A birthday today for the king of the hook check, Jack Walker, who was born on a Thursday of this date in 1888 in Silver Mountain, Ontario, which is west of modern-day Thunder Bay. Actually, Frank Nighbor may have been the monarch of all the hook checkers: it’s said that he once hook-checked Howie Morenz so effectively that the Montreal star never made it past centre-ice all night, and finally burst into tears in frustration. (If you’re in need of a hook-check primer, that’s here.) Walker was annoyingly efficient, too, and, what’s more, he may (possibly) have been the one to have devised the hook check in the first place, back before the First World War when he was getting started in hockey in Port Arthur. (That’s not settled fact, it has to be said: a couple of other players who skated up at the Lakehead, Bud Sorel and Joel Rochon, are sometimes said to have shown Walker the way.)  

Walker won three Stanley Cups in his day, with Toronto of the NHA in 1914, with the PCHA Seattle Metropolitans three years later, and then finally as a member of the WHL Victoria Cougars in 1925. He was voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1960, a decade after his death at the age of 61 in 1950. Walker might have won a fourth in 1919, but for the deadly pandemic that shut down the Stanley Cup final that year between Walker’s Seattle and the Montreal Canadiens before a champion could be decided. 

Earlier that winter, in January, the Mets paid tribute to their doughty 30-year-old checker ahead of a game at the Seattle Arena against the Victoria Aristocrats. Victoria prevailed on the night by a score of 1-0, with Eddie Oatman making the difference. “Jack Walker played a bang-up checking brand of hockey,” the Seattle Star noted, “that stopped many Victoria rushes. His hook check was well-oiled and in fine working order last night.” 

Victoria’s Daily Times was a little more grudging in its praise. “Jack Walker arose to the occasion,” their correspondent reported. “The crack forward was everywhere with his bothersome stick.”