I thought it might be fun to look at the history of hockey. A looong time ago I did a day in history thread and had some fun finding interesting pieces of History so I thought, why not hockey might be fun to try. I don't guarantee a daily update or anything. This will truly be in bite sized pieces. As always addons and comments are always welcome. So lets get err started.
1917-1918
The NHL is formed when all of the owners in the NHA had decided that they had had enough of Toronto owner Edward Livingstone. Widely regarded as a complete jerkface, they decided they didn't want to deal with him and concocted a brilliant plan to get rid of him.
A meeting was called by the owners of the Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, Montreal Canadians and Wanderers and the Toronto Arenas,but Livingstone was somehow kept from the meeting. The owners created a new league the National Hockey League with Quebec deciding to take a sabatical. The NHA still existed but was an empty shell.
The Wanderers didn't make it through the season as their arena burnt down and they withdrew from the league.
Frank Calder was named the first NHL president.
The Toronto Areanas qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs and played a five game series against Vancouver of the PCHL, the Toronto's won the series in 5 games being lead by Corbett Denneny to win the Stanley Cup.
Trivia
The NHL played a 22 game season
Montreal Wanderers' Harry Hyland scored 5 goals on the opening night.
Joe Malone one of the leagues first generational players switched from Quebec to the Canadians and scored 3 5 goal games in the first year and 44 goals in 20 games
The NHL changes a key rule from the NHA and decides that goalies will be allowed to leave their feet. This was formerly a $2.00 fine in the NHA and the penalty was called "Flopping"
Ottawa goalie Clint Benedict caused this rule change because he ignored the rule in the NHA and he was so darned entertaining.
George Vezina was the leagues best goalie with a 3.93 gaa.
The Habs are the first half of the season league champions and finish with a 13-9 record.
The Arenas won the second half and finished with a 13-9 record as well, Ottawa finishes last with a 9-13 record.
The Arenas beat the Canadians in a 2 game total goal series 10-7.
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Eddie Livingstone kind of had a reason to be a jerkface.
In 1916–17, the last season of the old National Hockey Association, the Canadian Army iced a professional team – 228th Battalion, the Northern Fusiliers. They played out of Toronto and drew huge crowds for every game.
Halfway through the season, the battalion was sent overseas and had to withdraw from the league. Rather than finish the schedule with an odd number of teams, the other owners voted to suspend Livingstone's Toronto Blueshirts without compensation. However, they demanded a $3,000 forfeit from the Army for not finishing the season (and were laughed out of court for it).
When the NHL formed, it gave the Arenas all the players Livingstone had under contract – again without compensation. Of course he sued the league, and the appeals dragged on for a decade. One of the judges declared, ‘I look on the conduct of the defendants as utterly dishonest and despicable,’ and regretted that he could find no precedent for awarding punitive damages.
There was enough jerkiness to go around in those days.
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Last edited by Jay Random; 02-08-2024 at 11:26 PM.
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Montreal Wanderers' Harry Hyland scored 5 goals on the opening night.
Joe Malone one of the leagues first generational players switched from Quebec to the Canadians and scored 3 5 goal games in the first year and 44 goals in 20 games
think of all the million dollar score and win winners!
__________________ "...and there goes Finger up the middle on Luongo!" - Jim Hughson, Av's vs. 'Nucks
Eddie Livingstone kind of had a reason to be a jerkface.
In 1916–17, the last season of the old National Hockey Association, the Canadian Army iced a professional team – 228th Battalion, the Northern Fusiliers. They played out of Toronto and drew huge crowds for every game.
Halfway through the season, the battalion was sent overseas and had to withdraw from the league. Rather than finish the schedule with an odd number of teams, the other owners voted to suspend Livingstone's Toronto Blueshirts without compensation. However, they demanded a $3,000 forfeit from the Army for not finishing the season (and were laughed out of court for it).
