Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (9 page)

SHORT AND STOCKY PLAYING HOCKEY

Most players who are considered small might be short in height but carry much more weight than the vertically challenged of an earlier era. In the NHL's first three or four decades, many players between 5'5" and 5'9" often weighed between 140 and 155 pounds. The NHL's most valuable player in the 2004–05 season, Martin St. Louis of the Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning, is considered short at 5'9" but not small because he weighs 185. The numbers of the Boston Bruins' highly skilled winger Sergei Samsonov are 5'8" and a surprising 194. Defenceman Francis Bouillon of the Montreal Canadiens appears out of place on the blue line at 5'8" but his 196 pounds make him a better fit.

KING FOR A DAY?

Reflecting on the measurements of a variety of players from earlier years makes one wonder about how players of such small stature might endure in today's league. King Clancy (5'7", 155) played front-line defence for Ottawa and Toronto for 16 seasons. The top goal-scorers of the NHL's early days, Babe Dye (201 goals in 271 games), and Joe Malone (143 goals in 126 NHL games), each weighed 150 pounds. Ken Doraty, whose overtime goal for the Maple Leafs against Boston in 1933 came in the sixth extra period, played at 133 pounds. Buddy O'Connor (5'8", 140) of the Rangers finished second by one point for the NHL scoring title in the 1947–48 season. Mush March, all 5'5" and 150 pounds of him, played 759 games for Chicago. Two of the finest forward lines ever carried total weights of 436 pounds—the elegant Howie Morenz, Aurel Joliat, and Johnny “Black Cat” Gagnon trio of the Montreal Canadiens in the 1920s—and 460 pounds—the swift Pony Line of Chicago in the 1940s: Max and Doug Bentley with Bill Mosienko.

LITTLE NAPOLEON VS. KING RICHARD

The top goalies of the early NHL times had to be quick because their small bodies, skinny pads and gloves did not fill much of the net. George Hainsworth (5'6", 150) once had 22 shutouts in a 44-game schedule. John Ross Roach (5'5", 130) was called Little Napoleon and played in 492 games. Roy Worters (5'3", 135) excelled for three teams. Jumpin' Jake Forbes (5'6", 140) was a big star in the game's first venture into New York. Even the great Georges Vezina, who played in 325 consecutive games for the Canadiens (and was the father of 22 children) was only 5'6". In the 1980s, another diminutive “King,” Richard Brodeur (5'7", 158), led the Vancouver Canucks to the Cup final.

POCKET ROCKETS AND THE ATOM BOMB

Two economy-sized centers were elite all-round players in a later time. Henri (Pocket Rocket) Richard (5'7", 160) excelled in a record 11 Stanley Cup winners for the Canadiens in 20 seasons from 1956 to 1975. Dave Keon (5'8", 160) was a key man on the Toronto Maple Leafs' four Cup winners in the 1960s. These quick little stars would seem like mosquitoes if they shared the ice with Zdeno Chara of the modern Ottawa Senators. At 6'9" and 260, Chara is the biggest NHLer ever.

* * * * *

“[Jeremy Roenick] should be worried about playing the game, not innovating it. He thinks he's Brett Hull or something. You should remind him that he didn't go to college. He's a junior guy. So he's not that bright.”

—Garth Snow, goaltender for New York Islanders

“It's not my fault [Garth Snow] didn't have any other options coming out of high school. If going to college gets you a career backup goaltender job, and my route gets you a thousand points and a thousand games, and compare the two contracts, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out whose decision was better.”

—Jeremy Roenick, former forward, Chicago Blackhawks

For a game that is commonly thought of as the most violent major North American sport, it may come as a shock that the history of the helmet in the NHL is relatively short.

W
e begin in Boston when tough-as-skate-leather Bruin Eddie Shore hit Toronto Maple Leaf Ace Bailey from behind during a December 12, 1933, game—with the end result being Bailey sustaining a fractured skull. To raise funds for Bailey's expensive medical bills, the NHL played its first All-Star Game on February 12, 1934. After Bailey's retirement he became a coach and later an off-ice official in Toronto at his beloved Maple Leaf Gardens.

