Black Hawks

march madness (in april of 1934)

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Hawkish:  A cast of Black Hawks on the ice in 1934, with (from left) Leroy Goldsworthy, Duke Dukowski, goaltender Charlie Gardiner, Doc Romnes, and Taffy Abel lined up alongside Louis Trudel. (Image: SDN-076149, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum)

Ninety years ago today, on a Tuesday of this date in 1934, the Chicago Black Hawks laid claim to their very first Stanley Cup championship with a 3-1 series win over the Detroit Red Wings. With coach Tommy Gorman at the helm, Chicago became the fourth American team in seven years to seize hockey’s most coveted trophy.

The win at Chicago Stadium was hard-fought. With captain Charlie Gardiner tending Chicago’s goal and Gardiner’s childhood friend from Winnipeg, Wilf Cude, in the Detroit net, the game was goalless through four periods. In the second overtime, when Red Wings’ star Ebbie Goodfellow took a penalty for tripping Chicago’s Tommy Cook, Harold (Mush) March scored the winner for the Black Hawks.

“The crowd cheered wildly for minutes on end,” the Regina Leader-Post reported next day. March was a son of Silton, Saskatchewan, just north of the city, so there was pride in this reporting. The Leader-Post noted that March had telephoned soon after the end of the decisive game and said he would be back in Saskatchewan within days. True to his word, he drove in later in April for a week-long visit.

With him was the puck that he’d sent past Cude. “That’s one souvenir,” the paper ventured, “that nobody will be able to pry loose from Harold.”

In 1931, March had scored the very first goal at Maple Leaf Gardens upon its opening, fooling Leafs’ Lorne Chabot. Not sure about the Stanley Cup keepsake, but that MLG puck was still on March’s bedroom dresser when he died in 2002 at the age of 93.

Silton Scintillant: Saskatchewan’s own Mush March, and puck (with teammate Paul Thompson in the background).

all (delisle’s) stars

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Delisle, Saskatchewan’s own Bentley brothers featured in the NHL’s first (official) All-Star Game in Toronto on a Monday night in October of 1947 ahead of the league’s new season. The brothers, who were still starring at the time for the Chicago Black Hawks, made sure that their team prevailed over the Stanley Cup champion Toronto Maple Leafs by a score of 4-3. Max, 27, (seen below) opened the scoring for the All-Stars in the second, on an assist from Montreal’s Ken Reardon, while 31-year-old Doug (that’s him up at the top) got the winner in the third, aided by linemates Milt Schmidt of Boston and Canadiens’ Maurice Richard.

It was just three weeks later that a blockbuster trade broke up the brotherly act in Chicago, as Max became a Maple Leaf. The Leafs’ went on to finish in first that year, and defended their Stanley Cup championship, winning the second in 1948 of three in a glorious row.

utterly sutter

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Blood Sport: Chicago Black Hawks centre Brent Sutter states his case to referee Don Van Massenhoven at the United Centre on Tuesday, February 25, 1997, after a stick belonging to winger Pat Verbeek of the Dallas Stars cut him without a penalty being called. Dallas won the game 1-0 on a goal from Todd Harvey. (Image: Tom Cruze, ST-17500583-E1, Chicago Sun-Times collection, Chicago History Museum)

the guardian

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Glare Ice: Lorne Chabot was 35 in the winter of 1934, playing in his first and only season with the Chicago Black Hawks. He was good that year, winning 26 of 48 games as well as a Vézina Trophy and securing a spot as a First Team All-Star. On Tuesday, January 15, though, his Hawks lost at home to the mighty Maple Leafs, 3-2. He made 33 stops — “and about 30 of them were hair raisers,” Edward Burns noted in the Chicago Tribune. Two nights later, in St. Louis, Chabot made 46 saves in Chicago’s 5-1 win over the short-lived Eagles. (Image: SDN-077058, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum)

hemstitched helge

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A birthday yesterday for Helge Bostrom, who was born in Winnipeg in 1894. Pictured here in 1933, second from the left, Bostrom got to the NHL late in his career as a bulksome defenceman. He was 35 when he joined the Chicago Blackhawks in 1929, playing subsequently in parts of four seasons, ’32-33 being the last. Named Chicago’s captain that year, he was the oldest player in the NHL. He was slowed that year by his recovery from a cut suffered in an accidental meeting with a skate belonging to Earl Seibert of the New York Rangers and played only half of Chicago’s schedule, and just two games (his last in the NHL) in the latter part of the season. He later served as an assistant coach in Chicago, a deputy to Clem Loughlin.

Throughout his career, Bostrom was known for the repairs he’d undergone: in ’32 the Chicago Tribune called him “hockey’s most hemstitched player,” crediting him with 242 career sutures. (N.B.: There remains some question of where a number like that might rate in the realm of all-time hockey stitch-statistics.)

Bostrom’s teammates here are (from left) Teddy Graham, Art Coulter, and Taffy Abel. On this day in 1924, it so happens, a younger Abel was on his way to the Winter Olympics with the U.S. team that had set sail the previous day from New York aboard the President Garfield headed for the tournament in Chamonix, France.