When the NHL formed, it gave the Arenas all the players Livingstone had under contract – again without compensation. Of course he sued the league, and the appeals dragged on for a decade. One of the judges declared, ‘I look on the conduct of the defendants as utterly dishonest and despicable,’ and regretted that he could find no precedent for awarding punitive damages.
There was enough jerkiness to go around in those days.
Looking for confirmation from the judges, but yes old white men wearing monocles and top hats were jerks.
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Looking for confirmation from the judges, but yes old white men wearing monocles and top hats were jerks.
Funny thing is, most of the owners were relatively young men and none of them were rich. George Kennedy, who owned the Habs, was a retired wrestler, and Sammy Lichtenhein, who owned the Wanderers, managed his old man's cotton and wool waste factory and ran sports teams on the side.
Livingstone was only in his thirties, but he had been an amateur coach and referee in Ontario for years, and knew every good senior player in the province. That gave him a big advantage in the lean years of World War I, when most of the established stars joined the army and went off to the trenches in France. I think some of the bad blood between him and the other owners came because they kept raiding his teams for players and he was inclined to fight back. He had a temper like Donald Duck.
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Funny thing is, most of the owners were relatively young men and none of them were rich. George Kennedy, who owned the Habs, was a retired wrestler, and Sammy Lichtenhein, who owned the Wanderers, managed his old man's cotton and wool waste factory and ran sports teams on the side.
Livingstone was only in his thirties, but he had been an amateur coach and referee in Ontario for years, and knew every good senior player in the province. That gave him a big advantage in the lean years of World War I, when most of the established stars joined the army and went off to the trenches in France. I think some of the bad blood between him and the other owners came because they kept raiding his teams for players and he was inclined to fight back. He had a temper like Donald Duck.
I'm impressed that you can remember so much at your age!
The early history of hockey has been a hobby of mine for years.
A really good source for this period is Deceptions and Doublecross: How the NHL Conquered Hockey, by Morey Holzman and Joseph Nieforth. It gets into the personalities and behind-the-scenes stuff in a way most histories don't, and really brings it to life.
The bit I quoted from the appellate judge, for instance, is in that book, straight from the court transcript. There was no such thing as political correctness in those days, and very little PR spin; these guys did not pull their verbal punches.
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1917-1918
The NHL is formed when all of the owners in the NHA ...
National Hockey Association, for the uninitiated.
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A meeting was called by the owners of the Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, Montreal Canadians
Canadiens
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and Wanderers and the Toronto Arenas, but Livingstone was somehow kept from the meeting.
Livingstone owned the Toronto NHA club, who were nicknamed the Blueshirts (which is where the nickname for the Maple Leafs comes from, and why the Leafs wear blue in the first place), so there were no representatives from Toronto at this meeting.
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... with Quebec deciding to take a sabatical.
There are two 'b's in sabbatical.
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The Toronto Areanas qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs...
Only two 'a's in "Arenas". N.B. the team was retroactively nicknamed the Arenas because the Canadian Arena Company, who owned the Arena Gardens in which the Blueshirts played, were given the Toronto NHL franchise in lieu of Livingstone. Contemporarily people still just called them the Blueshirts or the "Torontos", and the official name of the team was simply "Toronto Hockey Club". Eddie Livingstone filed another lawsuit not only against the NHL, but against the Arena Company itself, and the Arena Company surrendered the franchise back to the NHL in 1918.
The NHL subsequently created a "new" franchise, gave it to the Arena Company, and they were officially called the "Toronto Arena Hockey Club". This team was officially nicknamed "Arenas". They voluntarily withdrew from and returned the franchise to the NHL after the 1918-19 season, and the franchise was subsequently sold to its GM, Charles Querrie, before the 1919-20 season. Querrie renamed the club the St. Patricks.
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... and played a five game series against Vancouver of the PCHL, the Toronto's won the series in 5 games being lead by Corbett Denneny to win the Stanley Cup.
