Month: May 2024

frank fredrickson: winnipeg’s golden falcon

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Icelander: The great Frank Fredrickson died on a Monday of this date in 1979. He was 84. Born in Winnipeg in 1895 to parents who’d immigrated from Iceland, he first turned out as a centreman for the predominantly Icelandic Winnipeg Falcons in 1913-14. By 1916, almost to a man, the roster had enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Fredrickson started in the infantry before heading skyward with the Royal Flying Corps. He captained the Falcons to gold at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, then turned pro with the PCHA Victoria Aristocrats. Only after he won a Stanley Cup championship with the Victoria Cougars in 1925 did he get to the NHL, starring for the Bruins in Boston from 1926 to 1929. He went on to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates (he coached them, too) and the Detroit Falcons. After he retired, Fredrickson coached, steering both the Princeton University Tigers and the UBC Thunderbirds, before turning to a career in insurance. Frank Fredrickson was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958.

parading the cup: it’s the appropriate thing to do (I guess)

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Strength In Numbers: Guarded by Canadiens’ captain Yvan Cournoyer and Serge Savard, the hallowed Stanley Cup makes its way through downtown Montreal on May 26, 1978. Police estimated that a crowd of 200,000 turned out to celebrate Montreal’s six-game defeat of the Boston Bruins, earning themselves a third straight championship. “You’re never tired of winning,” Cournoyer said, with a grin, “especially when you face a reception like the one we’re getting. Each parade is better than the one before.” Goaltender Ken Dryden was a little more … circumspect? jaded? “I don’t find much difference from one parade to another,” he said, “but I gues we won the Cup, it’s the appropriate thing to do.” (Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

chasing the puck with gustav jaenecke

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A birthday today for Gustav Jaenecke, a left winger, born in Berlin in Germany on a Friday of this same date in 1908. Was he the best German-born player not named Leon Draisaitl? There may be something to that, grist for an unresolvable debate.

Clubwise, he skated for Berliner SC from 1924 to 1944, winning national titles in that time. After the Second World War, he play another five seasons for SC Riessersee in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, winning another three German titles before he retired in 1951 at the age of 43. He played for Germany in eight World Championships, collecting silver in 1930 and bronzes in 1932 and 1934. He he also played in three Winter Olympics, winning bronze at Lake Placid in 1932. In 1936, he captained the German team at the Garmisch games where he was roundly praised as Germany’s best player as the hosts finished tied with Sweden for fifth place among 15 teams.

Jaenecke was a German national tennis champion in his time, too, and played in the Davis Cup for his country. Jaenecke was elected to the International Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in 1998 and the German Sport Hall of Fame in 2008. He published an autobiography (below) in 1939 —Jagd hinter dem Puck: Eishockey, herzhaft und humorvoll (Chase The Puck: Ice Hockey, Hearty and Humorous).

Gustav Jaenecke died in 1985. He was 77.

sudden impact

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Over and Done: A birthday today for former Montreal Canadiens left winger Yvon Lambert, who’s 74 today. Born in Drummondville, Quebec, on a Saturday of this date in 1950, he scored this famous overtime goal on May 10, 1979, to propel his Canadiens past the Boston Bruins by a score of 5-4 and into the Stanley Cup Final. Montreal had tied the game late in the third when Guy Lafleur capitalized on a powerplay stemming from too many Bruins finding themselves on the ice. That’s Boston defenceman Brad Park and goaltender Gilles Gilbert doing their best to stop Lambert, and not succeeding. Montreal went on to beat the New York Rangers to claim the Cup. (Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

ironwrought

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Ranger Run: A birthday today for Murray Murdoch, born in Lucknow, Ontario, on a Thursday of this date in 1904. He was one of Lester Patrick’s original New York Rangers in 1926 and became the NHL’s original ironman, never missing a game in the 11 seasons that followed, helping New York to Stanley Cup championships in 1928 and 1933. He went on to a legendary coaching career with Yale University. A cousin of Dave and Ken Dryden’s, Murdoch was also related by marriage to Paul and Mark Messier. He died in 2001 at the age of 96.

