Bill Durnan

lone ranger

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Stop Right There: A helmeted Ken McAuley turns away Syd Howe of the Detroit Red Wings during the NHL’s 1944-45 season. Following the action is Rangers’ defenceman Bucko McDonald.

Spare a thought tonight for Ken McAuley, who was born in Edmonton on a Sunday of today’s date in 1921. After a respectable junior career tending goals in Alberta and in Saskatchewan senior hockey, McAuley sat out the 1942-43 season while he recovered from what would seem to have been a spate of concussions. Signed by the New York Rangers’ Patrick in the fall of ’43, the 22-year-old McAuley, who had a full-time job as a probation officer in Edmonton, found himself handed the starting net an hour before the season got underway at the end of October. “I was so nervous,” he later recalled, “they had to help me on with my equipment.” With the history of his head in mind, he added a helmet to his rig as he made his debut in Toronto, where the Leafs fired 52 shots his way on their way to a 5-2 win.

It didn’t get better. McAuley and his Rangers staggered through a 15-game winless streak to start the year. By Christmas, they’d lost games by scores of 10-5 (to the Chicago Black Hawks) and 11-4 (to Toronto). It got worse: in January of ’44, he was on the porous end of a 13-3 loss to the Boston Bruins followed by, eight games later, a 15-0 puncturing at the sticks of the Detroit Red Wings. “Poor Ken McAuley,” as the Detroit Free Press noted, actually made 43 saves for his team before they put away the pucks for the night.

It went on and on. The Red Wings retraumatized McAuley with a 12-2 win a few games later, followed by an 11-2 obliteration by the Montreal Canadiens before the season, mercifully, ended. His heroics were often praised in the New York press, despite all the losing. “Brilliant goaling on young Ken McAuley’s part saved the Rangers from a worse defeat,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle opined in February of 1944, after a 5-2 loss in Montreal. McAuley handled 53 shots that night, the New York Daily News reported, with Canadiens’ Bill Durnan turned away 18.

Rangers bottomed out the NHL that season, finishing last in the six-team standings, in case there was any doubt, anchored down with a record of 6-39-5. McAuley suffered through all 50 games; the only relief he got all season was in December, when the Rangers were playing (again) in Detroit. Struck down by a puck shot by Carl Liscombe of the Red Wings, McAuley was evacuated to Harper Hospital for treatment of a suspected broken jaw. Taking his place on an emergency basis was Detroit’s spare goaltender, 17-year-old Harry Lumley: he played the third period of the Rangers’ 5-3 loss, shutting out his teammates. As it turned out, McAuley’s jaw was lacerated, not broken, and he started New York’s next game, on Christmas Day, a 5-3 Yuletide win over Toronto.

McAuley’s stats for the 1943-44 season are painful to consider: 310 goals allowed in 50 games left him with a 6.24 GAA. He endured a second season with New York, going 11-25-10 through 46 games while putting up a 4.93 GAA, with Doug Stevenson aboard to provide some relief as a back-up.

That was all for Ken McAuley’s NHL career. He went on to coach the Edmonton Oil Kings of the Western Canada Junior Hockey League, and in 1954, with Norm Ullman and Johnny Bucyk in the line-up, guided them to the Memorial Cup final. He sold cars and insurance and carpets in Edmonton before he retired. Ken McAuley died in 1992 at the age of 71.

blank verse

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Hoorah for Habs: It was on a Tuesday of this date in 1972, sorry to say, that Montreal’s Hall-of-Fame goaltender Bill Durnan died at the age of 56. That’s him in the happy middle here, in October of 1948, when as a 32-year-old veteran of the Canadien crease, he beat Turk Broda and the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-0 at the Forum for his first shutout of the season. Flanking Durnan are most of Montreal’s goalscorers on the night. From left, they’re Glen Harmon, Elmer Lach, Billy Reay, and Norm Dussault. Joe Carveth scored Montreal’s other goal.

murph ’n’ turf

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Old Hardrock: Born in Shawville, Quebec, on a Sunday of this date in 1915, Murph Chamberlain was an adept checker in his day, fore and back. An energetically abrasive forward, he started his career with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1937, and he saw service as well for the Boston Bruins and New York Americans. Mostly, though, he was a Canadien, spending eight of his 12 NHL seasons with Montreal, with whom he won Stanley Cups in 1944 and ’46.

