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Where and when did hockey originate?

The location and the approximate date of ice hockey’s origins, as with many sports, are much-debated and conjectured issues. Stick-and-ball games have deep roots and various types can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Hockey appears to have evolved from a number of older sporting endeavours that employed some sort of stick (usually short and curved) and a ball: Irish hurling or hurley, Scottish shinty, English field hockey and bandy (the latter becoming popular in Scandinavia and Russia), Canadian/ American shinny, and American ice polo. North American First Nations also likely influenced the development of stick games on ice and were probably inspired in turn by European games. Gughawat, or Indian shinny, and baggataway, or lacrosse, were certainly played by First Nations people when the first Europeans arrived on the scene. Both games utilized short, curved sticks, numerous competitors per team, and fierce competition (practically an all-out battle) for possession of a ball.

What is the origin of the word hockey ?

The origins of the word hockey are almost as contentious as the question of who invented the game. One of the more popular derivations is the Old French hoquet, or “shepherd’s crook,” possibly a reference to the stick used in early forms of the game. Some think hoquet can be traced farther back to the Germanic root word hok or hak, which refers to a curved or bent piece of wood or metal. Likely, this is also the root of the English word hook. Nobody can say for sure, though. Hockey might just as easily owe its origin as a word to Scandinavia or Holland. One thing most people agree on, however, is that the word once signified the instrument of play rather than the game itself.

Quickies

Did you know …

that just before British soldiers fled New York City in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War, they reportedly played a game of Irish hurling on skates, and that a version of hockey was played in Stoney Brook (today’s Princeton), New Jersey, in the winter of 1786?

Why is street hockey called “shinny”?

Although shins take a beating during a game of shinny, the name comes from the Celtic game of shinty. A pick-up game of hockey, either on the street or on ice, shinny has no formal rules, and the goals are marked by whatever is handy. The puck can be anything from a ball to a tin can. There’s no hoisting, bodychecking, or lifting the puck because no one wears pads. Shinny is a uniquely Canadian expression.

The first professional shin pads were hand-stitched leather-covered strips of bamboo, wrapped around the lower leg outside knee-high stockings.

For many Canadian kids during the 1930s and 1940s, copies of the Eaton’s catalogue shoved into their socks were their first shin pads.

Who made the first hockey sticks?

The First Nations connection to the very first hockey sticks got a boost in early 2008 when the son of a Quebec City antique dealer acquired what he claims is a 350-year-old curved Mi’kmaq stick that he says proves Natives played hockey in Canada as early as the late seventeenth century. The man’s assertion hasn’t been met with much support among experts, but one thing is certain: the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia were carving single-piece hockey sticks at least as early as the 1870s and probably earlier. They utilized a wood known as hornbeam (also called ironwood) because of its strength. Later they turned to yellow birch when they exhausted the available hornbeam. These early sticks curved up like field hockey sticks and were much shorter and heavier than the kind used in modern ice hockey. The Starr Manufacturing Company in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, started producing hockey sticks in the late nineteenth century under the brand names Mic-Mac and Rex. The company’s sticks were immensely popular well into the 1930s. Starr was also famous for its skates, which it began manufacturing in the 1860s.

Quickies

Did you know …

that the world’s largest hockey stick is in Duncan, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island? The 207 foot, 32 ton wooden stick once adorned the entrance to Vancouver’s Expo 86. Duncan has been home to the colossal stick since 1988 and has been trying for the past 20 years to get it recognized officially in The Guinness Book of World Records as the planet’s largest. Recently, the town succeeded in its quest, though perhaps that has something to do with the fact that British Columbia billionaire Jimmy Pattison now owns the Guinness World Book Company, publisher of the famous record tome.

Who drew up the first recorded rules for organized hockey?

James George Aylwin Creighton, a McGill University student, a Halifax native, and the captain of one of the teams that played the first indoor hockey game in Montreal, has the distinction of drawing up the first recorded rules for organized hockey. He accomplished this feat in 1873, and the rules were published in the Montreal Gazette on February 27, 1877, after a series of four games between Creighton’s Metropolitan Club and the rival St. James Club held in Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Creighton’s rules, now called the Montreal Rules, likely derived from the earlier Halifax Rules. They are, in many respects, quite similar to the rules of field hockey.

When was the first organized hockey team founded?

On January 31, 1877, McGill University students started the first organized ice hockey club. Employing codified rules, hockey officials, and team uniforms, the McGill University Hockey Club played a challenge match against a loose collection of lacrosse and football players. McGill beat its opponents 2–1.

Quickies

Did you know …

that Montreal’s Victoria Skating Rink, which opened for business in 1862, was the first building in Canada to be electrified, and was the scene of the first Stanley Cup playoff game in 1894? The arena closed for good in 1937. Today its site features a parking garage.

Why is Toronto’s hockey team called the Maple Leafs?

In 1927, after having just been fired by the Rangers, Conn Smythe took the winnings from a horse race and bought the Toronto St. Pats hockey team, renaming them the Maple Leafs. Impressed with how brilliantly Canadians had fought in the First World War, Smythe named his new team after the soldiers’ maple leaf insignia. Smythe is the man who said of hockey, “If you can’t beat them in the alley, you can’t beat them on the ice.”

What was the first arena built especially for ice hockey?

There are two claimants to this distinction. Dey’s Skating Rink in Ottawa was opened in December 1896 and was torn down in 1920. Ottawa, represented by the Ottawa Hockey Club (also known as the Silver Seven and the Senators), won its first Stanley Cup in 1903 at Dey’s. The Montreal Arena, also called the Westmount Arena, began operations on December 31, 1898, and became home to a variety of teams, including Montreal’s Shamrocks, Victorias, AAAs, Wanderers, and Canadiens. The rink burned down on January 2, 1918, causing the Wanderers to fold. The Canadiens moved back to the Jubilee Arena where they had played before taking up residence at the Montreal Arena. In the summer of 1919 the Jubilee also burned down, forcing the Canadiens to build and move to the Mount Royal Arena, the Habs’ last rink before relocating to the Montreal Forum in 1926. The Mount Royal Arena, strangely enough, also burned down, but not until February 2000.

Quickies …

Did you know …

that the second organized hockey team in history was the Montreal Victorias, which debuted in 1881 and later went on to win the Stanley Cup in 1895, holding it from that year until 1899 (except for a challenge loss to the Winnipeg Victorias in 1896) when they lost it for good to the Montreal Shamrocks?

When was the first game in the National Hockey League played?

The first two games in the spanking new National Hockey League were played on December 19, 1917. The Montreal Wanderers edged the Toronto Arenas 10–9 and the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Ottawa Senators 7–4. The Wanderers’ match only attracted 700 fans. Unfortunately for the Wanderers, once one of the greatest hockey teams and winners of the Stanley Cup four times, their arena burned down two weeks later and the franchise folded.

What was the first hockey book?

Montrealer and Hockey Hall of Famer Arthur Farrell was a star forward with the Montreal Shamrocks, winners of the Stanley Cup in 1899 and 1900. Farrell published the first known hockey book in 1899. It was called Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game and was more of a manual for the sport than a meditation about it, but at least it was a start. Farrell subsequently produced two other hockey publications. The third outlined the origins of the game, detailed the rules in Canada and the United States, and featured comments by Canadian hockey stars on the art of playing various positions. You might say Farrell was an early precursor of the likes of superstar goalie Ken Dryden and the celebrated hockey journalist Roy MacGregor, but combined in one person.

What is the legend of the New Jersey Devil?

The New Jersey Devils began their NHL life as the Kansas City Scouts. Their tenure in Kansas City lasted only till 1978, when the NHL approved the team’s move to Denver as the Colorado Rockies. In 1982 the Rockies. relocated once again, this time to New Jersey. After a fan vote, the new team was christened the New Jersey Devils.

Five Hockey Books to Take to an Iceberg

• The Game: A Thoughtful and Provocative Look at a Life in Hockey by Ken Dryden (1983).

• Net Worth: Exploding the Myths of Pro Hockey by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths (1991).

• Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man Who Couldn’t Play by David Adams Richards (1996).

• Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places by Dave Bidini (2000).

• Putting a Roof on Winter: Hockey’s Rise from Sport to Spectacle by Michael McKinley (2000).

Most tellers of the legend of the Jersey Devil trace the tale back to Deborah Leeds, a New Jersey woman who was about to give birth to her 13th child. The story goes that Mrs. Leeds invoked the Devil during a very difficult and painful labour, and when the baby was born, it grew into a full-grown devil and escaped from the house. People in the 1700s still believed in witchcraft, and many felt a deformed child was a child of the Devil or that the deformity was a sign that the child had been cursed by God. It may be that Mrs. Leeds gave birth to a child with a birth defect and, given the superstitions of the period, the legend of the Jersey Devil was born.

Top Five Hockey Movies

• Slap Shot (1977): Directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman.

• Mystery, Alaska (1999): Directed by Jay Roach and starring Russell Crowe.

• The Rhino Brothers (2001): Directed by Dwayne Beaver and starring Curtis Bechdholt.

• Miracle (2004): Directed by Gavin O’Connor and starring Kurt Russell.

• The Rocket (2005): Directed by Charles Binamé and starring Roy Dupuis.

What was the first hockey movie?

The Edison Manufacturing Company made two very short films depicting hockey players in action — Hockey Match on the Ice (1898) and Hockey Match on the Ice at Montreal, Canada (1901) — so, in effect, these are the first two movies about ice hockey. The second of the two shows a couple of hundred kids playing what might well be shinny rather than organized hockey. However, the first known feature movie about hockey is the abysmal King of Hockey, a low-budget flick made by Warner Brothers in 1936. It stars Dick Purcell as Gabby Dugan, a college hockey player who makes his way into professional hockey, meets up with a nasty gambler, and gets involved with a socialite played by Anne Nagel. The movie is pretty hokey and terribly melodramatic, but it does feature hockey players from the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. Still, the American writer obviously wasn’t familiar with the game, since the script makes references to “fouls” and “the penalty cage.” If nothing else, King of Hockey is a harbinger of the hockey celluloid mediocrity that was to come.

Five Worst Hockey Movies

• Youngblood (1986): Directed by Peter Markle and starring Rob Lowe.

• The Mighty Ducks (1992): Directed by Stephen Herek and starring Emilio Estevez.

• MVP: Most Valuable Primate (2000): Directed by Robert Vince and starring various chimpanzees playing Jack.

• National Lampoon’s Pucked (2006): Directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Jon Bon Jovi.