breakaway finn

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Finn de Siècle: Born in Helsinki, in Finland, on a Wednesday of this date in 1960, Jari Kurri is 64 today, so here’s raising an old-school Jofa helmet high, on the end of a Koho Revolution from the ’80s, to him, in salute. Here he is testing Rick Wamsley at the Forum in Montreal on the night of Tuesday, March 2, 1982, when the Edmonton Oilers tied the Canadiens 3-3. Kurri was 21, then, in his second season in the NHL. He didn’t score on this night, but he did register an assist on Glenn Anderson’s second-period goal. (Image: Pierre McCann, Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

blues brothers, 1930: sparky, yip, butch, and bun

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Guess That’s Why They Call Them The Blueshirts: The 1928 New York Rangers won their first Stanley Cup championship, but in subsequent seasons they had difficulty regaining hockey’s heights. Seen here, the 1929-30 Rangers fell to the Montreal Canadiens in the Stanley Cup semi-finals. They are, in the back row, from left: Murray Murdoch, Yip Foster, Leroy Goldsworthy, Lester Patrick (coach + manager), Sparky Vail, and Butch Keeling. Front row, from the left: Leo Quenneville, Bun Cook, John Ross Roach, Bill Cook (captain), Frank Boucher, Leo Bourgault, Paul Thompson, Harry Westerby (trainer).

dick irvin? never met a better coach in hockey

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“I never met a better coach in hockey,” Toe Blake was saying this week back in 1957. “Any success I’ve had in the game belongs to him.”

Blake had achieved , at that point, quite a lot of success, having won three Stanley Cup championships as a player and another pair as coach of the Montreal Canadiens (with another six to come). Irvin, who died on this date in ’57 at the age of 64, had four Cup championships to his own name as a coach, one with the Toronto Maple Leafs, three with Montreal.

“I played eight years for Dick,” Blake continued. “He gave everything for his profession. I hope I’ve profited by his lessons.”

When Irvin arrived in Montreal in 1940-41, after nine seasons steering the Leafs, Blake was one of the few players he held on to. “He stripped the club. Then we went on to win Stanley Cups under his direction. He was a tough taskmaster. Before him, our club had been a too free and easy at times. But not under Dick.”

Irvin’s NHL coaching career began in Chicago, in 1928-29. He’d played three seasons with the Black Hawks, captaining the team, before a head injury ended his playing days. He was on the Chicago bench for two seasons, guiding them to the Stanley Cup final in 1931, where they lost to Cecil Hart’s Canadiens.

All in all, Irvin coached 1638 NHL games. His 791 wins slot him in at 12th on the all-time list of coaches in the league. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958.

a trophy for georges

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A Cup For Chicoutimi’s Cuke: In May of 1927 — the 12th, to be exact — Montreal Canadiens’ co-owner Léo Dandurand announced the advent of a new trophy celebrating the legacy of the iconic goaltender.

Passing along a calendar note, here, from Puckstruck’s Pedantry Desk. As you may have seen yesterday (in one of the several on-this-day posts across social media) or heard (on Hockey Night in Canada), it’s an anniversary this week for the Vézina Memorial Trophy. On Hockey Night, host Ron MacLean mentioned it in the second intermission of last night’s Vancouver—Edmonton game, setting up the punditry from his panel. “The Montreal Canadiens,” he intro’ed, “donated the Vézina Trophy on this day, May 14th, 1927. A pretty special goalie story happening tonight for the Edmonton Oilers.”

Good for Calvin Pickard, the Oiler goalie in question: he had a shutout going at that point, and ended up on the winning side of things as Edmonton skated to a 3-2 victory.

As for the Vézina, a correction is in order: if there’s a date we’re going to pinpoint as the trophy’s birthday, May 12th would be the one, rather than the 14th.

To recap: Georges Vézina, colossus of the Canadiens’ net for more than a decade, was still with the team in 1926 when illness stooped him in his skates. He died of tuberculosis in March of 1927 at the age of 39.

Vézina’s trophy.

NHL President Frank Calder was the one who originally suggested that the Canadiens might want to pay tribute to their late, great goaltender by donating a trophy in his name.

And so it was. Canadiens’ co-owner and director Léo Dandurand confirmed as much a year later, on the night of Thursday, May 12. The NHL season had ended a month earlier in 1927, with the Ottawa Senators overturning the Boston Bruins to claim the Stanley Cup. Montreal had bowed out of the playoffs in the semi-finals, losing to Ottawa.

