A hat tip to Thomas Patrick Gorman, the manager who built the ‘Super Six’ in Ottawa that won Stanley Cups in 1920, 1921, and 1923.
Tommy Gorman never played hockey, but he won a gold medal playing lacrosse at the 1908 Olympics. He was a reporter by trade, and rose to become sports editor of the Ottawa
Citizen. In the tumultuous 1916-17 season, the last year of the NHA, Ted Dey hired him to find new talent to replace all the players that the Ottawa Senators had lost to the army. Hockey and lacrosse have a lot in common, and being a first-rate lacrosse player must have helped Gorman spot hockey talent and recruit players to his team. He was a minority owner of the Senators during their glory years of the early 1920s, but after Frank Ahearn bought the team, Gorman sold his shares to Ahearn and headed south.
As the NHL expanded into the U.S., it quickly became clear that the big American cities held the future of the professional game. Gorman was the first coach and GM of the New York Americans, and after a few years dabbling in other interests, he returned to hockey as coach and GM of the Chicago Black Hawks. He won the Stanley Cup with the Hawks in 1934, after which he quarrelled with the team's owner, the mercurial Major Frederic McLaughlin. Gorman quit and took his formidable skills to Montreal, where he became coach and GM of the Maroons. His new team was just as successful as the old, winning the Stanley Cup in 1935. No other coach in history has won the Cup in consecutive seasons with two different teams.
After the Maroons folded due to the Depression, Gorman signed on with the Canadiens and won two more championships as their GM. He is the only man in the history of the big four North American professional sports to win championships as manager of four different teams.
During his long career, Gorman put his hand to all sorts of ventures. At various times he owned or managed race tracks, a senior hockey team, and a minor-league baseball team, and he reintroduced professional wrestling to Montreal after a long absence. He promoted big-band concerts, an evangelistic revival, and a successful tour by Olympic figure skater Barbara Ann Scott. He was still active in the sports world when he died in 1961, the last living founder of the NHL.