• The Love Guru (2008): Directed by Marco Schnabel and starring Mike Myers.

Who wrote the original theme song for CBC-TV’s Hockey Night in Canada ?

Vancouver-born Dolores Claman wrote the theme song for Hockey Night in Canada (with an arrangement by Howard Cable), a ditty called “The Hockey Theme,” which has become one of the most recognizable tunes ever composed in Canada. In 1968, when Claman was asked to write an anthem for the show, she supposedly had never seen a hockey game and claims she didn’t actually see one in person until 30 years after the introduction of her song. The theme was first played on Hockey Night in Canada during the 1968–69 season. Previously, the television show’s themes had been “Saturday’s Game,” a march by Howard Cable, and “Esso Happy Motoring Song.” In 2008, after a long-standing dispute over financial compensation with CBC-TV, Claman broke with the network and signed a deal with CTV that allowed “The Hockey Theme” to be featured on the private company’s televised hockey games beginning in 2008–09.

Who invented tabletop hockey?

In 1932 Torontonian Don Munro built a model for a tabletop hockey game in his basement using scrap metal and carving hockey figures out of wood. Shortly after, he sold the concept to Eaton’s Department Store in Toronto, and the new game was a huge hit. Munro’s largely wooden game was replaced in the mid-1950s by the Eagle Toy Company’s version, which boasted painted tin figures and metal rods that allowed players to whip their hockey pieces around 360 degrees.

Top Five Hockey Songs

• “Fifty Mission Cap” by The Tragically Hip

• “Hockey” by Jane Siberry

• “The Hockey Song” by Stompin’ Tom Connors

• “Hit Somebody” by Warren Zevon

• “Gordie and My Old Man” by Grievous Angels

What NHL team staged a contest between live bears and its players?

It’s hard to believe, but in December 1998 the once-mighty Edmonton Oilers in a bid to boost fading fan interest actually had three of their Russian players — Mikhail Shta-lenkov, Andrei Kovalenko, and Boris Mironov — hit the ice against a trio of bears borrowed from a Russian circus. The much-diminished Oilers, as represented by the aforementioned Russians, were at least able to drub the bears, which were pretty hapless on skates and in helmets.

How did the Boston hockey team get the name “Bruins”?

In the 1920s, Charles Adams held a city-wide contest to name his new Boston hockey team. Because the colours of his Brookside Department Stores were brown and yellow, he insisted that the team wear those same colours. He also wanted the team to be named after an animal known for its strength, agility, ferocity, and cunning. The public contest came up with the Bruins, meaning a large, ferocious bear.

Who are the Hanson brothers?

The Hanson brothers — Jeff and Steve Carlson and Dave Hanson — first found celebrity in 1977 in the Paul Newman film Slap Shot as hard-hitting, rabble-rousing hockey enforcers, the kind of players much beloved by broadcaster Don Cherry. In Slap Shot the trio play the fictional Hanson siblings (Jeff, Steve, and Jack). The two Carlsons and Hanson were actual hockey players in the minor leagues (and in the case of Steve Carlson and Dave Hanson, the NHL, too). In fact, Jack Carlson, another brother, had to bow out of the film because he was called up to play for the Edmonton Oilers (then in the World Hockey Association). Dave Hanson took his place. Interestingly, there is another character in the movie called Dave “Killer” Carlson, played by Jerry Houser, who is somewhat based on the real Jack Carlson and Dave Hanson, both of whom had the nickname “Killer” as players. The Carlsons hailed from Virginia, Minnesota, and first played for the Marquette Iron Rangers in Michigan. The real Dave Hanson was born in Cumberland, Wisconsin. Steve and Jeff Carlson and Dave Hanson made two wretched sequels to Slap Shot and continue to make public appearances as their fictional alter egos.

When did “Coach’s Corner” first appear on Hockey Night in Canada ?

The bombastic, flamboyantly dressed Don Cherry made his debut on Hockey Night in Canada in the “Coach’s Corner” segment in 1980 with Dave Hodge as his sidekick. In 1987 Hodge was replaced by Ron MacLean, who has been Cherry’s foil ever since. Always controversial, Cherry toiled in minor-league hockey as a defenceman from the 1950s to the early 1970s, finishing his playing career with the American Hockey League’s Rochester Americans, a team he also coached for three seasons. He parlayed the minor-league coaching stint into a chance in the big time as head coach of the Boston Bruins, a job he held for five seasons (1974–75 to 1978–79). During the seventh game of the Stanley Cup semifinal with the Montreal Canadiens in 1979, Cherry made the mistake of allowing too many Bruins on the ice, earning a penalty for the team. The Canadiens capitalized on the error during the subsequent power play when Guy Lafleur scored the tying goal. The match went into overtime and the Canadiens’ Yvon Lambert scored again, winning the game and eliminating Boston. The Habs went on to play the New York Rangers in the final and ended up winning the Cup. Cherry was fired. He bounced back briefly, though, in 1979–80 as head coach of the wretched Colorado Rockies but was fired after one season.

Six Top All-Time Hockey Broadcasters

• Foster Hewitt (1902–1985)

• Danny Gallivan (1917–1993)

• René Lecavalier (1918–1999)

• Howie Meeker (1923– )

• Bill Hewitt (1928–1996)

• Dick Irvin, Jr. (1932– )

When was hockey first broadcast on television?

Amazingly, the very first television broadcast of hockey occurred on October 29, 1938. The British Broadcasting Corporation aired the second and third periods of a game between the Harringay Racers and Streatham at London’s Harringay Arena. Perhaps equally surprising, the very first telecast of hockey in North America didn’t happen in Canada but in the United States. On an experimental station set up by NBC at Madison Square Garden, the network broadcast a game between the New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens on February 15, 1940. Not many people got to see the telecast, since there were fewer than 300 television sets in New York City. The first televised NHL game in Canada finally transpired on October 11, 1952, when Hockey Night in Canada debuted on the tube in French with a game between the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Canadiens called by René Lecavalier at the Montreal Forum. The Habs lost to the Hawks 3–2. Three weeks later, on November 1, Hockey Night in Canada aired its initial English-language broadcast as Foster Hewitt provided the play-by-the-play for a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens. The Leafs beat the Bruins 2–1. Just the last half of the game was broadcast, a policy that continued until 1968 for regular-season matches.

When did Foster Hewitt first say “he shoots, he scores”?

On March 22, 1923, Foster Hewitt uttered his signature “he shoots, he scores” in his first radio broadcast, a playoff game between intermediate hockey clubs from Toronto and Kitchener at the former’s Mutual Street Arena. The broadcast was done for CFCA in a glassed-in booth near the penalty box. A month before Hewitt’s CFCA broadcast, on February 18, Norm Albert, an editor at the Toronto Star, made the very first radio broadcast of a hockey game. The senior-league match between clubs from North Toronto and Midland, Ontario, turned out to be a 16–4 blowout in favour of Toronto. On January 7, 1933, Hewitt was heard for the first time coast-to-coast on radio when he welcomed listeners with “Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland” for a game between the Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings, which the former won 7–6.

When were the first hockey cards issued?

In 1910–11 Imperial Tobacco released the inaugural set of catalogued hockey cards in a 36-card collection. The cards showcased coloured pictures of the superstars of the era such as Georges Vézina, Cyclone Taylor, and Lester Patrick and were placed in packages of cigarettes. A complete mint set of these cards is now worth thousands of dollars.

What famous explorer played hockey in the Arctic?

A recent discovery in a letter from British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin to Roderick Murchison, dated November 6, 1825, records: “Till the snow fell the game of hockey played on the ice was the morning’s sport.” Franklin’s men were wintering during his second Arctic expedition at Fort Franklin (now called Deline) in Canada’s Northwest Territories on the shore of Great Bear Lake in October 1825. However, it isn’t clear if the people participating in this activity were wearing skates. More likely, they were playing field hockey. Still, that doesn’t stop Deline today from laying claim to hosting the very first “hockey” game in North America. As for Franklin, on his final expedition in 1845 to locate the Northwest Passage to Asia, he and his men disappeared in Canada’s Far North. They were last seen by Europeans on July 26, 1845. It appears Franklin perished on June 11, 1847, off King William Island in the Arctic Ocean.

What teams were involved in the world’s first hockey championship?

In 1883 at Montreal’s inaugural Winter Carnival, the world’s first hockey championship was held, pitting three teams against one another: the Montreal Victorias, the McGill University Hockey Club, and a team from Quebec City. The three teams vied for the sterling silver Carnival Cup. McGill University won the series. The championship was restaged at the carnival in 1884 and 1885.

What was the first NHL team to relocate?

Today it is all too common for sports franchises to pull up stakes and move to seemingly greener pastures. Hockey is no stranger to the pain of fans losing their beloved club. Think Quebec Nordiques (now Colorado Avalanche), Winnipeg Jets (now Phoenix Coyotes), the old Ottawa Senators (briefly St. Louis Eagles, then defunct, then revived as the new Senators in 1992–93), Minnesota North Stars (now Dallas Stars), and Hartford Whalers (now Carolina Hurricanes). The first team to leave its original city in the NHL was the Quebec Bulldogs, which headed for Hamilton, Ontario, with its superstar Joe Malone, to become the Tigers in 1920–21 after only one season in the big league. The Tigers didn’t last long in Hamilton, either. Despite having a pretty good team, the club’s players ended up in New York City to become the Americans in 1925–26. The Amerks, as they were nicknamed, finally gave up the ghost in 1941–42, leaving Madison Square Garden to the New York Rangers. Hamilton is still waiting for another NHL team; so is Quebec City.

Short Shelf of Fine Hockey Fiction

Boxing has Fat City (Leonard Gardner) and The Harder They Fall (Budd Schulberg), football has North Dallas Forty (Peter Gent), and baseball has The Natural (Bernard Malamud) and Shoeless Joe (W.P. Kinsella), but hockey is still waiting for its truly great lyric writer. There have been a few pretty good novels and one play, though.

• Les Canadiens by Rick Salutin and Ken Dryden (1977).

• The Last Season by Roy MacGregor (1983).

• Hockey Night in the Dominion of Canada by Eric Zweig (1992).

• King Leary by Paul Quarrington (1994).

• Salvage King, Ya! A Herky-Jerky Picaresque by Mark Anthony Jarman (1997).

• Understanding Ken by Pete McCormack (1998).

• Finnie Walsh by Steven Galloway (2000).

What is the best children’s story ever written about hockey?

