Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (12 page)

CAPTAIN COMMUNIST

But the NHL reacted quickly and harshly, led by Campbell, Smythe and Red Wings general manager Jack Adams. Smythe, who had fought in both world wars and had the rank of major, treated the players and team coach Hap Day, who suggested the association be allowed, as traitors. In a meeting with Thomson,
Smythe called his team captain a communist. “If Conn Smythe had fought the Germans as hard as he fought the players, World War II would have been over in about a week,” Harvey said years later. Adams was vehement in his opposition to the association. Years later, it was revealed that Adams was given a set amount of operating capital each season by the owners, the Norris family, and what he did not spend was his salary. One year, when several members of a Red Wing team that won the Stanley Cup signed contracts for the next season, their salaries were cut.

WHAT A COINCIDENCE

Within a year, most of the players involved in the association had been traded, several to the sad-sack Chicago Black Hawks. In the middle of a streak of five consecutive Stanley Cup wins, the Canadiens kept the great Harvey until the string was snapped in 1961, then traded him. Adams traded Lindsay, who had just finished his best NHL season (30 goals, 85 points) and sensational young goalie Glenn Hall, a Lindsay supporter, to Chicago. Adams' efforts led to the Wing players, minus Lindsay's leadership and determination, pulling out of the association and other teams, under extreme pressure from owners, buckled and the association folded, giving full control back to the owners. “Our effort was not a failure despite what happened because we did make some small gains in benefits and we paved the way for Eagleson and his bunch to form the union a few years down the road,” Lindsay said.

THE EAGLE LANDS

Eagleson had played lacrosse against Bob Pulford of the Maple Leafs, then their paths crossed again at the University of Toronto in the early 1960s, where Eagleson was a law school student and Pulford was working on a degree. Eagleson became involved in hockey when Bobby Orr's family asked him to look after the junior-hockey superstar's affairs. Then Pulford sought Eagleson's advice on a contract and other young Leaf stars of the 1960s such as Bob Baun and Carl Brewer consulted him, too. When Brewer left the NHL in 1965, Eagleson aided in the defenceman's successful fight to be reinstated as an amateur to join the Canadian national team. In 1966, Eagleson helped the players on the Springfield Indians of the American League gain some concessions against the
cruel and unusual working conditions of team owner Eddie Shore. “A few of us had talked with Eagleson and his law partners for hours on forming a union,” Baun said. “We talked about it with friends on other teams and there was positive response to the idea.”

CAN'T SAY NO TO A ROOM FULL OF BRUINS

Eagleson negotiated the largest contract in NHL history for Orr when he joined the Bruins out of junior hockey in 1966. In Montreal to see his client, Eagleson was invited to a hotel room by several Bruins and when he arrived, the whole team was present. They suggested that a union was needed and Eagleson was the man to explore the idea. With the Leaf players encouraging him, Eagleson quietly talked with all NHL teams and set down the groundwork for the players' association. Pulford was the first NHLPA president and when the Board of Governors would not allow Eagleson, the association executive-director, to address their meeting, Pulford, accompanied by veteran players Norm Ullman, Bob Nevin, Eddie Johnston, Harry Howell, and J.C. Tremblay, told the owners they had formed an association and the owners agreed to recognize it.

A SCANDALOUS SEND-OFF

Eagleson remained as the NHLPA's main man until the 1990s, negotiating several agreements that improved the players' conditions and benefits. He was replaced as executive director by Bob Goodenow, then Eagleson was convicted with theft and fraud involving association affairs. While his players' association time ended in disgrace, he did negotiate important gains for the players.

* * * * *

“Call them pros, call them mercenaries—but in fact they are just grown-up kids who have learned on the frozen creek or flooded corner lot that hockey is the greatest thrill of all.”

—Lester Patrick, defenceman, coach and a founding member
of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association

The Ottawa Valley town of Renfrew once had the highest paid team with the most stars in hockey: the Millionaires.

T
he first decade of the 20th century was a great time to be a hockey player. Teams that paid players to play—the term “professional” was used sparingly—popped up across Canada with no structured administration to supervise the various circuits. As a result, players could sell themselves to the highest bidder and, for a few seasons, many did precisely that: sometimes changing teams in midseason or signing on for an important series.