Still, that May night they celebrated in Montreal, paying tribute, specifically, to the team’s 25-year-old superstar, Howie Morenz.

Why? Just because. He’d just wrapped up his sixth NHL season, finishing third in league (regular-season) scoring, and friends and admirers felt the need to (as the Montreal Gazette put it) “to do honor to the man whose meteoric speed, general effectiveness, and sportsmanlike bearing as a centre ice players for the Canadiens Hockey Club has earned for him a reputation second to none in the game.”

The venue was the prominent private social and literary Club Canadien de Montreal, at 334 Sherbrooke Street East. Frank Calder was there, and Art Ross from Boston, Montreal Maroons’ captain Dunc Munro, and Morenz’s best pal and former teammate, Sprague Cleghorn. Former Montreal Wanderers’ goaltender (and haberdasher-about-town) Riley Hern was on hand to present Morenz with “a handsome set of glassware.”

There was feasting, there was music, there were speeches.

It was when Dandurand got up to give one of those that the new Vézina Trophy was announced. Reporting the next day, May 13, La Patrie described the scene this way:

Before resuming his seat, Mr. Dandurand spoke of the suggestion that President Calder, of the NHL, of a cup given by the Canadien club in memory of its former goalkeeper, George Vézina, who died approximately 14 months ago. This cup will be awarded each year to the NHL goaltender who has maintained the best average, and this year it will go to George Hainsworth, the worthy successor of the Boy from Chicoutimi.

So: May 12th.

The trophy itself (with its crowning beaver) doesn’t seem to have been in the house, and I haven’t seen any trace of any kind of formal presentation that year. Hainsworth ended up winning the Vézina three years in a row before Boston’s Tiny Thompson finally broke his lock in 1930.

Hainsworth did definitely get his hands on the actual trophy in March of 1928, on the last night of the NHL season, when President Calder was on hand at the Montreal Forum to present it to him. The Canadiens took hold of the O’Brien Cup that night, too, as the NHL’s top Canadian team, while Howie Morenz got the Mappin & Webb Trophy as the Habs’ MVP in home games. Faithful Montreal fans also presented Hainsworth with a large metallic four-leaf clover, while Morenz’s winger Aurèle Joliat got a black cat on a leash. Let’s try not to miss that anniversary when it rolls around again next year.

bill friday, 1933—2024

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Our Man Friday: Bill Friday upholds the law (on the cover a 1977 Houston Aeros program).

Sorry to see the news of the death of former referee Bill Friday’s at the age of 91.

He whistled 1,425 major-league games in his time, with verve. A son of Hamilton, Ontario, he is the only official to have worked both the  Stanley Cup Finals in NHL and the WHA’s Avco Trophy Finals. Friday was 39 and second in seniority among NHL referees (behind Art Skov) when he skated over to the fledgling WHA in the summer of 1972. He was earning a salary of $25,000 wearing the black-and-white in the NHL, while the new league was offering $50,000 to drape him in red-and-white. One thing that didn’t change was the obloquy: in NHL Boston, local Bruin partisans could relied upon to serenade him with chants of “Friday is a bum,” while in the WHA, Edmonton Oilers’ fans were convinced that he favoured the Winnipeg Jets. Friday was named WHA referee-in-chief in 1976. He was also a founder — and the first president — of the NHL Officials Association.

out and about with babe dye

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Dye Job: Born in 1898 on a Friday of today’s date in Hamilton, Ontario, right winger Babe Dye was one of the sharpest-shooting NHLers in the 1920s. He twice led the league in scoring playing, with the Toronto St. Patricks in those years, and won a Stanley Cup championship with the team in 1922. In 1926, Charlie Querrie sold him to the Chicago Black Hawks. He was 28 that season, and scored 25 goals in 41 gams for the Hawks, before injuries slowed him and brought his illustrious career to an end in 1931. He played football for the Toronto Argonauts, too, and baseball for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Buffalo Bisons, and Baltimore Orioles of the International League. Babe Dye died in 1962 at the age of 63. He was posthumously elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, in 1970.