A Great Game (34 page)

But now Ridpath was gone to hockey's newest land of opportunity, the cash-rich mining towns of northeastern Ontario. It was not his first adventure into the Temiskaming Hockey League. He had, after all, gone there late in the 1905–06 season, when he had joined teammates Rolly Young and Harry Burgoyne to play under assumed names for New Liskeard against Haileybury. That infamous excursion had shattered the amateur Marlboros and paved the way for the formation of the Professionals.

The Toronto papers, ever loyal to the OHA, had claimed that there had been deep revulsion in the north country against ringers as a consequence of the scandal. They could not have been more wrong. Indeed, the Temiskaming league began taking hockey “tourism” to levels never seen before or since. Lineups changed nonstop as players were literally hired game to game. On occasion, the personnel of clubs from other leagues were recruited in their entirety to substitute for local talent.

International Hockey League teams had been willing renters of their lineups to the Temiskaming clubs. However, the U.S.-based league was the ultimate loser in this dubious practice. Just as the IHL had once lured away promising Canadian prospects with the big bucks of the Michigan mining country, it then faced the same sort of competition in reverse. Northeastern Ontario was experiencing a mining boom in everything
from cobalt to gold. Its hockey clubs quickly became key Dominion competitors in the economic struggle that eventually finished the IHL.

Filled with well-paid young men lacking wives and mortgages, Canada's booming mining communities had lots of money to spend on hockey. Huge gates fuelled runaway player salaries. For example, in the home opener of Ridpath's new club, there were reportedly 4,000 rooters present—and Cobalt was a town of just 5,000 people. Yet the sum spent on tickets was only a small part of the cash haul. Wagers were plentiful and often very large. The total gambling in Riddy's first home-and-home series against Haileybury was in the range of $50,000. Robertson's
Telegram
was not exaggerating all that much when it claimed “up north they bet real money on hockey, and keep the mining stocks to sell to their friends.”
¹⁴

None of this should imply that the hockey played in the Temiskaming league was farcical—far from it. From 1906 on, the circuit's calibre grew steadily. By 1909, increasing numbers of established stars were being pilfered permanently from the clubs of big-city leagues like the ECHA and OPHL. Even before Ridpath's recruitment, the Silver Kings had beaten the Stanley Cup champion Montreal Wanderers 6–4 in an exhibition match earlier that season. Yet, because of progressively stricter residency rules in place for Cup competition, the bush league had virtually no chance of playing for Lord Stanley's chalice.

Miln, however, had apparently not given up on the championship. On the contrary, he again had his wires out and acted with speed and skill in frantic efforts to replace the hole left by Ridpath. Alex first elected to dump Fred Young, whom he had relegated to being a goal umpire. He then recruited Jimmy Mallen. Mallen, on his way out of the dissolving West Penn League, was from good stock. His brother, former Toronto Pro Ken Mallen, was a widely sought-after performer.

Mallen was not available for the game to be played the following
evening, so Miln also brought in Herb Fyfe. This refugee from Guelph was a steady performer who had practised with the Torontos in the 1907–08 preseason. In the end, though, it would not matter who took Riddy's place on left wing.

The contest was another of the year's key turning points involving Brantford. Fittingly, the showdown would take place at its address on Waterloo Street. The Torontos went down by a score of 12–4. However, they did not just lose big—they lost ugly. It all unravelled when Newsy Lalonde's hypercompetitive nature got the better of him.

Toronto had been outplayed in the first half and trailed 4–2. The young captain sensed the season was slipping away. So, when Brantford goal judge Charles Carson allowed a dubious fifth marker early in the second, Lalonde simply lost it. He went after Carson with his fists, causing a mad rush of players, fans and police officers to enter the melee. Although not thrown out of the game, Newsy's heart was not in it after that—and thus the blowout began.

It was clear that Lalonde would be facing charges from the Brantford authorities. No matter how much roughness was sometimes tolerated in hockey in those days, the line had always been drawn at attacks on officials. More critically, Lalonde's image had shifted. Newsy had always been a tough—and occasionally dirty—hockey player. As a star scorer who spent much time near the goalmouth, it was an occupational requirement. However, his behaviour had been borderline before—for example, he once pummelled a Galt fan who had attempted to interfere with the on-ice play. Toronto may not have been as pure about hockey violence as the OHA pretended, but fans did draw a distinction between an on-ice “policeman” and a thug.