DESPERATELY SEEKING CYCLONE

Fred “Cyclone” Taylor was an extremely fast, highly skilled attacker who was eagerly sought by several teams. “It was the best time to be a player because we could jump all over the country, going where the money was the best,” said Taylor in a 1973 interview when he was 89 years old. “It wasn't like a later time, starting in the 1920s, when one team could tie up your professional rights for life. We knew we were lucky but we also knew that it wouldn't last. The costs of a competitive team were much more than the income produced by the small arenas. We players tried to get all we could before the owners got sick of losing money.”

A SPENDING SPREE OF SILVER

The battle for playing talent was a mild one compared to the personal rivalries between team owners, including several very wealthy men who enjoyed sport as a diversion from their money-making businesses. M.J. O'Brien was a silver magnate, regarded as a “dapper dandy” right down to his pearl-buttoned spats. His son, J. Ambrose, talked his father into backing the Upper Ottawa Valley League, featuring teams in the silver-mining town of Cobalt; Pembroke; and Renfrew, the dairy town an hour north of Ottawa where O'Brien's team, the Creamery Kings, won five consecutive championships.

SICK OF HOCKEY? TRY LIVING IN MONTREAL IN 1910

The Eastern Canada Amateur Hockey Association had turned into the Canadian Hockey Association to squeeze out Sam Lichtenheim, who feuded with the other owners over gate receipts. The O'Briens, hoping for a shot at winning the Stanley Cup, applied for membership in the new league. When they were turned down, they found a strong ally in Lichtenheim. Together they formed the National Hockey Association and when it was obvious that the money behind the new venture gave it the edge, the NHA and the CHA merged. The new circuit had six teams: Ottawa, the Montreal Shamrocks, Montreal Wanderers, Renfrew, and the mining towns of Haileybury and Cobalt. J. Ambrose's idea to add one more club representing French Montreal, known as the Canadiens, received the backing of the other two Montreal clubs. Thus, the NHA opened the 1910 season with seven teams.

LOOT LURES LUMBER BARONS

Because the O'Briens wanted their Renfrew club to be the NHA's powerhouse, they spared no expense in assembling a team. Goalie Bert Lindsay, already a Creamery King, was rated the best in the game. The Patrick brothers were lured from the west, where they had combined hockey with the family lumber business: Lester for a top salary of $3,000 for a 12-game season and Frank for $2,000. This was big money considering many good players earned less than $1,000 per season. Renfrew forwards Larry Gilmour, Herb Jordan, and Bob Rowe had been top amateurs and Fred Whitcroft and Hugh Millar had been Lester Patrick's teammates with the Edmonton club that had lost a Stanley Cup challenge to the Wanderers the previous year.

LESSONS UNHEEDED BY THE PRE-LOCKOUT NY RANGERS

But Renfrew's big catch was Taylor, who had starred for the 1909 Cup-champion Ottawa Senators. “I was making good money with the Senators plus I had a civil service job for the other nine months of the year,” Taylor said. “But the O'Briens offered me an incredible amount, $5,250 for a two-month, 12-game schedule. You have to remember how much money that was in 1908. My father was a salesman for a farm implement company and the most
he ever made was $90 a month.” The Creamery Kings, appropriately, were renamed the Millionaires, but were known in Renfrew as the Boarding House Gang because they shared lodgings in the same residence. The famous players became the focal point of Renfrew's social life and the rich O'Briens enjoyed spending time with the players. When the team was whipped 7–2 by the Wanderers to open the season, Lester Patrick summed it up well: “Unfortunately, the opening of the season interfered with our Renfrew social activities.”

NOT EVEN NEWSY, ODIE AND SPRAGUE…

Despite the midseason addition of the great Newsy Lalonde from the Montreal Canadiens—he scored 22 goals in five games—the Millionaires finished third behind the Wanderers and Ottawa. The team made a postseason trip to New York for a three-game exhibition series against a club that combined Wanderers and Senators players, attracting attention for the game in the U.S. The Patricks left Renfrew for the 1911 season and were replaced by sniper Don Smith and another brother duo destined for big things, Sprague and Odie Cleghorn. But the result was the same. The Millionaires finished third and the O'Briens, who had lost $50,000 in the two seasons, decided that was enough hockey.