In 1979 noted Quebec novelist and playwright Roch Carrier first published the short story “Une abominable feuille d’érable sur la glace” (“An Abominable Maple Leaf on the Ice”), now better known as “The Hockey Sweater” in English and “Le chandail de hockey” in French. Carrier based the story on his own experiences as a child. The narrative is simple but superb in the way it gets to the heart of the mystique of hockey for Canadians, particularly children. In the 1940s a boy’s hockey sweater wears out and his mother orders a new one from the Eaton’s catalogue. The boy is a rabid fan of the Montreal Cana-diens Rocket” Richard. However, when the new sweater and their star forward Maurice “Rocket” Richard. However, when the new sweater finally arrives, to the boy’s horror it’s a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater, not a Habs one. The boy tries to get his mother to return the sweater, but she feels that Mr. Eaton, obviously a Leafs fan, might be offended, so she insists he wear the despicable Leafs garment to his hockey game. As expected, the boy is the only one not wearing a Canadiens jersey. “The Hockey Sweater” is often thought to be an allegory for French and English tensions in Canada. It has been published in many forms, including a picture book for younger children. In 1980 an animated version, The Sweater, was released by Canada’s National Film Board to much acclaim.

Six Top All-Time Hockey Journalists

• Elmer Ferguson (1885–1972)

• Milt Dunnell (1905–2008)

• Jim Coleman (1911–2000)

• Scott Young (1918–2005)

• Trent Frayne (1918– )

• Red Fisher (1926– )

Where did the word puck come from?

A hockey puck is a hard, vulcanized black rubber disk three inches in diameter, one inch thick and weighing between five and a half to six ounces. To reduce the tendency puck of pucks to bounce, they are frozen before use. The origins of the word are the subject of much debate. The first verifiable reference in print to the word in relation to hockey was in an 1876 game account in the Montreal Gazette. Some think the word derives from the Scottish and Gaelic word puc. In 1910 a book entitled English as We Speak It in Ireland defined the word as follows: “Puck: a blow. ‘He gave him a puck of a stick on the head.’ More commonly applied to a punch or blow of the horns of a cow or goat! ‘The cow gave him a puck (or pucked him) with her horns and knocked him down.’ The blow given by a hurler to the ball with his caman or hur-ley is always called a puck. Irish poc, same sound and meaning.”

Quickies

Did you know …

that Fox Television, worried that U.S. fans would find it difficult to follow the action in NHL hockey, introduced the FoxTrax puck at the league’s All-Star Game on January 20, 1996? Wherever the puck moved along the ice, it was tailed by an oscillating blue dot on television screens. When a shot was fired, the puck developed a red trail. Most hockey fans, especially Canadians, were outraged at Fox’s simplistic gimmick. Happily, FoxTrax never caught on despite the network’s dogged promotion of it. Fox finally retired its “innovation” prior to the 1998–99 season.

Why is Calgary’s hockey team called the “Flames”?

The “Flames” have not always been a Calgary hockey team. They started out in Atlanta during the second wave of NHL expansion in 1972, where the name “Flames” was chosen to remember the torching of the city in 1864 by Union troops, led by General William Tecumseh Sherman, during their long march through the South near the end of the Civil War. When the team moved to Calgary in 1980, the name was kept in honour of Calgary’s ties to oil.

What are Black Aces?

Black Aces is the collective name for the group of players who practise with the whole team but rarely play in games. This term originated with hard-nosed Eddie Shore’s Springfield (Massachusetts) Indians teams in the American Hockey League from the 1940s to the 1960s. Shore demanded that his Black Aces perform non-hockey tasks such as selling programs and popcorn during the games they didn’t play.

Quickies

Did you know …

that in hockey the War of 1812 refers to the Toronto-Montreal game of December 9, 1953, when a bench-clearing brawl exploded at 18:12 of the third period and referee Frank Udvari gave out 18 misconduct penalties and two major penalties evenly shared between the clubs? That left each team with a goalie, three skaters, and no players on the bench for the final 1:48 of the match.

What is a hat trick in hockey?

When a player scores three goals in one game, it’s called a hat trick. The term originated in cricket where usually reserved fans toss their hats to celebrate the knocking down of three consecutive wickets. Not surprisingly, Wayne Gretzky holds the National Hockey League record for the most career three-or-more-goal games (50, with 37 three-goalers, nine four-goalers, and four five-goalers) as well as top marks for the most three-or-more-goal games in one season (10 twice, in 1981–82 and 1983–84). However, the Great One doesn’t hold the record for the most goals ever scored in one game; the Quebec Bulldogs’ Joe Malone does, with seven in a 1920 match. A number of players — Newsy Lalonde, Cy and Corb Denneny, Malone, Syd Howe, Red Berenson, and Darryl Sittler — have potted six in a single game. The Toronto Maple Leafs’ Sittler holds the record for most points in one contest (10 on February 7, 1976, against the Boston Bruins). Gretzky is tied with 10 other players (including Mario Lemieux, Bryan Trottier, and Berenson) for most goals in a single period — four. A pure hat trick is when one player scores three consecutive, uninterrupted goals in a single game.

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Did you know …

that a Gordie Howe hat trick is a goal, an assist, and a fight in the same game? The NHL’s second all-time leading scorer, Howe was also an able pugilist who racked up 2,109 regular-season penalty minutes.

How did the expression “hanging from the rafters” originate?

The Detroit Red Wings’ old arena, the Olympia, is said to be the place where the expression “hanging from the rafters” originated. The rink was infamously steep-sided so that fans in the standing-room-only section literally hung from the rafters to see the game better. The Red Wings played their last game in the Old Red Barn on the Grand River on December 15, 1979, against the Quebec Nordiques, tying the match 4–4. Detroit moved into the brand-new Joe Louis Arena that season. The last hockey game played at the Olympia was a Red Wings Old-Timers game on February 21, 1980. The Olympia was demolished in 1986.

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Did you know … that the Montreal Canadiens’ nickname “Habs” comes from les habitants, a term that was once used to describe the early settlers of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century New France, the predecessor of what eventually became the province of Quebec? In fact, the Canadiens were specifically established in December 1909 in the National Hockey Association (precursor of the NHL) as a French-Canadian alternative to the many predominantly English hockey clubs in Montreal, teams such as the Shamrocks, the Wanderers, and the Victorias.

Where did the term firewagon hockey come from?

In the 1950s the Montreal Canadiens won five Stanley Cups (1953, 1956–59) and became known for the kind of high-speed, explosive rushes usually led by superstars such as Maurice Richard and Jean Béliveau. Sportswriters called this kind of playing style “firewagon hockey,” and the Canadiens were associated with it right into the 1970s. By 1979 they added another 11 Stanley Cups (1960, 1965–66, 1968–69, 1971, 1973, 1976–79) to the five they won in the 1950s. Since 1979 the Habs have only won two Cups (1986, 1993).

What is the five hole?

In hockey goaltending there are five areas in the net where goalies are vulnerable. The holes are above the shoulders, the lower corners of the goal, and between the legs of the netminder. The last is the five hole, which becomes vulnerable when a goalie has to move from side to side quickly (for example, when he or she is deked) or when a butterfly-style netminder drops to his or her knees.

Quickies …

Did you know … that Gretzky’s office refers to the area behind a team’s net? When Wayne Gretzky was on the ice, he spent a lot of time in possession of the puck behind the opposition goal, waiting for teammates to get open in front of the net. As the Great One once commented, “When I get back there, I prefer to use a backhand pass to get the puck out front. I like to use the net as a sort of screen, to buy time from the opposing defencemen who may be trying to get me.… I try to keep the puck away from them as long as possible so I can hopefully make a play.”

What is the slot?

The slot is the area directly in front of the net and is considered prime scoring territory. Centreman Phil Esposito, during his great years with the Boston Bruins, set up shop in the slot and got down to rewriting the record book in the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1968–69 he amassed 126 points and in 1970–71 he bagged 152 points, with 100 or more points in four subsequent seasons. His 76 goals in 1970–71 was tops in the league until Wayne Gretzky surpassed it with 92 in 1981–82 (still the record).

What is a wraparound?

A wraparound occurs when an attacking player controls the puck behind the opposition’s net and attempts to score by reaching around the side of the goal and jamming the puck in.

Who was the first NHL player to use a slap shot?

A slap shot is a forehand shot in which the shooter draws the stick back above the waist (the back swing) before swinging the stick quickly forward and slapping the puck. It is not unusual for slap shots to travel more than 100 miles per hour. The advantage of the slap shot is its velocity; the disadvantages include a lack of accuracy, the long time it takes to release the shot (slap shots are commonly blocked by doughty defenders), and the opportunity given to defenders to take the puck during the back swing. As to who in the NHL first employed the slap shot, like many things in hockey, that’s shrouded in controversy and speculation. Early practitioners of the slap shot in the 1950s were Bernard “Boom Boom” Geoffrion and Andy Bathgate. Geoffrion, who played most of his career with the Montreal Canadiens, says he got his colourful nickname “Boom Boom” because of that very shot: “One day I was practising at the Forum and shooting the puck hard against the boards and it was making a pretty big noise. A newspaper guy, Charlie Borie, asked me if it would be okay if he started calling me ‘Boom Boom.’ Since that day, the name stayed.”

What is a neutral-zone trap?

The neutral-zone trap is a dreadfully dull defensive strategy that’s popular with many hockey coaches because of its effectiveness. Although variations of the trap have existed for decades, it gained prominence when the 1995 New Jersey Devils used it to win the Stanley Cup. The goal of the trap is to clog the neutral zone with defenders so the offensive team has little momentum when crossing its own blueline. If successfully executed, the trap forces the attacking team to lose the puck before crossing the central redline, or to shoot it in. The Florida Panthers once frequently employed a twist on the trap by attempting to stop opponents before they reached the neutral zone, provoking a turnover near the opposition’s blueline.

Six Curious Terms in Hockey

• Baffle Play: A former term, now archaic, for a fast deke.

• Cookie Shelf: The top of the net where flashy players like to shoot the puck.

• Eggbeater: A player adept with his stick close up, usually in the corner to stick-check an opponent and claim the puck.

• Slewfooting: A dangerous, and dirty, act of tripping another player from behind. A player committing this foul stands behind an opponent and uses his or her foot to sweep the feet out from under the other player, causing the player to fall backward. The offending player is assessed a minor penalty for tripping. Such fouls most commonly occur in traffic in front of the net or following a faceoff.