PCHA (Pacific Coast Hockey Association), and Corb Denneny is not to be confused with his HHOFer brother Cy (longtime Ottawa Senator).
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Trivia
The NHL played a 22 game season
They played two half-seasons, which ended up an uneven 14 games and 8 games in length. The NHA had previously played this format, with two 10-game halves, in 1916-17. The schedule got screwed up by the folding of the Wanderers only four games into their schedule. Two previously scheduled Wanderers games were automatically forfeited to the Habs and Toronto and noted as wins in their records; the games were never actually played.
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The Habs are the first half of the season league champions and finish with a 13-9 record.
The Arenas won the second half and finished with a 13-9 record as well, Ottawa finishes last with a 9-13 record.
The Arenas beat the Canadians in a 2 game total goal series 10-7.
It would be more pertinent to say the Habs were first-half champions with a 10-4 record, and Toronto were second-half champions with a 5-3 record. The half-season champions were the important things, because the first-half champ played the second-half champ in the two-game total-goals series for the league championship. The "overall" standings were never counted together the way you have, and were totally irrelevant to the outcome of the league championship.
Spoiler!
Another bit of trivia to add: the NHA championship trophy was the O'Brien Trophy, named after industrialist M.J. O'Brien and his son Ambrose. Ambrose organized the NHA in the first place, and M.J. bankrolled most of the league in its early seasons; of the initial five members of the NHA—Montreal Wanderers, Haileybury Hockey Club, Renfrew Creamery Kings, Cobalt Silver Kings, and the Montreal Canadiens—four were owned by the O'Briens (Haileybury, Renfrew, Cobalt, and the Canadiens). The NHA—which was still legally incorporated—retained ownership of the O'Brien Trophy until 1921; thereafter until 1927 the NHL champion would be awarded the trophy, because the NHL champion would play the PCHA (and later, the WHL) champion for the Stanley Cup until '27. From '28 to '38 the trophy was awarded to the champion of the NHL's Canadian Division (Maple Leafs, Habs, Senators (until '34), Montreal Maroons (until '38) and the New York Americans), and from '39 to 1950 was awarded to the loser of the Stanley Cup finals.
The NHA itself was born from a disagreement between owners in the Eastern Canada Hockey Association (ECHA).
The Wanderers were sold to P.J. Doran, owner of the Jubilee Rink in Montreal, and he (obviously) wanted his team to play in his arena; previously the Wanderers shared the Montreal Arena with the Shamrocks and the Victorias. However, the Jubilee Rink only sat about 3,200 people whereas the Montreal Arena could accommodate about 4,300, and another 5,000-6,000 standing-room. The ECHA owners were pissed off because the owners all got cuts of the gate receipts for their away games, and the lower-capacity arena would thus limit their potential earnings. In much the same way as the NHA was later formed because the other owners wanted to freeze out Eddie Livingstone, the ECHA owners formed a new league called the Canadian Hockey Association (CHA) with the purpose of kicking Doran and the Wanderers out. (Ultimately Doran sold the Wanderers to Sam Lichtenhein in 1910 and the Wanderers moved back to the Montreal Arena anyway. When the Arena burned down in 1918 the Wanderers folded and the Canadiens moved... to the Jubilee Rink, where they played until 1920. )
The O'Briens wanted their clubs in the small Ontario mining towns of Haileybury, Cobalt and Renfrew to join the CHA, because the CHA was expected to be the top league in the country and they wanted to compete for the Stanley Cup. The CHA owners rebuffed the O'Briens so they went "fine then, we'll start our own league! With blackjack, and hookers!" Doran, still without a league for the Wanderers to play in after being shut out of the CHA, talked to the O'Briens and they started up the NHA.
Early in the CHA and NHA's first seasons Ottawa and the Montreal Shamrocks abandoned CHA and joined the NHA. Quebec Bulldogs moved from the CHA to the NHA in 1910, and the other CHA teams—the francophone National de Montréal and the All-Montreal Hockey Club—had no one left to play against. The CHA thus folded after only a handful of games played; Le National went back to being an exclusively amateur team in the Montreal senior leagues, and the All-Montreal folded.