FOR A GOOD TIME, NOT A LONG TIME

“We had very good talent in my two years in Renfrew but, first, the Montreal Wanderers and then the Ottawa Senators were better teams,” Taylor said. “But I had a great experience there. I got to know the Patrick brothers and listen to them talk about the game of hockey around the dinner table at the boarding house. Much of what they discussed there became the basis for the modern game.” J. Ambrose O'Brien never expressed a single word of scorn about his failed efforts to win the Stanley Cup. “To have the chance to know well and watch that many great players on one team was worth whatever it cost us,” he said.

A high-sticking incident leads to chaos in Montreal.

H
IGH SPIRITS AND HIGH STICKS

Most people think of March 17th as St. Patrick's Day, but in Montreal it is commonly remembered as the anniversary of the Richard Riot. In 2005 the world marked the 50th anniversary of a black day for hockey fans. And it all stems from a suspension of a man know as “The Rocket.”

The week before, the Habs were in Boston playing the Bruins. Even then, before the great Boston–Montreal rivalry of the 1970s, the Bruins had an inferiority complex when it came to the Canadiens. At this point of the 1954–55 season, the Bruins were in fourth place and had clinched a playoff spot. (The Habs eliminated the Bruins in the playoffs later that year.) During a game on March 13, Bruin defenceman Hal Laycoe, a former Canadien, walloped Montreal's star player Maurice “Rocket” Richard with a high stick, cutting his face. The Rocket could see the blood trickling down his face, and responded in kind…giving Laycoe a lumber facial of his own.

YOU JUST PUNCHED THE WRONG GUY

Next, with sticks swinging all around, rookie linesman Cliff Thompson did something unprecedented for an official. He jumped on the Rocket's back, and Richard swung and punched Thompson. In any sport no matter the era, it has long been considered taboo to touch an official. It was known the Rocket was going to be punished, but for how long was yet to be determined.

GOD VS. SATAN, TONIGHT AT THE FORUM

According to Montreal GM Frank Selke Jr., “the owners told [NHL president Clarence] Campbell that you give him the proper penalty or your job is on the line.” Three days later, the verdict came down. Rocket Richard was suspended for the final regular season game and for the entire playoffs. Famed hockey writer Stan Fischler once said of this sentence, “Now, that's like sentencing a pickpocket to the electric chair.” The French hockey fans were
outraged at this perceived (correct or not) indignity being thrown toward their hero. Campbell was suddenly in the forefront of an ethnic clash between Francophone and Anglophone—and then, Campbell sprinkled salt into an already-deep wound.

A PRESIDENT LACKING POLITICAL SAVVY

Saturday night, March 17, 1955. The Habs were scheduled to play the defending Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings, with whom an intense rivalry had developed in the 1950s. President Campbell was a regular attendee at the Forum, and he was asked by the then-mayor of Montreal Jean Drapeau not to attend the game. The mayor did not want an already excitable situation to boil over into something calamitous. However, Campbell did not listen.

HABS HYSTERIA

Not only did Campbell show up at the game, Campbell showed up about halfway through the first period, as though to draw extra attention to himself. The crowd did not respond well. Fans booed, hissed, and threw things such as tomatoes at Campbell and his guest. At the end of the first period with the Canadiens trailing 4–1, a younger male reached to shake the president's hand, and as Campbell reached out his hand, the youth threw a punch at Campbell. Then, out of nowhere, a teargas bomb went off inside the Forum creating mass hysteria. Fans stampeded toward the exits, and things spilled over to St. Catherine Street. Trolley cars were turned over. Newspaper stands burned. Shops were looted. Many shopkeepers lost everything. (Thankfully, no one was killed in the chaos.) The Habs forfeited the game to the Red Wings 4–1, but that was the least of the problems in downtown Montreal.