• Snowplow: To hook a player, usually between the bluelines.

• Spinnerama: A deft manoeuvre in which the puck carrier turns 360 degrees in an attempt to evade defenders.

Who was the last goaltender to play without a mask in the NHL?

The Pittsburgh Penguins’ Andy Brown was the last NHL goalie to bare his face to slap shots and other on-ice hazards. Brown played his last NHL game with the Penguins in a 6–3 loss to the Atlanta Flames on April 7, 1974. The plucky, or crazy, netminder continued his professional career in the World Hockey Association with the Indianapolis Racers, and he didn’t wear a mask there, either. Brown, like the Philadelphia Flyers’ Ron Hextall, had something of a mean streak. In 1973–74 with the Penguins he achieved the then single-season NHL penalty-minute record for goalies, notching 60. He continued his warring ways in the WHA the next season, leading all goalies in that league that year with 75 penalty minutes. Incidentally, the current NHL record holder for penalty minutes for a goalie in one season is Hextall, who earned himself 113 in 1988–89 while playing for the Flyers. Hextall also has the career record for penalty minutes — 584.

Top Five Soviet Players Who Never Played in the NHL

• Vsevolod Bobrov: A forward, he played hockey in the Soviet Union from 1946 through 1957, then coached the Soviet national team, including its games in the 1972 Summit Series. Also a soccer star, Bobrov was one of his country’s first genuine hockey heroes and was often compared to Maurice Richard. He was part of two World Championships and one Olympic-gold effort.

• Anatoli Firsov: One of the Soviet Union’s earliest superstars, Firsov played left wing and centre from 1958 through 1974. He was part of eight World Championships and three gold-medal Olympic teams. Firsov boycotted the 1972 Summit Series in support of ousted national team coach Anatoli Tarasov. It’s often thought that his absence on the Soviets’ Summit Series team was the equivalent of Canada’s inability to put Bobby Hull on the ice.

• Valeri Kharlamov: An eight-time World Champion and three-time Olympic goldmedal winner, Kharlamov, a forward, made his Canadian debut during the 1972 Summit Series and astonished the North American hockey world with his prodigious talent. Kharlamov played for the Soviet national team from 1967 through 1981, his career cut short when he was killed in a car accident.

• Vladislav Tretiak: A 10-time world champion and three-time Olympic gold-medal winner, Tretiak was the Soviet Union’s greatest ever goaltender during his career from 1968 through 1984. He played brilliantly in the 1972 Summit Series and later went on to stymie many North American teams in international competitions. He was the first Soviet-trained player to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

• Valeri Vasiliev: A nine-time world champion and two-time Olympic gold-medal winner, Vasiliev, the Soviet Union’s greatest defenceman, played from 1967 through 1982.

Which NHL player was the last to play without a helmet?

The days of seeing an NHL player’s hair or lack of it on the ice started to be numbered in the 1970s, especially after the league made it mandatory in 1979 for all players entering the NHL to don one. Anyone already in the league at that time could still go helmetless if they so desired. Centreman Craig MacTavish, once an integral part of the Edmonton Oilers in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, continued to display his greying locks until his final game with the St. Louis Blues during the 1997 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Which player in the NHL invented the curved hockey stick?

The Chicago Black Hawks’ Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita are often credited with first using hockey sticks with curved blades. According to the game’s lore, in the early 1960s Mikita noticed that his broken stick blade, which formed a curve, allowed him to shoot higher and harder. Soon after, Mikita and his teammate Hull were terrifying opposing goalies with shots propelled by huge “banana blade” curves. So dangerous were these shots that the stick blade’s curve is now limited to a half inch. Many hockey historians currently believe, however, that right winger Andy Bathgate, one of the first NHL players to employ the slap shot, was the first to tinker with curving his sticks even before he got to the big league. Bathgate, who played many of his best years with the New York Rangers in the 1950s and early 1960s, told a reporter once: “I would heat up the blades with hot water, then I would bend them. I would put them in the toilet-stall door jamb and leave them overnight. The next day they would have a hook in them.” To prevent his sticks from straightening out, Bathgate added fibreglass to his blades, likely the first player to do so.

Where did the word deke come from?

A deke is an action that involves the puck carrier faking a move in one direction and then taking the puck in another direction. Dekes are commonly used to move the puck past defenders or to score on goalies. Deke is a short form of decoy.

Quickies …

Did you know …

that the New York Rangers’ Andy Bathgate was the right winger who drilled a puck into Montreal Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante’s face on November 1, 1959, causing the superstar netminder to don a face mask, an action that changed forever the way goalies played the game?

What is a power play in hockey?

A power play occurs in hockey when a team, because of penalties to the opposition, has more players on the ice than the other team. The numerical advantage enjoyed by the team on the power play affords it a good opportunity to score. Most teams dedicate much time to practising their power plays. The secret of a good power play is the ability to control the puck in the attacking zone until it can be moved into position for a shot. In the NHL, power plays are successful about 15 to 18 percent of the time.

How does an offside occur in hockey?

An offside infraction occurs when an attacking player crosses the opponent’s blueline ahead of the puck. The offside is hockey’s most commonly called infraction and is intended to prevent a player from camping out in the attacking zone without the puck. The position of the player’s skates, not the stick, determines an offside. For the player to be offside, both skates must be completely over the blueline when the puck fully crosses it. After an offside is called, a faceoff occurs outside the blueline where the infraction took place. Until the 2005–06 season a two-line pass (crossing the centre redline and the opponent’s blueline) to a teammate was also considered an offside. However, the NHL legalized such passes, hoping they would open up the game, create more breakaways, and lead to more frequent scoring chances. Critics of the rule change, though, feel that the opposite has occurred and that the lack of a viable redline promotes greater use of the neutral-zone trap and more defensive hockey. A delayed offside occurs when an attacking player has preceded the puck across his opponent’s blueline and is offside but the defensive team takes possession of the puck at or near the blueline. Play is allowed to continue as the defensive team moves the puck out of its zone (and, therefore, nullifies the offside), or if an attacking player touches the puck inside the blueline.

When does icing happen in hockey?

Icing is an infraction that occurs when a player shoots the puck from his or her side of the centre redline across the opponent’s goal line. This infraction is whistled down when the non-offending team touches the puck after it has crossed the goal line. If a defender can reasonably play the puck and chooses not to, or if the shooter’s team is shorthanded, icing isn’t called. When icing is indicated, the puck is faced-off in the offending team’s defensive zone and play resumes.

When was the first Zamboni used in an NHL arena?

The Zamboni is a tractorlike machine employed to resurface the ice in a rink. The Zamboni scrapes off a thin layer of ice and then applies a thin coat of hot water, which melts small imperfections in the ice before freezing to form a smooth surface. The Zamboni was invented in the 1940s by Frank J. Zamboni, who owned one of the first skating rinks in Southern California. It was first used in an NHL game at the Montreal Forum on March 10, 1955. Prior to the invention of the Zamboni, NHL arenas were cleaned and flooded between periods by workers using shovels and barrels of water.

Who holds the most records in the NHL?

With 60 NHL records in regular-season, playoff, and All-Star games, Wayne Gretzky, of course, holds the individual record of records. Upon his retirement in 1999, the Great One actually had 61 records, but two of his records were eclipsed and he got one back. Gretzky’s record of 15 overtime assists has now been passed by Nicklas Lidstrom, Adam Oates, and Mark Messier, while his record of 12 All-Star Game assists has been beaten by Mark Messier, Ray Bourque, and Joe Sakic. When Mario Lemieux came out of retirement and played more games, he lost his points-per-game-average record, which now belongs to Gretzky again at 1.921 points per game. Some of Gretzky’s loftier records, ones that will likely never be surpassed, are most regular-season goals (894), most regular-season assists (1,963), most regular-season points (2,857), most playoff goals (122), most goals in one season (92), and most assists in one season (163).

Who holds the NHL record for scoring the most goals in one game?

Joe Malone of the Quebec Bulldogs scored seven goals in one game against the Toronto St. Patricks on January 31, 1920, powering his club to a 10–6 victory. Malone, born in Quebec City, was one of the NHL’s first superstars. He won the scoring title twice, the first time being in the league’s inaugural season in 1917–18 when he racked up 44 goals in a mere 20 games for the Montreal Canadiens. His other scoring title came in 1919–20 with the Bulldogs. Malone won three Stanley Cups, two with Quebec (1912, 1913) and one with the Canadiens (1924). Perhaps not too surprising, he was also one of the first men to score a goal in the NHL, sharing that distinction with the Montreal Wanderers’ Dave Ritchie. Both Malone and Ritchie potted goals early in their respective games on December 19, 1917. Starting times for games for the era aren’t known, but Malone, a Canadien, got his goal against the Ottawa Senators early in the first period en route to beating the Sens 7–4.

What was the highest-scoring game in NHL history?

This record turns out to be a tie. On January 10, 1920, the Montreal Canadiens trounced the Toronto St. Pats 14–7. Sixty-five years later, on December 11, 1985, the Edmonton Oilers slipped by the Chicago Black Hawks 12–9. The record for most goals by one team in a single game is also held by the Canadiens, who netted 16 against the Quebec Bulldogs’ three on March 3, 1920.

Which NHL player has won the most scoring titles?

Wayne Gretzky, not too surprisingly, won 10 Art Ross Trophies (1981–87, 1990–91, 1994), the award the NHL has given for the league’s regular-season scoring leader since 1947–48. Prior to that season, a number of players such as Joe Malone, Newsy Lalonde, Bill Cook, and Charlie Conacher won the scoring title twice, but no single person earned it more times than that. The runners-up to Gretzky for Art Ross Trophies are Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux, each with six. The Great One has also won the most Hart Trophies — nine — for most valuable player in the NHL during the regular season. Number 99 accomplished that feat eight seasons in a row from 1980 to 1987, then added a ninth Hart in 1989 after he was dealt to the Los Angeles Kings.

Who holds the NHL record for the most points in one game?

On February 7, 1976, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Darryl Sittler racked up an incredible six goals and four assists for 10 points in an 11–4 plastering of the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens. That record for points still stands. Centreman Sittler was the first Maple Leaf ever to hit 100 points in a season, achieving that plateau in 1975–76, then did it again in 1977–78 when he got 117.

Who is the only NHL player to win the Art Ross, Hart, and Lady Byng trophies in consecutive seasons?