(Image: SDN-073827, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum)

gardens party, 1931: a game of the higgledy piggledy variety, prolific in wild haphazard passing

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Wordy Welcomers: Dignitaries on ice at the opening of Maple Leaf Gardens on Thursday, November 12, 1931. From left, they are Maple Leafs majority owner J.P. Bickell, Ontario Premier George Henry, Maple Leafs President Ed Bickle, Toronto Mayor William J. Stewart, Canadian Bank of Commerce Vice-President George Cottrell, broadcaster Foster Hewitt, and NHL president Frank Calder. (Image: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1266, Item 25805)

“The new Maple Leaf Gardens proved a revelation to the hockey public last night,”” was what the Toronto Daily Star’s W.A. Hewitt wrote the morning after the night before. “everybody expressed amazement and pleasure at its spaciousness, its tremendous capacity, its comfort, its beautiful colour scheme, and its adaptability for hockey, and all the other indoor sports, with the spectators right on top of the play.”

It was on a Thursday of this date 92 years ago today — November 12, 1931 — that Conn Smythe’s Maple Leafs left behind the confines of the Arena Gardens on Mutual Street to kick off a new NHL season in new (and speedily built) digs, opening Conn Smythe’s gleaming Gardens with a night of pomp and ceremony … and a 2-1 loss to the visiting Chicago Black Hawks.

The Hawks’ Mush March scored the first goal in MLG history before Charlie Conacher tied it up. It was left to Vic Ripley to decide things in the third period. Charlie Gardiner was the winning goaltender, with Lorne Chabot taking the loss. Despite the inaugurating disappointment, it should be noted, the Leafs did turn it around in ’31-32, going on to sweep the New York Rangers to win the Stanley Cup the following April, the franchise’s first since 1922.

The game on November 12 was not high in hockey quality, according to another Star witness, C.H. Good. “The play generally was of the higgledy piggledy variety, prolific in wild haphazard passing and the marksmanship of the weirdest description. In the latter respect the Leafs were the worst offenders. They had chances galore, many more than their opponents, to score, but instead of picking out a nice little corner when in close, they invariably shot into Gardiner’s pads or did something else fully as dire.”

Highlanders Reel: The 48th Highlanders serenade the first MLG crowd as the two teams line up pre-game, Maple Leafs in the foreground, Hawks beyond. (Image: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1266, Item 25804)

 

old eagle-eye

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A son of Pembroke, Ontario, Hugh Lehman started his career playing with some exalted company as a young goaltender. Born on a Tuesday of today’s date in 1885, he suited up with the Canadian Soo Algonquins of the old International Hockey League in 1906-07 alongside Newsy Lalonde and the McNamara brothers, Hal and George. He was a Berlin Dutchman after that, and a Galt Pro, too, before heading west. By 1914, he was stopping pucks for the PCHA Vancouver Millionaires with whom, skating with Cyclone Taylor and another prodigious Pembroke product, Frank Nighbor, he backstopped (in 1915) the team to a Stanley Cup championship.

“Old Eagle Eye” they called him in those years and ever after, for his ability to spy out incoming pucks through the on-ice chaos. He and his Millionaires challenged for the Stanley Cup again in 1921-22 (when they lost out to the Toronto St. Patricks). The following year (with the Vancouver Maroons) he was stopped in the semi-finals by the Ottawa Senators, the eventual winners.

Late in the day — he was 41 — Lehman made his way to the NHL, signing for the 1926-27 season with the Chicago Black Hawks. He played two seasons for Major Frederic McLaughlin’s team, taking on duties, briefly, in the latter as playing coach, during which his team compiled a dismal record of 3-17-1. Hugh Lehman was elevated to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958. He died in 1961 at the age of 75.

behind the mask

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Looking Up: Dave Dryden’s first NHL team — he played a single game for them, in 1962 — was the New York Rangers. Here he’s on the lookout for the Chicago Black Hawks in October of 1965. He played parts of three seasons with Chicago before going on to stop pucks for the Buffalo Sabres and, in both the WHA and NHL, Edmonton’s Oilers. It was a year ago today that Dryden died at the age of 81. (Image: Fonds La Presse, BAnQ Vieux-Montréal)

cooking with hockey players: stew crew

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Supperintendent: Born in Toronto on a Thursday of this date in 1900, the great (and multi-talented) Lionel Conacher played a single season on defence for the Chicago Black Hawks, 1933-34, helping the team capture its first Stanley Cup championship. That’s him in the centre here, home on the range, in November of ’33, alongside teammates Roger Jenkins (left) and Paul Thompson (on high). (Image: © SDN-075731, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum)

by hook or by crook

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This is wrong, of course: when it comes to checks, the hook and the sweep are not the same — they’re just not. It’s a hook-check that Stan Mikita, dressed up here in All-Star garb in the late 1960s, is demonstrating for the camera, though whether or not he resorted to it in actual game-play with any regularity is open for debate, the once-popular manoeuvre having faded out of the NHL by the 1930s. The Chicago Black Hawk superstar was born on a Monday of today’s date in 1940, in Sokolče, east of Bratislava in what today is Slovakia. He was Stanislav Guoth in those years, before making a move with an aunt and an uncle in the late 1940s to St. Catharines, Ontario, where he got a new name and found a new wintry sport waiting for him to discover it.

join the club

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Passing The Puck: Chicago’s Bill Mosienko (right) receives the puck with which he scored the 200th regular-season goal of his career, on the Thursday night of January 17, 1952, when the Black Hawks played to a 6-6 with the visiting New York Rangers. Mosienko, who was 30, beat Ranger goaltender Chuck Rayner twice on the night as he became the 20th player in NHL history to hit the 200-goal mark. On hand to make the puck presentation was former Hawk and Leaf great Babe Dye (left), the second man (and second Hawk) to score 200, a mark he hit in 1929. The first to do it (and still the fastest) was Cy Denneny, who in 1928 scored his 200th in his 181st game. Dye, it so happens, was born in 1898 on a Friday of yesterday’s date in Hamilton, Ontario.