This photograph dates to March of 1948, on a night when the Canadiens visited Toronto to beat the Leafs, 3-2. Chamberlain is #12; the referee sentencing him is Bill Chadwick, with linesman Sam Babcock inbound. Billy Reay is arriving on the scene (top of the face-off circle), and that’s Leaf defenceman Gus Mortson on his knee. In the first period, Mortson boarded Hab goaltender Bill Durnan, which brought down Chamberlain and Ken Reardon on his — Mortson’s — head. Chadwick assessed majors to all. According to NHL Rule 32b governing goaltenders and majors, Durnan didn’t go to the box, but faced a penalty shot instead … which Max Bentley missed. I feel it’s my duty to report here that Chamberlain and Mortson shared a nickname in those years, with wartime rationing still in effect, I guess: both were known as Old Hardrock.

 

Update: This post has been amended. Having speculated that the scene here might have been from a game in October of 1948, I stand corrected by hockey historian Paul Patskou: it was a Wednesday-night game at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1948.

home for a test

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The Montreal Canadiens will be taking a glass-half-full view of things into Friday night’s Stanley Cup final game, you have to think, and they were hoping to be doing it in an arena filled to 50 per cent capacity. Too. Down two games to the Tampa Bay Lightning, the hopeful Canadiens will host games 3 and 4 at the Bell Centre tomorrow and Monday. The team had asked the Quebec government for permission to allow as many as 10,500 fans in the building, but after discussions with provincial public health officials, that request was denied, and so Montreal’s efforts to even the series will be seen by the same number of fans, 3,500, that cheered the deciding game of their semi-final win over the Vegas Golden Knights last week. 

Depicted here, a Stanley Cup final of a whole other era, in a whole other Montreal arena: these fans are watching the opening game of the NHL’s 1947 championship series, which saw the Canadiens host the Toronto Maple Leafs on a Tuesday night in April of that year. The crowd at the Forum was overflowing on the night, with 12,320 eager fans on hand to witness Montreal down Toronto by a score of 6-0. Bill Durnan posted the shutout, with Buddy O’Connor scoring the winning goal. A good start for Montreal, but it was one that didn’t last: Toronto roared back to take the series, and the Cup, in six games. 

(Images: Conrad Poirier, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

around the big apple with phil watson

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The New York Rangers were in Montreal as January ran out of calendar in 1948: they beat the hometown Canadiens 4-2 that Saturday night. Veteran (and famously combustible) Ranger right winger Phil Watson contributed a goal to the effort, foiling Bill Durnan, and was boxed as well (Watson was) twice for sins of interference. Watson, who died on a Friday of this date in 1991, was 33 that winter, playing out the last of his boisterous 13 NHL seasons. He went on to coach the Rangers, Boston, too, as well as, for a couple of WHA seasons in the 1970s, Philadelphia and Vancouver.

The Rangers were home next day in ’48, a whole other February 1, which is when this photograph was taken, Watson on the left, Rangers centre Neil Colville by his side. After their game, I guess? They met Chicago that night at Madison Square Garden, tying the Black Hawks 2-2. Again Watson scored, beating Hawk goaltender Emile Francis on a set-up by Buddy O’Connor, who maintained his lead in NHL scoring that night.

The Rangers followed that up, midweek, with another tie, 4-4 this time, in Detroit. Watson didn’t score, but he did take a swing at a Red Wings fan by the name of Claude Hughes who’d been jeering him as he rested between shifts.

“The patron,” the Windsor Star reported, “was moved to another seat, away from the Ranger bench.”

erratum

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First thing first: no, George Armstrong was not the first NHL player of Indigenous descent to score a goal in the league.

Despite what the Toronto Maple Leafs might be saying by way of a memorial video that debuted yesterday, and contrary to reports that have taken the Leafs’ word on this and sown the error into the pages of CBC.ca and the New York Times, the fact is that, no, he wasn’t.

This is not about Armstrong, who died on Sunday at the age of 90. His virtues as a man have been duly celebrated since then, rightly and reverently so, even as his record as an exceptional hockey player and leader have been revisited. It’s an amazing one, that record. Known as Chief throughout his playing days, Armstrong spent 75 years associated with the Leafs. No-one has played more games for Toronto than him. His 12 seasons as Toronto captain stands as the longest tenure of any leader in club history.

He was a proud Leaf: of that, there’s no doubt. The son of an Algonquin mother (her father was Mohawk), Armstrong  embraced his Indigenous heritage. That’s not in question.