Czechoslovakia-born Stanislaus Gvoth, better known as Stan Mikita, achieved this distinction in 1967 (the first to do so) and then again in 1968. Mikita played for the Chicago Black Hawks from 1958–59 to 1979–80 and won the Art Ross as scoring leader two other times (1964 and 1965). The scrappy forward had a notorious bad temper, got into numerous fights, and racked up significant penalty minutes in his career, which makes it all the more incredible that he somehow managed to win the Lady Byng twice, an award given out for sportsmanship and gentlemanly play!

What NHL player holds the record for the most 50-goal seasons?

Even when single-season scoring tallies started escalating after NHL expansion in 1967– 68, scoring 50 goals in a single season still meant something as a personal plateau, and it continues to. The Montreal Canadiens’ Maurice “Rocket” Richard was the first to do it in 1944–45, and achieved it in 50 games. Teammate “Boom Boom” Geoffrion was the second to hit the mark in 1960–61. The first player to pot more than 50 was the Chicago Black Hawks’ Bobby Hull, who got 54 in 1965–66 (Hull had earlier joined the 50-goal club in 1961–62). As to who’s recorded the most 50-goal seasons in a career, that’s a tie between Mike Bossy and Wayne Gretzky. Both did it nine times. However, Bossy only played 10 seasons in his career (all with the New York Islanders), while the Great One got his nine in 20 seasons with the Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings, St. Louis Blues, and New York Rangers. What’s more, Bossy nabbed his nine in consecutive seasons from 1977–78 to 1985–86, which is also a record, one he doesn’t share with anybody.

Who was the first NHL player to score 100 points in a regular season?

The Detroit Red Wings’ Gordie Howe almost hit 100 points in 1952–53 when he got 95, but it took more than another decade and a half before the Boston Bruins’ Phil Esposito broke the 100 barrier in 1968–69 on his way to ending up with 126 points. Of course, Wayne Gretzky blew everybody away with his remarkable feats in the 1980s, topping 200 points four times, with a record 215 in 1985–86. The Great One is still the only NHL player to score more than 200 points in one season. The Pittsburgh Penguins’ Mario Lemieux came close in 1988–89 when he managed 199 points. Incidentally, Number 99 has the most 100-point seasons (15) and the most consecutive 100-pointers (13).

Quickies

Did you know …

that Gordie Howe was 41 and in his 23rd year with the Detroit Red Wings in 1968–69 when he achieved his only 100-point season? Howe is the sole 40-year-old in the NHL to achieve this plateau. That season he ended up with 103 points. Of course, Howe went on to retire from the Red Wings in the early 1970s, then came out of retirement to play through most of that decade in the World Hockey Association, and finally returned to the NHL with the Hartford Whalers when he was 51! He retired at last in 1980 at age 52.

Who was the first NHL player to score more than 500 goals in a career?

Few players dominated his era the way Maurice “Rocket” Richard dominated his. On October 19, 1957, at the Montreal Forum he scaled another plateau when he scored goal number 500, the first to do so in the NHL. The Rocket was playing in his 863rd game. Strangely enough, Richard never won a scoring championship. In fact, he holds the record for being the runnerup, accomplishing that unfortunate mark five times in 1945, 1947, 1951, 1954, and 1955. To date only two NHL players have scored more than 800 regular-season career goals: Wayne Gretzky (894) and Gordie Howe (801).

Who is the only rookie to win the NHL scoring championship?

Scrappy, surly Nels Stewart was already 23 when he joined the NHL as a Montreal Maroon in 1925–26. Previously, “Old Poison,” as he was nicknamed, had played for five years with the Cleveland Indians in the USA Hockey Association. Born in Montreal, Stewart scored 34 goals and eight assists for 42 points in 36 games in his inaugural season. That year he also won the Hart Trophy as most valuable player and helped the Maroons to win the Stanley Cup. Old Poison won a second Hart in 1929–30 and scored 39 goals and 16 assists for 55 points in only 44 games. The next season, on January 3, 1931, he potted two goals in four seconds, an NHL record that still stands, though it was equalled by the Winnipeg Jets’ Deron Quint in 1995. The record for most goals scored by a rookie in the NHL belongs to Teemu Selanne, who got 76 in 1992–93 while playing for the Winnipeg Jets. That same year Selanne racked up 132 points, which is also a record for a rookie.

How long was the longest undefeated streak in NHL annals?

With Pat Quinn behind the bench as coach and top-notch, feisty players such as Bobby Clarke, Bill Barber, and Reggie Leach headmanning the attack on the ice, the Philadelphia Flyers put together an amazing streak of wins and ties that began on October 14, 1979, when they edged the Toronto Maple Leafs 4–3 and continued unbeaten until they were defeated by the Minnesota North Stars 7–1 on January 7, 1980. All told the Broad Street Bullies won 25 games and tied 10 during their streak.

Who was the first black player in the NHL?

Black players and managers have been noticeably absent from the NHL for much of its existence. Whether this had more to do with the fact that almost all big-league players before 1970 hailed from Canada and in those days the country had, relatively speaking, a small black population, or with the fact that there was an active colour barrier in place, is open to debate. But one thing isn’t subject to conjecture: Fredericton, New Brunswick– born Willie O’Ree was the first player of African descent to play in the NHL. The right winger’s stint in the major league was brief — he played two games for the Boston Bruins in January 1958 and 43 matches for the same team in 1960–61 — but his place in hockey history is significant. The New Brunswicker experienced much racial abuse at the hands of opposing players as well as fans, the latter insulting him by throwing black hats onto the ice. O’Ree may not have had a lengthy career in the NHL and only recorded 14 points in the big league, but he was a legend in the minors, playing in various leagues such as the American Hockey League and the Western Hockey League (largely for the San Diego Gulls) well into the 1970s. He did all this even though he was legally blind in one eye, due to an errant puck during a game when he was 18.

Quickies …

Did you know …

that Sidney Crosby is the youngest NHL player and the only teenager ever to win the Art Ross Trophy as scoring champion? He achieved that in his second season in 2006–07 with the Pittsburgh Penguins when he scored 36 goals and 84 assists for 120 points. That year Crosby also won the Hart Trophy as most valuable player (chosen by the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association) and the Lester B. Pearson Award (picked by the NHL Players’ Association).

Who was the first full-blooded aboriginal player in the NHL?

A Saskatchewan Cree named Fred Saskamoose from the Sandy Lake Reserve appeared in 11 games with the Chicago Black Hawks in 1953–54, making him the first full-blooded aboriginal player to make it to the NHL. Saskamoose recorded no points and notched six penalty minutes in his short NHL dalliance. Later, though, he was the playing coach of the Kamloops Chiefs. During his time in British Columbia, the Shushwap and Chilcotin Bands of the province’s interior awarded him the name Chief Thunder Stick, a title he assumed when he was elected chief of the Sandy Lake Cree.

Quickies

Did you know …

that Jarome Iginla was the first black player to win the Art Ross Trophy? In 2001–02 the ace right winger of the Calgary Flames scored 52 goals and 44 assists for 96 points to win the Art Ross as scoring champion. Iginla also won the Lester B. Pearson Award as the NHL Players’ Association pick for most valuable player and the Maurice Richard Trophy for most goals. He won the Richard Trophy again in 2003–04 when he potted 41 goals.

Who is the only NHL player ever to receive permanent possession of a trophy?

Between 1927–28 and 1934–35, Frank Boucher of the New York Rangers won the Lady Byng Trophy for gentlemanly play seven times. During that period, Boucher played 364 games and only incurred 87 penalty minutes. When the Ottawa-born centreman received his seventh Lady Byng in 1935, the NHL decided to give him the trophy for good. A new piece of hardware was then donated to the league by Lady Byng herself. Incidentally, as a player, Boucher helped the Rangers win Stanley Cups in 1928 and 1933. As coach of New York, he steered them to another Cup in 1940, their last until 1994 when they finally won it again.

Quickies

Did you know …

that the first NHL player of Asiatic descent was Larry Kwong? The son of a Chinese grocer in British Columbia, Kwong was pretty much only in the NHL for a cup of coffee when he played a single shift for the New York Rangers in a game on March 13, 1948.

What kind of car was Tim Horton driving when he was killed?

Cochrane, Ontario-born Tim Horton is now better known as the franchise name of a colossal doughnut-and-coffee empire, but for 24 seasons he was one of the NHL’s most durable, dependable defencemen. After a couple of brief stints with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Horton came to stay in 1952–53. He was a fixture on the Leafs’ defence until he was traded to the New York Rangers in 1969–70. During the 1960s, he and a crackerjack blueline squad that included Allan Stanley, Bob Baun, and Carl Brewer helped Toronto win four Stanley Cups (1962–64, 1967). Horton’s 16 points in 13 playoff games in 1962 set a record for defencemen (long since outstripped), and he was capable of rushing up ice in a burst of speed to deliver a pretty hard slap shot to an opponent’s net. The brawny defender played briefly for the Pittsburgh Penguins after his time with the Rangers, then ended up with the Buffalo Sabres and back with his old Leafs coach George “Punch” Imlach in 1972–73. Horton, now in his forties, wanted to retire the next season, but Imlach persuaded him otherwise. On February 21, 1974, Horton was killed in a car accident near St. Catharines, Ontario, after a game in Toronto. A notorious speeder, he was headed back to Buffalo in the new Ford Pantera sports car that Imlach had given him as a signing bonus to play one last season. During his long NHL career, he played 1,446 regular-season games and scored 115 goals and 403 assists for 518 points, adding another 11 goals and 39 assists in the playoffs. Today the doughnut company Horton founded in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1964 (later taking on former Hamilton policeman Ron Joyce as partner) has nothing to do with his survivors except in name, but it has mushroomed into a billion-dollar corporation that employs more than 70,000 people in Canada and the United States.

What NHL superstar was offered the position of governor general of Canada?

After Jean Béliveau retired from the front office of the Montreal Canadiens in 1993, he was offered the post of governor general the next year. However, he declined the honour, citing family obligations. Although never idolized the way his Canadiens teammate Maurice Richard was, Béliveau was one of the greatest hockey players ever to lace on a pair of skates. Born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, the gentlemanly centre played 20 seasons (18 full) for the Canadiens and scored 507 goals and 712 assists for 1,219 points. In the Stanley Cup playoffs he added another 79 goals and 97 assists in 17 competitions, helping the Habs win 10 Cups. Béliveau won the Art Ross Trophy in 1956, the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1965, and the Hart Trophy in 1956 and 1964. Le Gros Bill, as he was nicknamed, retired as a player in 1971 and was employed by Montreal as vice-president of corporate affairs for 22 years.

