A Great Game (16 page)

However, the OHA had a fundamental problem: it was now on the outside of competition for Canada's national hockey championship, the Stanley Cup. Thus, the association made a remarkable and self-serving discovery: not only had an OHA team never won the Stanley Cup, but the association was now proclaiming it had never really wanted to win the Cup anyway.

“The O.H.A. has never considered that its function was the development
of champion teams,” the
Globe
announced in rather arch tones, “. . . and it has not cared who won the Stanley Cup or any other of the cups that are a detriment to the games they were expected to promote. The O.H.A. looks with indifference on the battles for the Stanley Cup.”
⁶

The difficulty for the OHA was that many fans in Ontario—including, most pointedly, Toronto hockey fans—wanted a shot at the Cup. They saw what the Stanley Cup meant to followers in places like Montreal, Ottawa and Winnipeg. It symbolized hockey supremacy, no matter what Nelson's
Globe
, Robertson's
Telegram
, Hewitt's
Star
or the OHA might believe, and they wanted their local heroes to challenge for it. And it seems those local heroes, the top Toronto players, increasingly felt the same way. By the end of the 1905–06 season, not only were eight well-known pros practising at the Mutual Street Rink, but three of the fan-favourite Marlboros, including star Bruce Ridpath, had been exposed as closet professionals.

There can be little doubt that the threat of professionalism encroaching on its home turf was the reason why the OHA, uncharacteristically, procrastinated in dealing with the Marlboros. Despite overwhelming evidence of their activities as paid ringers in the Temiskaming league, winter, spring and finally summer went by with no action from the normally draconian association. The OHA had to be aware that this threesome, led by the immensely popular Ridpath, if joined to the nascent pro squad at Mutual, could become a potent combination in favour of Toronto professional hockey.

The OHA had no choice in the matter, however, if it was to hold its treasured moral ground and lead the national fight against open professionalism. Thus, on November 14, 1906, more than eight months after learning of their infamous game at New Liskeard, the OHA finally ruled that Ridpath and teammates Rolly Young and Harry Burgoyne were professionals and threw them out of the association. In better days, when it had exiled the likes of Doc Gibson and Cyclone Taylor, the
OHA probably could not have foreseen that it was laying the institutional foundations of pro hockey. This time, it had to know that it was creating the critical mass for a bona fide Toronto pro team.

That team was not long in coming. A mere eight days later, Bruce Ridpath announced the formation of the Toronto Hockey Club. “Riddy” would be the captain of the Torontos and head of their executive committee. The leading members would come from both the Marlboros and the aborted professional club of 1905–06.

Ridpath would be joined on the Torontos' committee by Young and Pete Charlton. Charlton, having migrated to Berlin after two previous years with the Marlboros, had won three consecutive OHA senior championships. His ongoing movements had long been the basis of rumours that he was a clandestine professional. The final committee member was Hugh Boydell Lambe of the Mutual pros, who would act as secretary-treasurer. Lambe, a former defenceman with the Toronto St. Georges, was one of the many senior OHA players expelled in the lacrosse decision of 1904.

The hockey club announced that a manager would be appointed later. Indeed, an unknown figure, a Mr. B. Spanner,
⁷
apparently did carry the title for a time. But the real boss had been there all along: Alexander Miln.

Ridpath may have been the captain of the Toronto Hockey Club in name, but it quickly became evident that the real skipper was the twenty-eight-year-old Miln. Aggressive and ambitious, the Scottish-born “Alex” had been around Toronto sports circles for years. He was a noted cyclist, horseman and sailor, belonging to both the Toronto Hunt Club and the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.

Miln was most noted, however, for his involvement in hockey. He had been associated with a number of organizations, but by far the most important was the legendary Toronto Wellingtons. While it appears he
played briefly with the club, his key role had been as manager of the squad in its heyday and, later, as its secretary-treasurer. After the men's hockey team folded, he remained permanent secretary of the Wellington alumni and its ladies' organization.

A bookkeeper by profession, Miln became a full-time hockey executive in the fall of 1905. John J. Palmer of the Toronto Type Foundry had purchased the Mutual Street Rink from the Caledonian Curling Club for the princely sum of $25,000. Shortly thereafter, he named Miln its manager. The
Toronto
News
noted that it was a popular choice: “Mr. Miln has been connected with hockey clubs for many years, and a better man for the position could not have been secured by the new owners of the rink.”
⁸

It appears that Miln's hockey ambitions from the outset were focused on the Stanley Cup, the very prize that Robertson's OHA so disparaged. It was Miln, after all, who had secured the Wellingtons' challenge against the Winnipeg Victorias in 1902, and he had acted as the team's spokesman in the Manitoba capital. A bitingly sarcastic letter in the Toronto papers the previous February had also betrayed a man not afraid to question the judgments of the association.

Although, like Robertson, a Conservative
⁹
in politics, Miln's independence on hockey matters became even clearer almost as soon as he took over at Mutual. He was publicly associated with the pro practice squad of 1905–06. He was also immediately engaged in extensive renovations of the old rink that betrayed bigger plans. Although the Caledonian building had been the preferred location of Toronto's top-rank shinny almost from the beginning, by the end of the nineteenth century it was also widely considered deficient for the national winter sport of a major Canadian city.

The first problem was the capacity of the building. On January 16, 1904, the facility managed to cram in 2,674 paying customers (and no
doubt a few others) to witness a showdown between the archrival Marlboros and St. Georges. This was a pittance compared with Montreal's great Westmount Arena, which offered seating for 4,500 and standing room for hundreds more. The new Winnipeg Arena, opened in 1905, could take in 4,000. In Toronto's much smaller venue, important games were often quick to sell out, leading to ticket scalping that could drive prices up tenfold.

The second problem was the size of the ice surface. This was linked to the first problem, because significant seating had been put in for hockey spectators only after the fact. Known to be jerry-built, these stands significantly reduced the width of the original, squarish skating area. “To settle all disputes,” the
Toronto
Star
measured Mutual's surface. It was a mere 153 feet, 4 inches long and 73 feet, 5 inches wide.
¹⁰

This put the playing area well below the standard established in Montreal. The surface of its Victoria Skating Rink of 1875 had been 200 feet by 85 feet (the National Hockey League standard to this day). The ice of the contemporary Montreal Arena was even slightly larger. Mutual's small surface could help against a visiting team of strong skaters, but it would handicap any Toronto team that aspired to take the Stanley Cup on a full-size sheet.

The final problem was the amenities—or rather, the virtual lack of them. There were also design flaws for a major spectator facility, like windows low enough for young boys to crawl through for free admission. Most of all, this was the pre-Zamboni era, when “natural” ice had to be painstakingly created by work and weather. This sheet was constructed on top of sand, which, combined with the era's poor lighting, made for a murky-coloured surface that rendered the puck only semi-visible to spectators.

No Canadian city of the time had an artificial skating rink; however, Toronto's milder winters (compared to cities like Montreal and Winnipeg) were a more serious challenge. They made schedules much less reliable. They also caused regular practices to begin comparatively later in the season—sometimes as late as January—another disadvantage for a Toronto team seeking a national championship.
¹¹

As early as the 1890s, Mutual's weaknesses were leading to stories about a “new rink” for Toronto. Soon, these reports began to follow an annual and predictable cycle. In the fall would come word of plans to
construct a new artificial-ice complex the following off-season, usually said to be located on the site of the New Caledonian Rink. The idea would inevitably be based on the contemporary gold standard, Pittsburgh's Duquesne Gardens.