The New York Times ran an Armstrong obituary on January 24.

But he wasn’t the first NHLer of Indigenous descent to score a goal.

This is not something the Leafs should be getting wrong. It’s also not entirely surprising that the team has promulgated the error and caused others to repeat it.

Unfortunately, it reflects the NHL’s haphazard approach to its own past. It’s not just in matters of Indigenous history that the league’s blithe indifference has smudged and erased the record, though that has become an ignominious specialization in recent years.

The Leafs’ confident claim is entirely in line with the example that continues to be set by the corporate NHL, which so often seems to see its history as so much marketing material, useful when it’s colourful or supports a convenient narrative, easy to ignore when it’s painful or problematic, why would you carefully curate it for posterity and the sake of, um, just getting it right?

There concludes the haranguing part of the program. Now this:

The night of Saturday, February 9, 1952 was when 21-year-old George Armstrong grabbed his first goal, the first of 322 he’d score in his career. The scene was Maple Leafs Gardens, and the goal was a pretty one, defying Montreal goaltender Gerry McNeil’s best effort to prevent it. It was the winner in a 3-2 Leaf decision over the Canadiens.

Armstrong’s first goal came eight years after Johnny Harms got his first, also against Montreal.

Harms was from Saskatchewan, born in Battleford to a mother who was Cree. He spent most of his long career in the minors, but he did have some success with the Chicago Black Hawks as a right winger over two seasons in the mid-1940s. He scored eight goals all told in the NHL; that first one came on a Thursday, April 6, 1944, when he spoiled Bill Durnan’s bid for a shutout in a 3-1 Chicago loss to Montreal in the second game of the Stanley Cup finals.

Four years before Harms scored that one, Joe Benoit took his turn, scoring his first goal one Sunday night in 1940, November 17, when he helped his Habs tie the Black Hawks 4-4 at Chicago Stadium. Paul Goodman was in the Chicago net.

Benoit, who was Métis, was either born in St. Albert, Alberta, or in the north of the province, at Egg Lake — the records I’ve looked at don’t agree on this.

His NHL career lasted just five seasons, all of them with the Canadiens, during which scored 81 goals, regular season and playoffs. He has the distinction of playing on the first incarnation of Montreal’s famous Punch Line, skating the right wing with Elmer Lach and Toe Blake in the early 1940s before Maurice Richard showed up.

On we go, back again, nine years before Benoit.

Buddy Maracle was Oneida Mohawk, born in Ayr, Ontario. I’ve written before hereabout annotating his first and only NHL goal. It came on Sunday, February 22, 1931, when Maracle’s New York Rangers walloped the visiting Philadelphia Quakers by a score of 6-1. Maracle assisted on Cecil Dillon’s fifth Ranger goal before Dillon passed him the puck and Maracle beat Quakers goaltender Wilf Cude to complete New York’s scoring.

Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in 1900, Clarence “Taffy” Abel had an outstanding career as a hard-hitting defenceman.

You can look it up: he’s in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. In 1924, he played for the U.S. team that took silver at the Winter Olympics in Chamonix, in France. Conn Smythe subsequently signed him up to play for expansion New York Rangers in 1926, which he did for three stellar seasons, pairingoften with Ching Johnson. They were a formidable pair on the blueline, and played no small part in New York’s 1928 Stanley Cup championship. Later, Abel joined Chicago for a further five seasons, winning another Cup in 1934, his final NHL campaign.

Back in those playing days of his, Abel doesn’t seem to have talked about his Indigenous background — not in any public way, at least. But as Abel’s nephew, George Jones, has pointed out, Abel’s maternal grandfather, John Gurnoe, was a member of the Chippewa nation. (Jones has a new website devoted to his uncle here.)

Abel’s first NHL goal? New York was in Boston on the night of Tuesday, December 7, 1926. He dashed the length of the rink to score the game’s lone tally, beating Doc Stewart in the Bruins’ net to secure the Rangers’ 1-0 win.

chicago’s mr. april

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Snowing The Goalie: That’s Johnny Harms with a spray and a shot on his Chicago Black Hawks teammate Mike Karakas circa 1944 or ’45.

“He is Johnny Harms, a 19-year-old lad from Saskatoon, Sask., and hockey being what it is, Johnny could be a personage before the seven-game series runs its course.”