Quickies

Did you know …

that the first NHL shutout was recorded by the Montreal Canadiens’ great goaltender Georges Vézina? Appropriately, given the teams’ latter-day rivalry, he achieved this milestone on February 18, 1918, in a game against the Toronto Arenas (later to change their name to the St. Patricks, then to the Maple Leafs). Vézina and the Habs won the match 9–0 in the league’s 29th game in its first season.

When and where was the first official NHL All-Star Game played?

Great hockey isn’t something usually associated with an NHL All-Star Game, but fans do get to see the year’s best players assembled in one spot, the players selected get to have a bit of fun (and grab some more money), and players who aren’t picked get a rest. The league began choosing All-Star teams in 1930–31 and staged a few All-Star benefit games for the survivors of dead players (Ace Bailey in 1933, Howie Morenz in 1937, and Babe Siebert in 1939). However, the first official All-Star Game was played on October 13, 1947, at Maple Leaf Gardens. The initial format had the Stanley Cup champions from the previous season play a team of All-Stars picked from the league’s other five clubs. In 1947 the All-Stars beat the Cup-winning Toronto Maple Leafs 4–3. Since that first official match, the All-Star Game has been moved from the beginning of the season to the middle and now the Eastern Conference All-Stars play the Western Conference All-Stars.

Why is Kingston, Ontario, thought by many to be the birthplace of hockey?

The first recorded games of shinny on ice were played in Kingston, Upper Canada, in 1839. A British Army officer, Arthur Freeling, said he and fellow soldiers played “hockey on the ice” in January 1843 in Kingston. Edward Horsey, in his diary, noted that shinny was played on the ice of Kingston’s harbour in the 1860s by soldiers. However, an organized game with some rules wasn’t played in Kingston until 1886. That match pitted Queen’s College students against Royal Military College cadets and occurred 11 years after the first recorded indoor game in Montreal.

What is the Frozen Four?

Since 1948 the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has crowned the Men’s Division I champion in American college hockey. Today, through an extremely complex system, college teams across the country are winnowed down to 12 clubs that play one another in the annual NCAA Tournament. The quartet of semi-finalists that comes out on top is called the Frozen Four (so-called to differentiate it from basketball’s Final Four), and from the playoffs in this group the year’s best college team is determined. The Frozen Four playoffs are held in a different city each year, usually one associated with college hockey (such as Detroit, St. Paul, Minnesota, or Albany, New York), but not always. In 2008 the Boston College Eagles were crowned Men’s Division I champions after defeating the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame 4–1 in Denver, Colorado. The NCAA started a Women’s Frozen Four in 2001. The women’s champion in 2008 was the University of Minnesota at Duluth.

Five Outstanding NHL Head Coaches

• Scotty Bowman: There’s no argument that Bowman is the best NHL coach of all time. He’s the all-time victory champ with 1,244 regular-season and 223 playoff wins as head coach of the St. Louis Blues, Montreal Canadiens, Buffalo Sabres, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Detroit Red Wings from 1967–68 to 2001–02. During that time, he won a record nine Stanley Cups.

• Al Arbour: A solid defenceman in the 1950s and 1960s for various NHL teams, including the Detroit Red Wings, Toronto Maple Leafs, and St. Louis Blues, Arbour turned to coaching with the Blues in 1970–71 and became a huge success. His most famous coaching stint was with the New York Islanders, who he backbenched from 1973–74 to 1993–94. In order to give him his 1,500th Islanders game coached, New York had him helm one game in 2007–08. Naturally, Arbour won, bringing his total coaching victories to 782, second only to Bowman. He also became the oldest man, at 75, ever to coach an NHL game. And let’s not forget the four Stanley Cups he won in a row during the Islanders’ salad days in the early 1980s.

• James Dickinson “Dick” Irvin: Few coaches can boast the longevity that Hamilton, Ontarioborn Dick Irvin could. The plucky backbencher began his life in hockey as a player, breaking into the professional game with the Pacific Coast Hockey Association’s Portland Rosebuds in 1916– 17, but turned amateur again the following season. After the Second World War, he resumed his pro career with leagues other than the NHL until finally playing for the Chicago Black Hawks briefly in the late 1920s. He began his coaching career with the Hawks in 1928–29 but only stayed there for a couple of seasons, eventually moving to the Toronto Maple Leafs as coach in 1931–32 and winning his first Stanley Cup there in 1932. By 1940–41 he was backbenching the Montreal Canadiens, winning three more Cups with the Habs (1944, 1946, 1953) before leaving to coach his final season (1955–56) in Chicago, where he had started. Irvin won 692 regularseason NHL games, lost 527, and tied 230, winning 100 games and losing 88 in the playoffs.

• Hector “Toe” Blake: Few hockey personalities have excelled as both player and coach and become legends, as well. Blake did all of that with only one team — the Montreal Canadiens. During the 1930s and 1940s, Blake, a left winger, was part of the explosive Punch Line with Maurice Richard and Elmer Lach, scoring the winning goals that gave the Habs Stanley Cups in 1944 and 1946. Earlier, in his rookie season with the Montreal Maroons, Blake won his first Cup in 1935. After breaking his ankle in 1948, he left the Canadiens and played some minor-league hockey for a few seasons until retiring from the game as a player in 1951. Blake debuted as a coach with the Habs in 1955–56 and went on to lead Montreal to eight Stanley Cups, five of them in a row from 1956 to 1960. His other three were in 1965, 1966, and 1968. As a coach, he won 500 regular-season games and 82 playoff matches.

• Glen Sather: Some might say the formidable Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s didn’t need a coach, but credit should be given to Sather as their backbencher. As a player in the 1960s and 1970s, he was a journeyman left winger, but he found his true calling as a coach, debuting behind the bench with the Oilers (when they were in the World Hockey Association) in 1977–78. He helmed Edmonton for four Stanley Cups in the 1980s and added a fifth as general manager in 1990. In his coaching career he won 497 regular-season games and 89 playoff contests.

When were the fastest three goals in NHL history scored?

In 1951–52 the Chicago Black Hawks were bottom feeders in the NHL. The club had the worst record in the league, and scores of empty seats in Chicago Stadium attested to the contempt even their own fans held them in. Long before March 1952 it was pretty obvious the Hawks weren’t going to make the playoffs, but on March 23 something magical happened, one of the greatest feats ever accomplished by an NHL player. On that day the

Hawks and the New York Rangers played their last game of the regular season (both were out of the playoffs) at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. By the end of the second period, in what was a pointless match attended by fewer than 4,000 fans, the Rangers had a commanding 6–2 lead over the hapless Hawks. In the third period, though, at 6:09, Chicago right winger Bill Mosienko scored. A few seconds later he put a second puck into the net behind Rangers goalie Lorne Anderson. Then, at the 6:30 mark, Mosienko scored a third time. The Chicago sniper had scored a hat trick in 21 seconds, a record that has stood for more than a half-century. Only the Montreal Canadiens’ Jean Béliveau, who scored three power-play goals in 44 seconds in 1955, has come close to breaking this record. As for that seemingly nothing game in March 1952, the Hawks eventually won it 7–6.

Winnipeg-born Mosienko, who had been a pretty good but not exceptional forward with Max and Doug Bentley on the Pony Line in the 1940s, played another couple of seasons and retired in 1954–55 with a record that may well be his for many more decades to come.

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Did you know …

that Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president still in office to attend an NHL game? On May 25, 1998, Clinton showed up at the second game of the Eastern Conference finals between the Washington Capitals and the Buffalo Sabres at the American capital’s MCI Center. The president took in the game from Capitals owner Abe Poulin’s personal suite and said at the time that he was impressed with the game’s speed and intensity.

How did the Detroit Red Wings and the New York Rangers get their names?

In 1932 James Norris purchased the Detroit Falcons hockey team and renamed them the Red Wings. Norris had played for a Montreal team named the Winged Wheelers, which inspired the name and the winged wheel logo on the NHL’s motor city franchise. After Madison Square Garden president “Tex” Rickard bought the New York team in 1926, people began calling them after their owner — Tex’s Rangers.

When did the NHL’s first expansion occur?

Everyone associates NHL expansion, at least the first one, with 1967–68 when the league added six new U.S. teams (Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota North Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Oakland Seals, now defunct). However, the league had contracted and expanded a number of times before the days of the fabled but misnamed Original Six (Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, and Boston Bruins). At the NHL’s inception in 1917 there were only four clubs — Toronto Arenas (later Maple Leafs), Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators (the originals), and Montreal Wanderers. The last were gone within a couple of weeks when their arena burned down. The Quebec Bulldogs (later the Hamilton Tigers, and still later part of the New York Americans) came onboard in 1919. However, the first actual expansion occurred in 1924–25 when the Montreal Maroons and the Boston Bruins signed up. The next season the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Americans, both now long expired, started playing. Then, in 1926–27, things really began cooking when the Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, and Detroit Cougars (now the Red Wings) joined the party, bringing league membership to a height of 10 clubs. It wouldn’t be that numerous again until 1967–68. Today the NHL has 30 teams (24 in the United States, six in Canada).

What NHL goalie nearly bled to death on the ice?

On March 22, 1989, in a game between the Buffalo Sabres and the St. Louis Blues, the latter’s Steve Tuttle crashed into a Sabres defenceman and went hurtling through the air at Clint Malarchuk, Buffalo’s goaltender. Tuttle’s skate blade pierced Malarchuk’s neck, severing his jugular vein. The goalie would have likely died on the spot if not for trainer Jim Pizzutelli, who stanched the gusher of blood until doctors could operate. Malarchuk ended up with 300 stitches to close a six-inch wound, but he returned to the Sabres’ net 11 days later.

When was the first NHL game played outdoors?

Outdoor NHL games have been a big hit with the fans, the media, and the players lately. The first regular-season match held outdoors was dubbed the Heritage Classic and took place on November 22, 2003, in Edmonton, Alberta. It pitted the Edmonton Oilers against the Montreal Canadiens and was staged in Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium. More than 57,000 spectators braved a bone-chilling -18 degrees Celsius temperature to watch the Habs edge the Oilers 4–3. Less than five years later, on January 1, 2008, a second regular-season NHL match, called the AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic, was played in Orchard Park, New York, between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins. An NHL-record-setting 71,217 fans turned out to see the Penguins beat the Sabres 2–1 after a shootout in which Pittsburgh’s young superstar Sidney Crosby got the final goal. For the first NHL game presented outdoors, though, one has to go back to September 27, 1991, to an exhibition match played in Las Vegas, of all places. The Los Angeles Kings and the New York Rangers took part in an odd promotional affair in the pre-season in an outdoor rink constructed in the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace. No one froze at this game — the desert temperature was about 29 degrees Celsius. But the players had to put up with melting ice and a plague of grasshoppers!

