Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (10 page)

BORN TO FLY?

Because the newly formed NHL and the PCHA were eagerly seeking players, Fredrickson was a prized commodity. Lester Patrick, one of the PCHA's founders, saw him as a star on the ice—and off, because of his war exploits—and made him a generous offer. Frederickson declined. Instead, he signed a five-year deal to conduct an aerial study of Iceland and make a report on the feasibility of air transport in that country. But the program was canceled after six months, and Frederickson was back in Winnipeg—where he decided to join the Canadian Air Force instead of playing hockey. And in his spare time he played the violin in a hotel orchestra and gave concerts with his pianist wife Bea, a graduate of the Toronto Conservatory of Music. Was hockey ever going to get him back?

The answer came in 1921, when Frederickson signed with the Victoria Cougars for the then-astronomical sum of $2,700 per season. Lester Patrick pumped up the publicity for the first meeting of
their new 26-year-old star and the league's 37-year-old superstar, Cyclone Taylor of the Vancouver Millionaires. Fredrickson scored two goals in a win over Vancouver, and even Cyclone had words of praise, calling Fredrickson “as fine a player as I've ever seen, with a wonderful quick shot.”

Fredrickson spent six years with the Cougars, winning the scoring title in 1922–23 with 39 goals and 55 points in 30 games, a new record. In the 1924–25 season, Fredrickson led the Cougars to the PCHA title. Then they became the last team outside the NHL to make it to the Stanley Cup finals, where they defeated the Montreal Canadiens and their great young star Howie Morenz. (The next year they made it back, but were defeated by the Montreal Maroons.)

When the PCHA was disbanded in 1926, most members of the Victoria team joined the Detroit Cougars of the NHL. Fredrickson became a Cougar along with them, but he'd made his own deal with the new club for $6,500 per season…more than double what the other players were paid. When they discovered his salary, his teammates refused to pass the puck to him, forcing the Cougars to eventually trade him to the Boston Bruins.

MUSIC ON ICE

With the Bruins, Fredrickson's violin was joined by the saxophone of great young defenceman Eddie Shore. But their music sessions on the team's train trips weren't popular with everyone; Bruins boss Art Ross soon banned all musical instruments. Fredrickson later played with the Pittsburgh Pirates (where he was the NHL's first player/coach) and the Detroit Falcons, where a knee injury ended his career in 1931. He stayed in hockey by coaching in the Manitoba Junior Leagues, and for the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II—where he led the team to another Allen Cup title. In 1958 he was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Extra:
One more note about Sigurdur Franklin Frederickson, one of hockey's historic geniuses: while coaching at Princeton University, according to legendary sportswriter Eric Zweig, he walked to work every day with his neighbor—and fellow violinist—Albert Einstein.

The NHL should have given black players a chance much earlier than they did but color barriers had to fall.

W
hen Anson Carter of the New York Rangers scored the overtime goal for Team Canada that won the 2003 World Championship in Finland, he claimed he was happiest about one factor. “There was a big media conference after the game with press from all over the world,” Carter said. “The great thing about those interviews was that nothing, no reference or question, was made about me being a black hockey player. I was just a hockey player who scored a big goal.”

SMYTHE MAKES US WRITHE

Carter is one of the growing number of black players who are making their mark in the NHL. Jarome Iginla of the Calgary Flames has proven himself to be an elite NHL player: a scoring champ, twice winner of the Maurice Richard Trophy as leading goal-scorer, twice an all-star and winner of the King Clancy Memorial Trophy for community and charity service. Add the induction of former Edmonton Oilers goalie Grant Fuhr as the first black player in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003 and it's clear that black players are an integral part of the game.

But it wasn't always that way. Herb Carnegie, now in his 80s, must often think of what might have been in a later time. He and his brother Ossie were the sons of Jamaican immigrants to Toronto and played pond and corner-rink hockey, becoming good players at the high school level. When Herb earned a spot with a Junior A team, the Toronto Young Rangers, in 1938, he was certain he was bound for the NHL. But the call never came and while debate exists as to why the Carnegie boys didn't make it, color definitely entered the picture.