That’s Edward Prell of Chicago’s Tribune appraising the right winger the local Black Hawks called up early in April of 1944 from the AHL’s Hershey Bears to supplement their roster as they prepared to play a final for the Stanley Cup against the Montreal Canadiens.

As it turned out, the rookie Harms would prove a personage, scoring in three of the four games the series lasted as Montreal swept to victory. If his goals were not quite enough to turn things around, they were still noteworthy in their own way. That spring, Harms, who died on a Sunday of this date in 2003 at the age of 77, became the first player in NHL history to score the first three goals of his career in a Stanley Cup final.

He was born in 1925, not in Saskatoon, but northwest of the city, in Battleford, to John Laird and Helen Haubeck. His mother was Cree. He was subsequently adopted by Helen and John Harms, Sr., Dutch Mennonite farmers.

In the second game of the 1944 final, Harms scored Chicago’s only goal as the Black Hawks fell 3-1 to go two games down at the Stadium, cracking Bill Durnan’s shutout with just a second remaining.

Next game he scored his team’s second goal, using Canadiens’ defenceman Glen Harmon as a screen to beat Durnan. (Chicago lost that one 3-2.)

In the fourth and final game, Harms scored while Toe Blake was serving a penalty for crosschecking. His linemates George Allen and Cully Dahlstrom set him up on that one to put the Black Hawks up (briefly) 2-1 … only to see  Canadiens storm back to win 5-4 in overtime to take the Stanley Cup.

Harms stuck around in Chicago the following season, wearing number 9 for the Black Hawks while seeing regular duty on the wing. He collected five goals and ten points in 43 games. That was his last year in the NHL, though he carried on until 1961 in several minor leagues, ending up in British Columbia, where he captained the Vernon Canadians of the Okanagan Senior league to a 1956 Allan Cup championship.

net presence

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The first time Gerry McNeil defended the Montreal Canadiens’ net was in 1947, when he relieved an injured Bill Durnan at the Forum midway through a meeting with the New York Rangers. Montreal lost a 1-0 lead that night; the Rangers won 5-3. McNeil “wasn’t given the best of protection,” the Gazette’s Dink Carroll wrote, “but the fact remains that Durnan’s absence was felt.” McNeil started the next night, too, against Boston, holding the Bruins to a 2-2 tie. “Steady but unspectacular” was the verdict on that performance.

Born in Quebec City on a Saturday of this date in 1926, McNeil remains largely unsung in the annals of Montreal goaltending greatness. To demonstrate why that’s not fair you might cite the fact that in all four seasons in which he was Montreal’s first-choice puckstop, from 1950 through ’54, Canadiens made it to the Stanley Cup finals. “The plucky goaler,” Dink Carroll called him in 1953 when McNeil led his team to a championship with a fifth-game shutout of the Boston Bruins. Often remembered as the man Toronto’s Bill Barilko scored on to win the 1951 Cup for the Maple Leafs, McNeil ended up playing parts of seven seasons with Montreal. His last stint as a Canadien came during the 1956-57 regular season when he returned from retirement to sub in for an asthmatic Jacques Plante. Canadiens won a Cup that year, too.

Gerry McNeil died in 2004 at the age of 78. For more on his life and times, his son David McNeil very good book is the one you want. In The Pressure of the Moment: Remembering Gerry McNeil (2016) also happens to be a fascinating cultural study of the game as well an incisive guide to the arts and anguishes of goaltending.

the grip + the grin

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Any guesses, based solely on the faces in the photograph, on who was the victor on the night depicted here, and who the vanquished?

If there’s something you’re seeing in Bill Durnan’s smile on the left that suggests that he prevailed at Maple Leaf Gardens on Saturday, April 19, 1947, well, then, um, sorry, you’re mistaken. The triumphant grin is, in fact, Turk Broda’s on the right. And why not? With their 2-1 win over Montreal, he and his Toronto Maple had just won the Stanley Cup in six games.

Many who witnessed the action that night agreed that the rival goaltenders were the two best men on the ice. By no surprise, Montreal’s Gazette chose to focus on the man in the bleu, blanc, et rouge in the aftermath. “The greatest goalkeeper of modern times, and perhaps of all time,” columnist Dink Carroll proclaimed the 31-year-old Durnan, who wasn’t (it has to be said) always so happy in his goaltending gear as he appears to be here. “If it hadn’t been for his uncanny skill in keeping the puck out of the net, the Leafs might have won by four or five goals.” Broda, Carroll allowed, was good, too — though “the Habitant sharpshooters made his task a little easier by hitting him with the puck when they were all alone with him.”