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This could be considered a bitter sweet season. World War 1 had ended but the optimism was tempered by the Spanish Flu epidemic that was sweeping Europe.
Seattle won the PCHA title eliminating Vancouver in a 2 game series outscoring them 7-5. In the East The Canadians were the first half champions with a 10-8 record. The Sens were the second half champions. In a two game series the Habs beat the Sens to face Seattle in the Stanley Cup Finals.
1918-1919 featured a key rule change as the NHL added two bluelines and permitted forward passing in the neutral zone. The NHL also put in new rules prohibiting substitutions for penalized players. Minors were three minutes, majors 5 minutes, and you couldn't substitute for a player with a match penalty. The NHL also started tracking assists.
The Canadians had to travel across the continent by train as the finals would take place in Seattle. In the first game, Seattle bombed Montreal 7-0. The second game the Canadians beat Seattle 4-2. Seattle rebounded to beat George Vezina 7 times to destroy the Habs 7-2. Game 4 ended 0-0 after 20 minutes of overtime. Game 5 was considered a classic as the Habs came back from a 3 goal deficit to beat Seattle. The series was deadlocked 2-2-1 with the cup up for grabs.
These thrilling games were overshadowed by the rapidly spreading flu pandemic, And people were concerned with such large public gatherings. Things took a turn for the worst as fans reported that the players looked exhausted and Montreal defenseman Joe Hall was rushed to the hospital during game 5. Billy Couture, Jack McDonald, Newsy Lalonde and Louis Berlinquette were bed ridden and Montreal Manager George Kennedy was also extremely sick. There was discussions around using Victoria players to step in for the ailing Montreal Players, and a week later Joe Hall died from the Flu and for the first time in history and only time the Stanley Cup finals were cancelled and the Cup was not awarded. We wouldn't see a season without a championship awarded until 2005.
Trivia
Quebec fails to state its intentions for the season and the NHL continues to be a 3 tearm league.
The Canadians and Sens won the first and second half season titles to fight for the NHL title. Toronto last years Stanley Cup champion finishes 5-13
Montreal's Newsy Lalonde wins the NHL scoring title with 21 goals and 30 points in 18 games.
Ottawa's Clint Benedict leads the NHL with a GAA of 2.94, he had a league worst 5.18 gaa in the inaugural season of the NHL.
Joe Hall leads the league in penalties with 83 minutes.
Hobart "Hobey" Baker considered to be one of the greatest players of his time who refused to turn professional is killed while testing a fighter planed on December 21, 1918.
Odie Cleghorn who was considered to be one of the toughest players of all time and used a strategy of spitting tabacco juice in opposing players faces notches 23 goals in the regular season 7 goals in the two game series against Ottawa and notched 2 goals in the Stanley Cup finals.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Toronto actually failed to finish that season. The courts ruled that they had poached Eddie Livingstone's contracted players and arena lease, and the team filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying damages. After that, Livingstone sued the Arena Company, which owned the defunct franchise.
With only two teams left to finish the schedule, the regular season was called off early (each team having played 18 games out of the scheduled 20). The Canadiens and Senators played hockey's first-ever best-of-7 series to determine which team would represent the NHL in the Stanley Cup challenge.
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NHL history in a 127 years of bite sized pieces.
N.B. the team was retroactively nicknamed the Arenas because the Canadian Arena Company, who owned the Arena Gardens in which the Blueshirts played, were given the Toronto NHL franchise in lieu of Livingstone. Contemporarily people still just called them the Blueshirts or the "Torontos", and the official name of the team was simply "Toronto Hockey Club". Eddie Livingstone filed another lawsuit not only against the NHL, but against the Arena Company itself, and the Arena Company surrendered the franchise back to the NHL in 1918.
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