the losses as indicators of addressable team flaws, not of any lack of talent.

  GORING TO THE ISLAND

  During the 1979–80 season, the Islanders made the necessary changes, adding muscle in defencemen Dave Langevin and Gord Lane plus tough young draft pick Duane Sutter. Steady defenceman Ken Morrow joined after the 1980 Olympic victory by the U.S. team at Lake Placid. At the trading deadline, Torrey added the sparkplug the Isles needed in center Butch Goring, acquired from the Los Angeles Kings at a high price in Harris and Lewis.