Small but mighty, George Hainsworth made his NHL debut in November of 1926 when his Montreal Canadiens opened their season in Boston, losing 4-1 to the hometown Bruins. Eddie Shore got his start in the league that same night, for any who might be keeping track. Also for the record: in the third period, Canadiens’ winger Aurèle Joliat met Shore with what the Montreal Gazette rated “the hardest check of the night, “right at mid-ice, and Eddie, of Saskatoon, went up in the air a yard or two and landed on his third vertebra.” Shore’s Saskatchewan hometown is actually nearer Regina than Saskatoon, but never mind. By the Gazette’s account, Shore set up Carson Cooper for Boston’s fourth goal, even though NHL records don’t credit him with an assist. Hainsworth, for his part, well, the Gazette noticed that in the third, he “seemed to be handicapped by a thick fog which was rising from the ice at the end of the rink. The heat in the rink was fearful.”

It would take Hainsworth, who died on a Monday of this date in 1950, three more games in 1926 to notch his first NHL win, but by the end of the season he was recognized as the league’s best goalkeep, winning inaugural Vézina Trophy. By the time he retired in 1937, no-one doubted that he was one of the best ever to have played in the NHL — even if (rant alert) the league’s faulty 2017 ranking of superlative NHLers forgot about him. Twenty per cent of Hainsworth’s regular-season starts ended as shutouts; in 1928-29, he kept a clean sheet in 22 of 44 regular-season games.

Hainsworth grew up in southwestern Ontario, though at 5’6” and 150 pounds you wouldn’t say substantially. A tiny figure who looked lost in his bulky goaltending armor is a phrase extracted from a remembrance written at the time of his death. Earlier (1927), he was dubbed Kitchener’s coolest cucumber and seen, on some occasions (in 1929), to have spent the greater part of the game enjoying an impersonal view of the affair as he lolled back on the top cross-bar of his cage. What chances Ottawa did have that night he handled with such ease and nonchalance that they appeared simple.

Sometimes he had a bad night. In Boston in 1930, he stopped George Owen’s long shot, but then cleared in such leisurely fashion that he finally fell face forward on the ice, allowing Cooney Weiland to score.

Sleepy-eyed, Boston’s Globe called him in 1930, citing also his jovial calm. A year later he was deemed still as spry as a two-year-old whose utter sang-froid in stopping a puck affords a rare thrill in hockey.

He stood out like a beacon (1932), handling some of Charlie Conacher’s fastest shots as though they came from the stick of Morenz’s little son.

As of 1934, he was one of the smoothest articles seen between the iron bars on any rink.

His harshest critic was said to be his wife, Alma; back home in Kitchener, she’d read newspaper reports of his games and then write him letters telling him to do better.

He was an alderman in Kitchener at the time of his death in 1950 at the age of 57. He and Alma were returning from a visit to their son Bill in Val d’Or, Quebec, when, near Gravenhurst, Ontario, their car collided head-on with a small truck. Alma and three other were injured; Hainsworth alone lost his life.