Born in Quebec City on a Sunday of this date in 1881, Joe Cattarinich was 29 in 1909 when he signed up to play goal for Montreal’s newest hockey outfit, Le Club de Hockey Le Canadien, in the newly hatched NHA. A month later, on January 5, 1910, he skated out on the ice of the Jubilee Arena to stop the first pucks in the history of Montreal’s mightiest franchise, ending up a winner in overtime, as the Canadiens beat the Cobalt Silver Kings 7-6. The Gazette reported next morning: “The deciding goal in the overtime was scored by [Skinner] Poulin after Cattaranich [sic] had made two good stops at Canadiens end of the rink.” Ructions in the birth of the new league resulted in this game being nullified, and the season re-started. Montreal’s second debut wasn’t so inspiring: in Renfrew, powered by Lester and Frank Patrick and Cyclone Taylor, the local Creamery Kings beat Cattarinich and his mates by a score of 9-4.

Cattarinich’s Canadiens career lasted just two more games after that, losses both at the sticks of the Ottawa Hockey Club. Teddy Groulx took over after that; by the following season, Montreal had drafted in Georges Vézina to take good care of the goaltending, which he did for the next 16+ years.

When he wasn’t stopping pucks, Cattarinich was a successful businessman, starting as as a hotel manager in Lévis, then prospering as a tobacco wholesaler. A busy sports promoter, he was an owner of racing tracks and many of the horses who ran them in Montreal, Cleveland, Chicago, and New Orleans. Leo Dandurand was a partner in some of those equine ventures, and it was with him (and Louis Letourneau) that Cattarinich bought the Canadiens for $11,000 in 1921, following George Kennedy’s death. When the partners sold the team in 1935 to other Montreal interests, the price was $165,000.

“During their ownership,” the Gazette noted in 1938, following Cattarinich’s death at the age of 57, “the Canadiens thrice won the Stanley Cup and during that period some of the players never signed a contract at a stated figure, depending on Cattarinich to pay them a just salary, and in each case that player finished the season more than satisfied with his treatment.”