Conn Smythe, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, reportedly said while watching Carnegie practise with the Young Rangers, “I will give $10,000 to anyone who can turn Herb
Carnegie white.” There's no definitive proof that Smythe made such a statement but some reliable hockey people insist the Leaf owner said it.

BÉLIVEAU & THE BLACK ACES

Even the player shortage during the years of World War II did not open the doors for the Carnegie brothers. They played in the Quebec League, a strong amateur circuit with Sherbrooke, where Herb was most valuable player for three consecutive seasons. The Carnegie brothers and Manny McIntyre played on a high-scoring all-black line called the Black Aces. Herb Carnegie joined the Quebec Aces as a teammate of the great Jean Béliveau, who had turned down the Montreal Canadiens to stay in Quebec for a big salary. Béliveau always said he learned a great deal from Carnegie whom he called “a beautiful skater and playmaker, a super hockey player.”

CARNEGIE SPURNED

When he was 29, the New York Rangers wanted to sign Carnegie but told him that he would open the season on the American League farm team. He refused, figuring he would be buried in the minors for what remained of his career. An “ace” in financial businesses and founder of the Future Aces hockey school, Carnegie was a success in life but the bitterness still lingers on about the NHL door not opening for him.

O'REE AT LAST

The doors did open for Willie O'Ree, the first black man to play in the NHL when he joined the Boston Bruins for two games in the 1957–58 season and 43 in 1960–61. He was a fast skater who had a lengthy minor league career, spending the most time with Los Angeles Blades and San Diego Gulls of the old Western League where he was a high scorer. But not even the NHL expansion of the late 1960s gave O'Ree another shot at making it back to the bigs. He has worked for the NHL during the past few years as director, youth development, NHL diversity. O'Ree plays down the “pioneer” aspect of his brief NHL career: “There were a few racial slurs but I faced nothing even remotely close to what Jackie Robinson endured when he broke into big-league baseball.”

UNDERGROUND HOCKEY

The post-Civil War “Underground Railroad” brought many black people to Canada to escape persecution in the U.S., where the freedom they had been granted didn't really mean that. Hockey was a growing game in Canada and the black community joined in. But as many former slaves drifted back south, the black population dwindled. Two black senior amateur players who made names in Ontario hockey in earlier times were Hippo Galloway of Dunnville and Charlie Lightfoot of Stratford. Bud Kelly was a star on an army team based in London, Ontario, during World War II and George Barnes stood out in intermediate hockey, a level for teams in smaller centers. In 1920, St. Catharines, Ontario, had an all-black team, the Orioles, playing against an all-white club.

RAMPANT RACISM

Arthur Dorrington, from Truro, Nova Scotia, the first black man in U.S. minor-pro hockey in 1950, faced heavy discrimination in both racial slurs from opponents and fans and barriers to accompanying his white teammates to hotels and restaurants. Mike Marson was a good junior, drafted by the expansion Washington Capitals in 1974, a talented and tough kid in an interracial marriage. He played 196 NHL games over six seasons but complained of racial slurs—even from his teammates—death threats by both phone and letter and having the tires of his car slashed.

TOUGH TONY MAKES WAY

Tony McKegney discovered early in his career in the late 1970s the sting of racism. He had been adopted by a white family in Sarnia, Ontario, and became a star junior with the Kingston Canadiens. Drafted by the NHL Buffalo Sabres in 1978, McKegney instead accepted an offer from the Birmingham Bulls of the World Hockey Association, which was in its final season. When Alabama fans threatened a boycott because of McKegney's color, the Bulls released him from his contract and he signed with the Sabres. McKegney played 912 NHL games with seven teams, scoring 320 goals. Several top stars—who just happened to be black—followed the McKegney lead and slowly the racism, both from rivals and fans, disappeared. Fuhr and Iginla are just two top-drawer black players who have contributed immensely to the modern game.