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Did you know …

that baseball titan Babe Ruth dropped in on an NHL game on November 15, 1927? Swarmed by fans, the Bambino swept into the Boston Garden to watch the Bruins play the Chicago Black Hawks in a bruising donnybrook of a game that prompted Ruth to comment, after witnessing his very first hockey spectacle, “Never saw anything like it. Those fellows wanted to kill one another. Thank God I’m in baseball. It’s so peaceful and quiet.”

What incredible feat did Mario Lemieux accomplish on New Year’s Eve 1988?

During his career, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Mario Lemieux accomplished incredible feats and provided hockey fans with some of the game’s most memorable moments, but on December 31, 1988, he did something even pretty extraordinary for him. In a game against the New Jersey Devils the Magnificent One became the first and thus far only NHL player to score goals in five different ways. Lemieux put the puck into the Devils’ net at even strength, on the power play, shorthanded, on a penalty shot, and into an empty net in an 8–6 Penguins victory.

What happened to the World Hockey Association?

First taking to the ice in 1972–73 as a rival to the National Hockey League, the World Hockey Association had a rollicking roller coaster of a ride through professional hockey until it finally went off the rails at the conclusion of the 1978–79 season. While it existed, the WHA harried the staid NHL and forced that venerable league to boost players’ salaries, consider European and U.S. talent more seriously, and generally run a better ship. Before the WHA was finished it had had 32 different franchises at one or another time in 24 cities, most of which bit the dust ignominiously. The WHA’s founders were two enterprising Californians named Gary Davidson and Dennis Murphy, but if it hadn’t been for the involvement of two of hockey’s greatest superstars — Bobby Hull with the Winnipeg Jets and Gordie Howe with the Houston Aeros, then the New England Whalers — the rogue league would have gone belly up a lot sooner. Enticed by lavish salaries, other major NHLers, including Gerry Cheevers, Frank Mahovlich, J.C. Tremblay, and Dave Keon, jumped to the WHA. In the league’s inaugural season it actually got teams onto the ice in Cleveland; Philadelphia; Ottawa; Quebec City; New York; Winnipeg; Houston; Los Angeles; Edmonton; Chicago; St. Paul, Minnesota, and Hartford, Connecticut. When the adventure was over, the WHA had just six clubs: the Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques, Winnipeg Jets, New England Whalers, Cincinnati Stingers, and Birmingham Bulls. The first four teams made the transition from the WHA into the NHL. Ironically, two of those clubs, the Whalers and the Jets, have since relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina (Hurricanes), and Phoenix, Arizona (Coyotes), respectively. The WHA’s championship award was the Avco Cup or World Trophy, named after a finance company. That’s also something of an irony, since the league was seriously underfinanced and fiscally mismanaged throughout its entire life. What was the upstart league’s legacy? Without doubt it forced the NHL to become a more globally minded sporting endeavour, propelled it into a much greater presence in the United States, and for better or worse kickstarted it into the realm of big business. Was the WHA a pale, inferior stepchild of the NHL, as many critics would have it? Let’s not forget that the careers of future stars Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Mike Gartner, Rick Vaive, Michel Goulet, Rod Langway, and many others began in the WHA. And let’s not forget, too, that in the 67 exhibition games played between the two leagues the WHA won 33, lost 27, and tied seven.

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Did you know …

that the largest attendance ever for a hockey game was 74,554 for a match between the University of Michigan and Michigan State University on October 6, 2001, at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan? The college rivals had to settle for a 3–3 tie in a hockey battle that was dubbed “The Cold War.”

When did the longest shootout in NHL history take place?

For three periods, on November 26, 2005, the Washington Capitals and the New York Rangers battled it out at Madison Square Garden, ending the game’s regulation time with a 2–2 tie. After five minutes of overtime, the score was still tied. Under the NHL’s new rule, the next step to break the tie was a shootout in which each team had a chance to score with one of its players in alone on the opponent’s goaltender. The Capitals’ goalie, Olaf Kolzig, and the Rangers netminder, Henrik Lundqvist, got ready for the barrage of “breakaways” they would have to face. Neither had any idea just how long the shootout would take. In the first three rounds each team scored twice but couldn’t break the deadlock. After Washington’s 15th shooter failed to score, it was the Rangers’ turn. Coach Tom Renney had to choose defenceman Marek Malik after running out of every other available possibility. Malik hadn’t scored a goal in 21 months, but he gamely skated in on Kolzig, passed the puck behind himself, and fired it from between his own legs over the startled Washington goalie, just under the crossbar, to finally end the game in a 3–2 victory for New York.

What NHL player scored a goal on his back?

The two newest NHL players to energize the game and electrify the fans are Nova Scotian Sidney Crosby, playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Russian Alexander Ovechkin, skating for the Washington Capitals. Ovechkin, a left winger, debuted with the Capitals in 2005-06, the same season that Crosby, a centreman, joined the NHL. Crosby, who is barely into his 20s, has already done some incredible things such as winning the Art Ross Trophy in 2006-07 as the league’s top scorer with 120 points (36 goals, 84 assists). The Penguins’ captain is the youngest player ever to win the Art Ross, but he also added the Hart Trophy (most valuable player as picked by the league) and the Lester B. Pearson Award (most outstanding player as selected by the NHL Players’ Association). However, Alexander Ovechkin is no slouch when it comes to matching Crosby’s amazing brand of hockey. In his first year the Capitals’ sniper beat out Crosby for the Calder Trophy as best rookie, scoring 52 goals and 54 assists. Then, in 2007–08, his third campaign, the Russian really broke out, scoring 65 goals and 47 assists for 112 points and winning the Art Ross. That year he also won the Hart and the Lester B. Pearson, not to mention the Maurice Richard Trophy for most goals. No doubt hockey fans have more heroics in store for them from Ovechkin, but one single action already stands out in his blossoming career. On January 16, 2006, the Capitals had built a commanding 5–1 lead over the Phoenix Coyotes when Ovechkin potted a goal that many hockey pundits have dubbed one of the greatest scoring feats of all time. Knocked down by Coyotes defenceman Paul Mara as he was surging toward Phoenix’s net, Ovechkin slid on his back, facing away from the goal. Somehow he was able to hook the puck with one hand on his stick and slip it into the net past goalie Brian Boucher for his second goal of the evening.

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Did you know …

that the first Finnish-born player in the National Hockey League was Albert Pudas, who played one season (1926–27) for the Toronto St. Patricks (now the Maple Leafs)? Actually, Pudas, who was born in Siikajoki, Finland, but grew up and played hockey in Port Arthur, Ontario, only got into four games in his entire NHL career. The second Finn to make the NHL was Pentti Lund, also from Port Arthur, who was awarded the Calder Trophy as best rookie in 1948–49 with the New York Rangers. The reason there were so many Finns playing hockey in and around what is now Thunder Bay is that the area attracted a lot of Finnish immigrants, as well as a fair number of other Scandinavians.

What were the first NHL teams to play exhibition matches in Europe?

If you’re thinking the answer to this question lies in the 1970s onward, you would be wrong. After the 1937–38 season, the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Canadiens sailed for Europe by ship to take part in a nine-game exhibition tour in Britain and France. The first match was staged in London before an audience of 8,000 people. The Habs beat the Red Wings in that game 5–4 with an overtime goal by Toe Blake. The Canadiens went on to win the entire series, with five victories, three losses, and one tie. More than 20 years later, in 1959, the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins did the Canadiens and Red Wings one better by participating in a 23-game exhibition tour through Europe, battling each other in 10 cities, including London, Paris, Geneva, Berlin, and Vienna. The Rangers added the Chicago Black Hawks’ Bobby Hull to their team for the series, and in a weird twist, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ resident clown Eddie Shack was paired with the Golden Jet on a line!

Quickies

Did you know …

that the first Czech-born player in the National Hockey League was one of the league’s greatest stars? Stan Mikita, born Stanislaus Gvoth in Sokolce, Czechoslovakia, in 1940, came to Canada at the age of eight and settled in St. Catharines, Ontario. During his long NHL career from 1958–59 to 1979–80 with the Chicago Black Hawks, he racked up 1,467 regular-season points with 541 goals and 926 assists.

Which country won the first World Hockey Championship?

The answer to this question is a bit complicated. Prior to 1920, European Hockey Championships were held without North American participation, with the first European competition being held in Les Avants, Switzerland, in 1910. Great Britain won that event. In 1920 North Americans competed in international hockey for the first time at the Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. Canada, the winner of the gold medal there, was also deemed the World Champion, as was the case in the first two Winter Olympics in 1924 and 1928. The first World Championship sanctioned outside the Olympics by the International Ice Hockey Federation took place in Chamonix, France, Berlin, and Vienna in 1930, with Canada as the gold medallist. Until 1972, the first time the World Championship and the Olympic hockey tournament were played separately in the same year, Olympic and World Championship medals were handed out for the same results. In the Olympic years of 1980, 1984, and 1988 there were no World Championships played. Beginning in 1992, the Olympic hockey competition and the World Championship were once more held as separate events in an Olympic year. So the answer to the question of who won the first World Championship would be Canada, whether one uses 1920 as the first year or 1930.

Quickies

Did you know …

that the first Swedish-born player in the National Hockey League was right winger Gustav Forslund, who appeared for one season (1932–33) with the Ottawa Senators? Born in Umea, Sweden, and raised in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ontario, Forslund scored 13 points in the 48-game season.

Who scored the first goal and assisted on the last goal of the 1972 Canada–Soviet Union Summit Series?

The most important single tournament in the history of hockey was an eight-game series played in September 1972 between a team of Canada’s National Hockey League professionals and the Soviet Union’s national team. The event ushered in the modern era of international hockey, the breakdown of all professional-amateur barriers, and the emergence of the multicultural makeup of the NHL. The series evolved out of Canada’s withdrawal from international competition and the Soviets’ desire to play best against best, with four games in Canada (Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver) and four games in the Soviet Union (all in Moscow).