SHORING UP THE “D” (OF THE NOGGIN)

Seeing the damage that he did to Bailey and perhaps fearing for his safety from Leafs who had plans to retaliate, Eddie shortly afterwards began to wear a leather helmet during games. Looking at this contraption with a fresh 21st century outlook, it's difficult to see how Shore's head would have been protected if he had been clonked in the casaba. Shore's helmet more resembles headgear worn by a horse-riding jockey than a protective apparatus against pucks, sticks and falls to the ice.

CRAWFORD'S CRANIUM

For 12 seasons (1937–1950), Bruins defenceman Jack Crawford also wore a similar leather head covering, but much of this was due to vanity (understandable, in his case). In his teenage years, the crafty Crawford suffered a rare skin malady which left his scalp bald and scarred. So to cover his top, Crawford began wearing the leather helmet.

BILL MASTERTON: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY

Very few NHL players wore helmets until one fateful night in Minnesota when the first (and still only) death of a player during an NHL game occurred. Not long into the first period of a January 13, 1968, game between the Oakland Seals and the Minnesota
North Stars, rookie centerman Bill Masterton of the North Stars took the puck into the Seals' offensive zone. He passed to right wing Wayne Connelly, then skated toward the area in front of the Seals net to try to get a goal. Instead he got banged around by a few Seals, fell backwards, and cracked his head on the ice. Masterton began bleeding profusely from his ears and nose. He was immediately taken to Fairview Southdale Hospital in Minneapolis. On the way in the ambulance, Masterton lost consciousness and never woke up. Two days later, he died as a result of his head injury.

The North Stars retired Bat's (as he was nicknamed) No. 19 and shortly after Masterton's death, the NHL created the Bill Masterton Trophy, which is awarded annually to the player who is most dedicated to, and shows the most perseverance for, the sport of hockey.

MIKITA HEAD OF THE PACK

Interestingly, Clarence Campbell, then head of the NHL, did not immediately dictate that all players had to wear helmets during practices and in games. Yet slowly, very slowly, players began to wear them. One of the first was Stan Mikita, the great center and right wing from the 1960s Chicago Black Hawks. Wearing his coal-black-colored plastic helmet, Mikita was as easy to spot on the ice at that time as the remaining players
without
helmets were in the late 1980s.

SAFE IN SEVENTY-NINE

Mite and youth hockey leagues in Canada and the United States made helmet-wearing a must in the 1970s. In 1979 the NHL made helmets mandatory for any player signed after June 1, 1979. On April 29, 1997, grinder Craig MacTavish—the last NHL player to play without a helmet—announced his retirement, quietly rolling the percentage of NHL helmet-use up to 100 from there on in.

* * * * *

“There are two types of forwards. Scorers and bangers. Scorers score and bangers bang.”

—Ken Dryden

The first full-fledged professional hockey league was created to give Michigan copper miners some recreational activity.

D
OC HOCKEY

J.L. “Doc” Gibson was a dentist in Houghton, Michigan, who knew pro hockey well. He had played in his Ontario hometown of Berlin (now Kitchener), where his team was banned from the Ontario Hockey Association after players were given $10 gold coins after an important win, a violation of amateur rules. Gibson graduated from college in Detroit and established a dental practice in Houghton, a town of 5,000 on the Michigan peninsula close to a productive copper mine. Gibson founded the Portage Lake hockey club in Houghton. To stock his team, he recruited amateur players, turned them into professionals by paying salaries, and dominated hockey in the area.

Other teams, some backed by those with financial interests in the mines, formed to compete with Portage Lake. The result was the International Professional Hockey League in 1904–05, comprising Houghton; Calumet-Larium Miners; the Indians of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario; and two teams in Pittsburgh, which had one of two artificial ice surfaces in existence at the time.

CYCLONE SIGHTING

Fred “Cyclone” Taylor, a brilliant 19 year old from Ontario, was playing senior hockey in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba for the Rat Portage (now Kenora) Thistles. He received room, board, and $25 a month in spending money. Taylor said: “The Portage Lake team in Houghton made me an offer of $400 plus expenses for the rest of the season. I took their offer and helped them win the championship that season.”