So the fan favourite was gone. The captain was under a cloud. Team play had largely been lost through the constant shuffling. And the championship was now unequivocally out of reach. The Torontos were approaching a point of no return.

Before resuming league play, however, the club would take the train to London for an exhibition contest that Friday. This OPHL expedition, canvassing a potential new market after the loss of two franchises, was certainly going against the grain. The Garnet and Grey met up with Galt and lost 7–4. A well-filled Princess Rink witnessed a lacklustre effort on
both sides—hardly a move to inspire interest in a London franchise. If nothing else, though, the match did confirm that the Miln-Irving business partnership remained intact despite the league's boardroom battles.
¹⁵

The following Tuesday, February 16, the Torontos went on to Galt itself, where they again lost, the final count being 16–11. At this point, Lalonde seems to have embarked on a score-settling campaign. His aggressive play led to another fight with Dusome. This followed his appearance earlier that day in front of a police magistrate in Brantford. There, the Toronto centre got off with a fine for assault and abusive language.

Newsy's reign of terror moved back to Mutual Street on Thursday night. In a contest marked by the terrible refereeing of Buck Irving—who was generally known to be a terrible referee—Lalonde took after Berlin's Edmunds and Gross with vicious stickwork. The hometown fans loudly jeered him when he was finally thrown out of the game. The
Globe
observed the seriousness of the situation:

When a local crowd hisses and hoots the captain of the local team for brutal attacks on opposing players, the same captain having been fined a few days ago in the Brantford Police Court for beating a goal umpire, his usefulness in promoting the game of hockey seems to have reached the limit.
¹⁶

Unfortunately for the Professionals, the bad news did not end there. They had again lost—this time 8–5—and had played very poorly. The
crowd was a small one, and even those fans were dissatisfied. The reviews were universally bad, the following being typical: “If the players received real money for playing a hockey game, they got it under false pretences. It wasn't even shinny. Alex Miln, himself, admitted that.”
¹⁷

To compound matters, some serious local competition to the pro team was emerging. It was not from the Interprovincial Union, where the Toronto Amateur Athletic Club had finished the season winless, but from the good old Ontario Hockey Association. The TAAC's entry in the old association was having a decent season, but the new senior club from St. Michael's College was doing even better. For the first time in several years, the possibility of a senior championship was generating real amateur hockey excitement in Toronto.

Queen City fans were also being reminded daily of their departed pro celebrities. Reports from the mining country heaped praise on the exploits of Bruce Ridpath, now the darling of Cobalt, lifting his team ahead of Haileybury's Skene Ronan and Con Corbeau to take the local championship. And Dubbie Kerr was emerging as a new star of the Ottawas, hot on the trail of the Eastern league title.

The Toronto Professionals' final game of the season would be at Mutual on Tuesday, February 23—and it would be another seminal moment against Brantford. By now, the Torontos were merely limping towards the finish line, both on the ice and at the box office.

The events of that evening would make things far worse for the organization.

Despite the previous three losses, the Torontos' lineup was starting to come back together. Lambe had been returned to spare status while Lalonde was moved to the cover point position. This had allowed forwards Mallen, Manson, Smith and Fyfe—all decent hockey players—to be put on the ice as a unit. The team again had a solid attack, while Tyner in goal and an improving Doran at point covered the back end.

Indeed, the Torontos did look like the better team against Manager Roy Brown's outfit that evening. Yet every time they appeared ready to roll ahead, the players seemed to either pull back or permit a soft goal.
In the end, they let Brantford turn a 7–6 deficit into a 9–7 victory. The few hundred diehards present were vocally displeased.

It is evident from all reports the next day that many suspected the game had been thrown, if not rigged outright. Even the
News
, the club's most sympathetic organ, testified that “there were those at the rink who said openly that the locals wouldn't take it as a gift.”
¹⁸
John Ross Robertson's
Telegram
, which regularly implied that pro hockey was fixed, gleefully proclaimed “professional hockey got a bad black eye in last night's game.”
¹⁹

The criticism focused on two players: Lalonde and Tyner. Lalonde was unusually passive and, very uncharacteristically, failed to score. Tyner let in an abnormal number of soft ones. According to nasty but widely circulating rumours, the pair, after deliberately losing the game, were going to play for Brantford to help them overtake Galt in the homestretch.
²⁰
Miln was even said to be in on the scheme.
²¹