Durnan did win two Stanley Cups with Montreal, in 1944 and ’46. He also won the Vézina Trophy, as the NHL’s top goaltender, in six of his seven seasons in the league. Born in Toronto on a Saturday of this date in 1916, Durnan died at the age of 56 in October of 1972 — just a week, as it so happened, after Turk Broda’s death at 58.

reflemania

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In The Throes Pose: On the night of November 2, 1947, Montreal’s 4-2 win in Chicago ended in this mess. The linesmen struggling to break it up are (left) George Hayes and Mush March. The latter has a grip on Canadiens’ Butch Bouchard, who’d later stand accused of punching Hayes. Hayes, for his sins, has a grip on (white sweater) Chicago’s Ralph Nattress and (beneath him) Montreal’s Jimmy Peters, both of whom would be assessed majors.

The Chicago Black Hawks lost the first five games they played to open the 1947-48 NHL season. When, in early November, they lost a sixth, 4-2 at home to Montreal, Hawks’ president Bill Tobin decided it was time for a change. The one he had in mind turned out to be the biggest trade in NHL history, with the Black Hawks’ Max Bentley, the league’s incumbent leading scorer, heading to Toronto with Cy Thomas in exchange for Gus Bodnar, Gaye Stewart, Bud Poile, Bob Goldham, and Ernie Dickens. For the Black Hawks, it didn’t change much: they lost their next game, against Boston, and finished the season in the NHL’s basement.

Their November opponents from Montreal didn’t fare a whole lot better that year: they ended up just ahead of Chicago, out of the playoffs. But on the night of Sunday, November 2, in Bentley’s last game as a Black Hawk, Canadiens managed to come out on top. The chaos that’s depicted here, above, came about in the last minute of the third period. When the wrestling was finished, there were major penalties for Montreal’s Bob Carse and Jimmy Peters as well as for the two Hawks they battled, Ralph Nattrass and goaltender Emile Francis, respectively. (It was, the Chicago Tribune noted, Francis’ second fight in as many games; against Detroit, on October 29, he messed with Ted Lindsay, and vice-versa.) On this night, Canadiens’ defenceman Butch Bouchard earned himself a match penalty for the crime of (the Tribune) “assaulting referee George Hayes while Hayes was trying to act as peacemaker.” The Globe and Mail told pretty much the same tale, but amped up the headline: “Free-for-All Climaxes Chicago Tilt; Bouchard Punches Ref; Canucks Win.”

Hayes was working the game as a linesman, along with Mush March; the game’s (sole) referee was George Gravel. Still, for Bouchard to be attacking any of the game’s officials would seem to spell trouble for the big Montreal defenceman. None of the newspapers reporting on the incident had much in the way of detail to offer, including Montreal’s Gazette, which reported that NHL President Clarence Campbell was waiting to get Gravel’s report on the game. The Gazette’s synopsis, in the interim: the game was “hard-fought;” Hayes hailed from Ingersoll, Ontario; Bouchard, weighing in at 200 pounds, was banished “after landing blows” on the linesman.

Except that — just maybe — did no blows land? By mid-week, the Canadian Press was reporting that “after a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding,” L’Affaire Bouchard was closed. The Montreal defenceman was fined $50 for his part in the upset in Chicago, but Campbell found him innocent of the charge of punching, and levelled no suspension. According to referee Gravel’s report, Bouchard merely pushed Hayes during the melee at the end of the game. “Bouchard,” CP said, “did not poke or hit anybody.”

He was free to play, therefore, in Montreal’s next game, and did so, later on that same week, when Max Bentley and the Toronto Maple Leafs visited the Forum. “It was a typical battle between these two teams,” the Gazette’s Dink Carroll enthused, “full of fast and furious play, with no quarter asked and none given.” Canadiens prevailed, 3-0, with goaltender Bill Durnan featuring prominently, with Bouchard’s help. The latter (Carroll decided) “was just about the best man on the ice.” He made not a mistake, and “won all his jousts with Wild Willie Ezinicki, the Leafs’ well-known catalytic agent.”