Thirty seconds into the first match in Montreal, the Boston Bruins’ Phil Esposito scored the very first goal in the series, and Canadians sat back, figuring the tournament would be a cakewalk. However, the Soviets stormed back in the game and embarrassed Canada by whipping it 7–3. Things improved marginally in the second match in Toronto when Canada fought back and won 2–1. After that Canadian nerves began to fray when the Soviets tied Canada 4–4 in Winnipeg and clobbered their hosts 5–3 in Vancouver. The West Coast fans booed Team Canada as it skated off the ice when the game was finished, and an emotional Esposito pleaded for respect on national television. After two violent exhibition games in Sweden to adapt to the larger ice surface, Canada entered the Soviet Union in a desperate situation, especially after the team lost the fifth game 5–4 in Moscow. As it turned out, and as every Canadian now knows, Canada went on to win the next three games 3–2, 4–3, and 6–5. The winning goal in all three matches was scored by Paul Henderson. That final game was watched by more people in Canada — something like 16 million — than any other televised show before or since. Certainly, the country as a whole breathed a collective sigh of relief at the final tally: four wins for Canada, three losses, and one tie. As to who assisted Paul Henderson on that last score against the Soviets’ netminder Vladislav Tretiak, the goal heard across Canada if not the world, it was Phil Esposito, natch. Espo also ended up being the scoring leader for the series, with seven goals and six assists.

How long have women been playing ice hockey?

Women have been playing hockey for at least as long as men have. Certainly, as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, women’s amateur teams and leagues were sprouting up all over Canada, from the Maritimes to Dawson City, Yukon. During the Boer War, the first moneymaking women’s game was staged in Montreal in a bid to raise cash to aid the wives of Canadian soldiers fighting in the conflict in South Africa. The first documented women’s league began life in 1900 when teams from Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec City joined forces to compete against one another. In those days women had to wear long skirts that they bunched around their ankles and used tactically to block shots. Needless to say, the men of the era fulminated against this “unseemly” female behaviour, frequently suggesting that women weren’t strong enough for the rigours of the sport or complaining about the ever-possible danger that they might fall and expose themselves. Judging by newspaper accounts in the early part of the twentieth century, women hockey players could take care of themselves, and sometimes fights as vicious as those common in men’s matches broke out on the ice. American women, too, embraced the new sport enthusiastically, and there is a newspaper account as early as 1899 of a game on artificial ice between two teams in Philadelphia. Early women’s clubs had colourful names such as the Arena Icebergs, the Civil Service Snowflakes, the Dundurn Amazons, the Saskatchewan Prairie Lilies, and the Meadow Lake Golden Girls. Very occasionally, women would play men, and in 1900 a female squad from Brandon, Manitoba, beat a men’s club representing a town bank. The first Ontario championship was played in 1914, and soon after, teams were competing for the Ladies’ Ontario Hockey Association’s trophy.

Quickies

Did you know …

that Phil Esposito, who displayed an aggressive, almost xenophobic dislike of Soviet players during the 1972 Canada–Soviet Union Summit Series, walked his daughter, Connie, down the aisle in 1996 as she married a Russian hockey player named Alexander Selinanov? At the time Selinanov was a member of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning, which Esposito was president and general manager of.

What was the most successful women’s hockey team ever?

Although women’s hockey in North America has a long history dating back to the nineteenth century, one team before the modern era stands head and shoulders above all the others. The amateur Preston Rivulettes hailed from a small town in southern Ontario. Women’s hockey took a beating in the 1930s and many clubs folded during the Great Depression, but the Rivulettes thrived. Led by forwards Hilda Ranscombe and Marm Schmuck and goalie Nellie Ranscombe, the team notched 348 victories, three ties, and two losses in the decade. Along the way, the Rivs won the annual women’s championships in Ontario every year and in 1933 were the first to win the Lady championships in Ontario every year and Bessborough Trophy, presented annually to the Dominion Women’s Hockey Association national championship. The Rivulettes continued to have a lock on the Dominion trophy until the Second World War forced the club to disband in 1941. The team was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1963.

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Did you know …

that Lord Stanley, Canada’s governor general from 1888 to 1893 and the man who donated hockey’s most prestigious championship trophy, got his entire family to play the game? His daughter, Isobel, played for a Government House hockey team that skirmished with a local female squad. It is said that even Lord Stanley’s wife took a twirl or two in a match.

When was the first Women’s World Hockey Championship held?

Informally begun in 1987 in Toronto as an invitational tournament, the Women’s World Hockey Championship has become the pre-eminent event in women’s hockey, with the exception of the Winter Olympics. Not surprisingly, Canada won that first event. At the first six championships (1990, 1992, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000) under the auspices of the International Ice Hockey Federation the results were the same: Canada gold, the United States silver, Finland bronze. In 2001 Canada and the United States once again took gold and silver respectively, but Russia nabbed bronze. The 2003 championship was cancelled due to the outbreak of SARS, and since then both Canada and the United States have won gold twice (Canada in 2004, 2007, the United States in 2005, 2008). The Women’s World Hockey Championship isn’t held in years when there’s a Winter Olympics. Canada’s premier women’s hockey players over the past decade and a half have been national heroes such as Angela James, Danielle Goyette, Geraldine Heaney, Nancy Drolet, and the incomparable HayleysWickenheiser.

Five Top Canadian Women’s Hockey Players

• Hayley Wickenheiser: Gold medals at 2002 and 2006 Olympics. Gold medals at Women’s World Hockey Championship in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, and 2007.

• Angela James: Gold medals at Women’s World Hockey Championship in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1997.

• Cassie Campbell: Gold medals at 2002 and 2006 Olympics. Gold medals at Women’s World Hockey Championship in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2004.

• Danielle Goyette: Gold medals at 2002 and 2006 Olympics. Gold medals at Women’s World Hockey Championship in 1992, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2007.

• Geraldine Heaney: Gold medal at 2002 Olympics. Gold medals at Women’s World Hockey Championship in 1992, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2001.

Who were the first two women to play professional hockey in men’s leagues?

Arguably the most famous female hockey player in the world in the early 1990s, Manon Rhéaume, born in Lac Beauport, Quebec, was the first woman to suit up with a National Hockey League team when she played goal in a 1992 pre-season match for the Tampa Bay Lightning against the St. Louis Blues. The next year she played another exhibition game for the Lightning against the Boston Bruins. After that she tended goal for a number of men’s minor-league clubs. In 1992 Rhéaume made her first appearance with Canada’s national team, and she helped it win gold medals at the Women’s World Championship in 1992 and 1994. Prior to the 1997 World Championship, she was cut from Team Canada, but she made a comeback at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. She played well, but Canada lost the gold to the U.S. team and had to settle for silver. Rhéaume announced her retirement from hockey in the summer of 2000. The second woman to play for a men’s professional team was Glens Falls, New York–born Erin Whitten, who was also a goalie. In 1993– 94 she debuted with the Toledo Storm, a men’s club in the minor-league East Coast Hockey League. On October 30, 1993, Whitten became the first female netminder to achieve a victory in a men’s professional match. She played four seasons of women’s university hockey at the University of New Hampshire and was the top goaltender on the U.S. women’s national team. Whitten made appearances in 1992, 1994, 1997, and 1999 at the Women’s World Championship, but the U.S. team finished second to Canada every time.

Five Top U.S. Women’s Hockey Players

• Cammi Granato: Gold medal at 1998 Olympics. Gold medal at 2005 Women’s World Hockey Championship. Played for Team USA from 1990 to 2005.

• Karen Bye: Gold medal at 1998 Olympics. Silver medals at six Women’s World Hockey Championships.

• Katie King: Gold medal at 1998 Olympics. Gold medal at 2005 Women’s World Hockey Championship.

• Angela Ruggiero: Gold medal at the 1998 Olympics. Gold medals at the Women’s World Hockey Championship in 2005 and 2008.

• Krissy Wendell: Gold medal at 1998 Olympics. Gold medal at the Women’s World Hockey Championship in 2005.

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Stanley Cup Playoff Hat Trick Magic

• Wayne Gretzky: Most three-or-more-goal games in playoffs in a career (10).

• Jari Kurri: Most three-or-more-goal games in one playoff year: (4).

• Jari Kurri: Most three-or-more-goal games in one playoff series: (3).

Three Biggest NHL Scoundrels

• Harold Ballard: In 1972 the Toronto Maple Leafs’ worst owner ever was sentenced to three concurrent three-year jail sentences for tax evasion. However, the miserly, mercurial Leafs autocrat spent only one year in jail. When he got out, he continued his erratic ways as Leafs owner for another two decades, easily one of the worst periods in the franchise’s storied history. Obviously, being a jailbird only made him worse.

• Bruce McNall: In 1992 McNall, the owner of the Los Angeles Kings, was elected chairman of the NHL’s Board of Governors. However, he didn’t get to enjoy his lofty status for long. In March 1997 he went to prison to serve five and a half years for swindling banks and investors out of $250 million.

• Alan Eagleson: The impresario behind the 1972 Canada–Soviet Union Summit Series and the Canada Cup, one of the architects (and, as it turned out, exploiters) of the National Hockey League Players’ Association, and the most powerful agent hockey has ever seen, Eagleson was someone you didn’t dare cross in the stuffy, closed world of the NHL. That all changed, though, when the uber-agent was fined $1 million and sentenced to 18 months in jail for bilking players and purloining disability-insurance cash and profits from various Canada Cup events, money that was supposedly earmarked for the NHL players’ pension fund. Ensconced in prison, the 64-yearold Eagleson worked as a cleaner and fetched coffee. How the mighty fall! He was also stripped of his Order of Canada and forced out of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Top Five Penalty Kings in the NHL

Here, with their combined career regular-season and playoff penalties, are five of the orneriest blokes ever to lace on skates.

• Dave “Tiger” Williams: 4,421 penalty minutes in 14 seasons, 962 regular-season games, 83 playoff matches. Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings, and Hartford Whalers.

• Dale Hunter: 4,294 penalty minutes in 19 seasons, 1,407 regular-season games, 186 playoff matches. Quebec Nordiques, Washington Capitals, and Colorado Avalanche.

• Marty McSorley: 3,755 penalty minutes in 961 regular-season games, 115 playoff matches. Pittsburgh Penguins, Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, San Jose Sharks, and Boston Bruins.

• Tie Domi: 3,753 penalty minutes in 1,020 regular-season games, 98 playoff matches. Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers, and Winnipeg Jets.

• Chris Nilan: 3,584 penalty minutes in 688 regular-season games, 111 playoff matches. Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Boston Red Sox.