STACKED LINEUP

When Taylor joined the Houghton team, he found himself in
select company. The Portage Lake club had Riley Hern in goal, Barney Holden and Fred Lake at point and cover point (defence), and forwards Bruce Stuart, Joe Hall, Harry Bright and Grindy Forrester. Taylor, Hern, Stuart, and Hall continued to put up big seasons even after the International League folded and were all inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The Houghton team played in the Amphidrome, located in the center of the town. It had 3,000 seats, all of them filled for the club's games. The fans were eager to see the team's new player and in his first game, Cyclone Taylor scored twice in an 8–2 win over Calumet.

NEWSY, THE CYCLONE & BAD JOE

Taylor faced another young player destined to be a big star, Newsy Lalonde – a tough player with great skill. Lalonde and “Bad” Joe Hall had a longtime feud that featured fist and stick fights over the years. Lalonde had the assignment of checking Taylor. “Newsy played a tough game and handling that caliber of checking prepared me for what I would encounter through my career,” Taylor said.

Taylor returned for a second season in Houghton, 1906–07, won the scoring title and was named the league's outstanding player. A sweep of three late-season games in Pittsburgh clinched a second championship and the team returned to Houghton by train to be greeted by a band, a parade and a banquet in honor of their achievement.

RUBBED OUT BY RECESSION

But the future of the International League was in doubt. The U.S. economy was chopped down by a recession and the northern Michigan mining areas were the hardest hit. The next autumn, they announced that teams would not be able to afford players' salaries—the Houghton team's total payroll for the season was approximately $5,000—and the league dissolved. “The International League was a great experience for many young players,” Taylor said years later. “The hockey was good, very competive, and physically tough, which prepared us well for anything we encountered later in our careers.”

And much more about the high-scoring—and violin-playing—Icelandic-Winnipeggian, Frank Fredickson.

I
CELAND JONES

The exploits of Frank Fredrickson read like the script for an
Indiana Jones
movie: The charismatic, flamboyant, and handsome Icelander seemed to excel at any endeavor he tried, from hockey to flying airplanes to coaching to music. He was a star in amateur hockey, a star again as a professional in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) and the NHL, an accomplished violinist, a World War I pilot, and a survivor of a torpedoed ship in the Mediterranean Sea. On top of that, he won an Olympic gold medal.

BORN TO GLIDE

Fredrickson's family had moved from Iceland to Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the late 1800s, joining a community of their countrymen in the Canadian city. Born in 1895, Sigurdur Franklin Frederickson spoke no English until he started elementary school at six years of age, and was often teased and bullied by the other “real Canadian” kids. “Luckily for me, I loved sports and played every game as hard as I could to gain acceptance,” he said years later. “Because Winnipeg had cold winters, ice surfaces for skating and hockey were plentiful. I was on them every chance I had.”

Fredrickson played junior and senior hockey as a teenager in Winnipeg, then was captain of the University of Manitoba team while continuing amateur league play. But his hockey career was put on hold in 1916 when World War I broke out. Frederickson enlisted and shipped off to England with the Canadian Army's 196th Battalion, then to Egypt with the Royal Flying Corps, where he earned his pilot's wings. On a 1918 trip to an active-duty assignment in France, his ship, the
Leasowe Castle
, was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Mediterranean Sea. Ninety-two men were lost; Frederickson and 2,800 other men
made it to the lifeboats. They were rescued a half day later by a Japanese ship.

THE GOLDEN FALCONS

In 1919 Fredrickson returned to Canada, where he helped organize a hockey team called the Winnipeg Falcons. All but one of the team's players were of Icelandic descent. Refused entry by the Manitoba senior amateur league—big mistake—Fredrickson and his friends formed their own three-team league in 1920. After scoring 22 goals in nine league games, and another 22 in six playoff games, Fredrickson challenged the Manitoba league champions to an official “challenge” game. The Falcons won. That got them to the Canadian amateur championship, the still-famous Allen Cup, against the University of Toronto Blues. They won that, too. From there the Falcons went to Antwerp, Belgium, to represent Canada at the 1920 Winter Olympics. Fredrickson lead the team to wins over Czechoslovakia, Sweden, and the United States, and the Falcons—er, the Canadians—won the very first Olympic hockey gold medal. Frederickson—who scored 12 goals in just three games—became the first Olympic hockey MVP.