Alongside Butch Keeling, George Hayes was back on the lines, and while he and Bouchard seem to have managed to steer clear of one another, referee Bill Chadwick found himself featured in the paper next day for what seems like an eccentric call:

 

durnan down

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Close Action: A newswire photograph, helpfully captioned, from 1943-44 shows a fluster of Black Hawks in front of Montreal’s goal. From left, that’s Chicago’s Johnny Harms lined up with Canadiens Ray Getliffe and Mike McMahon, who are doing their best to aid goaltender Bill Durnan in his effort to smother the puck, while Hawks Doug Bentley (#7) and Clint Smith (#3) stand by in hope that he’ll fail.

maurice richard had a bad night; fern majeau picked up a pocketful of pennies

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On A Line With Punch: Maurice Richard.

Seventy-four years ago tonight, Maurice Richard had a terrible night.

That’s not the anniversary that tends to be observed, of course. Seems like people prefer to recall that it was on a night like this in 1943 that Montreal coach Dick Irvin debuted a brand new first line, one featuring wingers Toe Blake (left) and Maurice Richard (right) centred by Elmer Lach, that would soon come to be known, then and for all time, as the Punch Line.

October 30 was a Saturday in 1943, and it was opening night for four of the NHL’s six teams. Montreal was home to the Boston Bruins. After an injury-plague start in the Canadiens’ system, Richard, 22, was healthy. Having played just 16 games in 1942-43, he was ready to start the season as a regular. The Canadiens had lost some scoring over the summer: Gordie Drillon was gone and so was Joe Benoit, both gone to the war. The latter had scored 30 goals in ’42-43, leading the Canadiens in that department as the right winger for Lach and Blake. That line was already, pre-Richard, called Punch, with Elmer Ferguson of The Montreal Herald claiming that he’d been the one to name it.

Richard didn’t recall this, exactly. In autobiography Stan Fischler ghosted for him in The Flying Frenchmen (1971), Richard erred in saying that he took Charlie Sands’ place on the Punch Line rather than Benoit’s.

Roch Carrier added a flourish to the story in Our Life With The Rocket (2001), a poetic one even if it’s not entirely accurate.

Richard’s wife Lucille did (it’s true) give birth to a baby girl, Huguette, towards the end of October of 1943, just as Montreal’s training camp was wrapping up in Verdun. True, too: around the same time, Richard asked coach Irvin whether he could switch the number on his sweater. Charlie Sands wasn’t a Punch Liner, but he was traded during that final week of pre-season: along with Dutch Hiller, Montreal sent him to the New York Rangers in exchange for Phil Watson. Richard had been wearing 15; could he take on Sands’ old 9? “He’d like that,” Carrier has him explaining to Irvin, “because his little girl weighs nine pounds.”

“Somewhat surprised by this sentimental outburst, Dick Irvin agrees.”

Here’s where Carrier strays. To celebrate Huguette’s arrival, he writes, Richard promised to score a pair of goals in the Canadiens’ season-opening game: one for mother, one for daughter. “The Canadiens defeat the Bruins,” Carrier fairytales, “three to two. Maurice has scored twice. And that is how, urged on by a little nine-pound girl, the Punch Line takes off.”

Huguette’s birthday was October 23, a Saturday. The following Wednesday, Richard did burn bright in the Canadiens’ final exhibition game, which they played in Cornwall, Ontario, against the local Flyers from the Quebec Senior Hockey League. Maybe that’s when he made his fatherly promise, adding an extra goal for himself? Either way, the Canadian Press singled him out for praise in Montreal’s 7-3 victory: “Maurice Richard, apparently headed for a big year in the big time, paced Dick Irvin’s team with three goals in a sparkling effort.”

That Saturday, October 30, 1943, the home team could only manage to tie the visiting Bruins 2-2. Montreal had several rookies in the line-up, including goaltender Bill Durnan, who was making his NHL debut. Likewise Canadiens centre Fern Majeau, who opened the scoring. Herb Cain and Chuck Scherza replied for Boston before Toe Blake scored the game’s final tally. The Boston Daily Globe called that one “a picture goal” that same Blake skate by the entire Boston team. “The ice was covered with paper and hats after the red light flashed.”

That was the good news, such as it was. Leave it Montreal’s Gazette to outline what didn’t go so well. “Four Bruins Are Casualties,” announced a sidebar headline alongside the paper’s main Forum dispatch, “Maurice Richard Has Bad Night.” Details followed:

richard oct 30 43 (1)