Gang’s All Here: Marty Barry is the Bruin on the right here, alongside teammate Dit Clapper, the man he succeeded as Boston captain in 1934. The players were on the ice here at Boston Garden (not, as the original caption suggests, in Newton, Massachusetts), conducting a clinic for prospective players. (Image: Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection)
A friend with impeccable Bruins sources tells me that Boston management aims to correct the record on their missing captains … just not quite yet.
The team’s centennial is coming up, in 2024, and a book and a documentary are planned, and so in one future fell swoop the errors that the Bruins have for so long refused to acknowledge let alone correct will be no more.
So that’s something to look forward to … in two years’ time.
The news from Quebec in November of 1933.
Meanwhile, it was on a Friday of today’s date in 1905 that Marty Barry, one of Boston’s mislaid captains, was born in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, north of Quebec City. A centreman, he made his NHL debut with the New York Americans in 1927. The Bruins claimed him from the Americans’ Can-Am league team in the NHL’s intra-league draft in 1929 and he played six seasons in Boston.
Barry was 27 when he succeeded Dit Clapper as Bruins’ captain in November of 1933. It was a bit of a homecoming for the new skipper: Art Ross’ team had convened in Quebec City that year for its training camp.
“Some athletes talk a wonderful game,” a dispatch from the Boston Globe began early that month, but that wasn’t “one of the failings of the newly appointed captain of the Boston Bruins hockey club.”
It continued:
Marty “Clam” Barry, following a meeting of the players and Manager Ross late here this afternoon, was asked to make a speech. Barry, who never utters a word in the dressing room, as usual had nothing to say, but his playmates insisted, so Marty stood up and made the longest speech of his career.
“Thanks, fellows.” Then he sat down.
That is Marty Barry, no bluff, no talk, but a man of action on the ice as he was always an outstanding performer of the Bruins since he was drafted from New Haven Eagles four years ago, and he topped an admirable record last season by being leading scorer of the Bruins and one of the top pointmakers of the NHL.
Barry scored 27 goals and 39 points in 48 games as Boston captain, which tied him for the team points total with Nels Stewart. He finished fourth in NHL scoring. The Bruins didn’t fare so well, finishing out of the playoffs in the nine-team league.
The Bruins’ captaincy was, in that era, a one-year appointment, and Barry was duly succeeded in the fall of 1934 by Stewart.
With Art Giroux, the Bruins traded him in 1935 to the Detroit Red Wings, getting back Cooney Weiland and Walt Buswell. In his four years in Detroit, Barry won a pair of Stanley Cup championships (in ’36 and ’37) and a Lady Byng Trophy. He played one last year in the NHL in 1939-40 for the Montreal Canadiens.
Marty Barry died in 1969 at the age of 64.
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