In the midst of the Great Depression, Conn Smythe used his ingenuity to find financing and build Maple Leaf Gardens.

I
n 1931, the Great Depression had established its downward lock on North American financial markets, unemployment had reached record percentages and few trains in Canada ran without transients in the baggage car. To consider construction of a large arena to house a professional hockey team required a man with big vision, nerves of steel and the ability to get blood, in the form of money, from a stone (Canada's financial institutions and investors). Conn Smythe was precisely that man, and when Maple Leaf Gardens—for decades probably the best-known building in Canada—opened in November 1931, Smythe said, “I'm either a great visionary or the dumbest guy who ever lived.”

A GUY WITH “GUILE”

But in a feat of incredible daring, guile and salesmanship, Smythe, aided abundantly by his assistant Frank Selke, raised the money in a dead market to build the living stage for his Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Smythe had scuffled hard to find the $160,000 to purchase the Toronto St. Patricks in the fledgling National Hockey League in 1927, a team that was a steady money loser in the elderly Mutual Street Arena.

HOW TO MOTIVATE A VENGEFUL HOCKEY MIND

Smythe was a college hockey player, served in the Canadian army in World War I, built a sand-and-gravel company and started his thoroughbred racing stable in the post-war years. He coached the U of T hockey team and was an investor in the Toronto Marlboros operated by Selke. The New York Rangers hired him to build their team when the NHL first expanded into the U.S. in the mid-1920s, and after he had assembled a strong team of mostly unknown amateur players—many who later went into the Hockey
Hall of Fame—the Rangers fired him. He returned to Toronto with $10,000 in severance pay, vowing to own a team there that would be better than
his
Rangers.

THAT'S RIGHT, KIDS, GAMBLING PAYS

Smythe increased his bankroll through winning bets on sports events, found backers through his persistence, then bought the St. Patricks. He quickly changed the team name to the Maple Leafs and the colors from green to blue and white and built a strong lineup around players from Selke's Marlboro junior team—augmenting it through trades and purchases until, by 1930, the Leafs had high potential. Turning a profit in the old Mutual Street building proved impossible, stoking Smythe's dreams for a big arena. But the stock market had crashed: The few investors who had money were clinging to it and construction of an expensive building did not appear to be in the cards.

LEAFS PROGRAMS GOOD BATHROOM READS

“It looked as if we would have to postpone the building,” Smythe said. “Then early in the '30–31 season, Selke produced a special program to be sold at the games that boosted the need for a new arena. [Leafs radio broadcaster] Foster Hewitt mentioned on the air that the program was available for ten cents and we got 91,000 requests for it. Those 91,000 dimes convinced a few money guys and bankers that there was big interest in hockey and a new building.” Folklore, much of it originated by Smythe over the years, includes the story of how in the spring of 1931 backers of the MLG project opened the bids from construction companies and found they were several hundred thousand dollars short of launching the building. Smythe claimed it was the bleakest moment of his life; he was certain the project was dead.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE WORKING STIFF

The situation inspired a fine tale of how Selke, who was business manager for the electrical workers' union in his non-hockey job, jogged a mile from the bank where the fiscal backers' meeting was held to the building trades council meeting, where he persuaded the unions to accept 20 percent of their salary in shares of MLG stock. In reality, Selke made personal pitches to the 24 unions, his
hard sell convincing the workers that 80 percent of their salaries in cash was better than the unemployment faced by many skilled trades in the depressed economy.

“Conn Smythe made it sound as if I ran up the street, made a pitch to the unions and ran back to tell the bankers that the workers went along with getting stock for part of their salaries,” Selke said. “Mostly, it was a hard pitch to the union leaders that did it. When the unions agreed, the bankers gave us more money and, slowly, the construction money reached a level where we could go ahead. I think the unions were a little suspicious of the deal we offered and had the economy been strong and jobs more plentiful, they would have turned it down. But jobs were so scarce in '31, they went for our idea.”