Max Bentley

fast times at maple leaf gardens

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Speedsters: The NHL’s fastest gather in Toronto in January of 1942. From left, they are: Tommy Anderson (Brooklyn), Max Bentley (Chicago), Sid Abel (Detroit), Lynn Patrick (New York), Jack Portland (Montreal), Flash Hollett (Boston), Syl Apps (Toronto).

From all over the (seven-team) NHL they came on a Friday night in January of 1942, joining together in Toronto for the benefit of a late, beloved local sportsman, raising money in a good cause and racing the rink in a show of speedy skating.

A crowd of 13,563 fans jammed Maple Leaf Gardens for the Robert (Moose) Ecclestone Memorial Night on January 30 of that wartime winter, raising some $11,000 (something like $200,000 in 2024 terms) to help the family of a popular former manager of senior hockey teams who’d died at 33 in an automobile accident in 1941.

The evening festivities featured a 20-minute exhibition game in which a collection of former NHL stars took on the Maple Leafs. The all-stars included former New York Rangers’ goaltender Dave Kerr along with former Leafs Red Horner, Hap Day (now the team’s coach), and King Clancy (who, in retirement, had taken up as an NHL referee). They were bolstered by four members of Art Ross’s Boston Bruins, in town to play the Leafs the following night: Bruins’ captain Dit Clapper, Jack Crawford, Busher Jackson and his brother Art Jackson had all been friends of the Moose.

The Leafs ran up a quick 3-0 lead on goals from Gordie Drillon (a pair) and Sweeney Schriner before 36-year-old Joe Primeau replied for the oldsters, set up by his old Leaf linemate Busher Jackson. The game ended in a 3-3 tie following two more goals from 44-year-old George Hay, a former NHL left winger with Chicago and Detroit and future Hall-of-Famer who was by then working a new job with the RCAF as a pilot officer.

Primeau was deemed the player of the game: he got a gold wristwatch for his efforts.

King Clancy, 39, was a casualty, suffering cut ankle tendons in a collision with Leaf defenceman Bob Goldham. He would recover, but not for a while, and not in time to referee the Leafs-Bruins game the next night, as scheduled. Norm Lamport had to sub in for Clancy in that game, which saw Milt Schmidt score in overtime to give Boston the 3-2 win.

As for the racing, each NHL team sent a speedy representative to compete in Toronto to determine who could get around the MLG ice fastest with a puck on his stick. The Montreal Canadiens had gone through a couple of round of sprints to pick their speedster. In the first, both Toe Blake and Cliff Goupille completed their turns of the Forum in 16 2/5 seconds. When they tried again a few days later, it was their biggest defenceman, Jack Portland (6’2” and 185 lbs.) who dashed to the win in 15 2/5 seconds.

In Toronto, each player took two whirls, with a flying start. They wore their NHL uniforms but not all of their regular padding. Another RCAF flyer/future Hall-of-Famer took care of the timing, Squadron Leader Harry (Punch) Broadbent.

Toronto’s captain Syl Apps and New York’s Lynn Patrick clocked the best times once everybody had taken a turn, with each stopping the watch at 14 4/5 seconds. In a skate-off, Patrick slowed to 15 seconds while Apps matched his earlier time for the overall victory, much to the delight of the Leaf crowd.

Speediest of the also-rans were Flash Hollett (Boston), and Sid Abel (Detroit), both of whose best times were 15 seconds. Jack Portland and Max Bentley (Chicago) both went around in 15 1/5 seconds, while Tommy Anderson of the Brooklyn Americans came in at 15 2/5.

This night of showy racing is sometimes cited as the NHL’s original skills competition, but in fact something similar had been tried before, across several seasons in the late 1920s, when Montreal’s Howie Morenz and Ottawa’s Hec Kilrea were the pick of the rink.

Former Glories: Former Toronto star defenceman King Clancy and Hap Day had new jobs in 1942, as (respectively) an NHL referee and Leaf coach, but they suited up to play in memory of a man called Moose.

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.

boston garden blues

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Boston’s Brave: Maple Leaf goaltender Turk Broda makes his way to the ice at Boston Garden on the night of Thursday, April 1, 1948, with teammate Vic Lynn following behind. Boston Police doubled their presence at the Garden on this night for the fourth game of the Bruins/Leafs Stanley Cup semi-final after a violent end to game three on March 30.

In the long fierceness that is the rivalry between the Boston Bruins and the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston leg of the Stanley Cup semi-final in which the two teams met in the spring of 1948 stands on its obstreperous own.

The Leafs had won the first two games at home. They were the defending Cup champions that year, featuring a stacked line-up that included the sublime talents of Ted Kennedy, Max Bentley, and Syl Apps, and they continued their dominance when the teams moved to Boston, beating the Bruins 5-1 at the Garden on the Tuesday night of March 30 to take a stranglehold on the best-of-seven series.

Boston didn’t go quietly that night, though. The game was an ill-tempered one throughout: “stormy” was the word the local Globe used to describe it.

For instance: when, early on, Milt Schmidt  and Fern Flaman pinned Bill Barilko to the boards, a spectator leaned over to punch the Leaf defenceman. (Referee Georges Gravel did his best to see the fan ejected from the arena, in vain.)

For instance: a late-game jam between the Leafs’ Harry Watson and Boston’s Murray Henderson ended with a broken nose for the latter.

For instance: as the teams were departing the ice at the end of the game, another fan swung a fist at Leaf coach Hap Day.

That was how the Boston press framed it, anyway. Jim Vipond of Toronto’s Globe and Mail had a more nuanced account, alleging that two fans near the Toronto bench were heckling Day throughout the game, “repeatedly calling him ‘yellow.’” Vipond noted that Gravel tried to have this pair removed, too, but Bruins’ president Weston Adams “dashed to the side of the rink and refused to let the police interfere.”

When the game ended, one of these same agitators seized Day’s hat, a light-tan fedora. Other fans joined in, and Toronto defenceman Wally Stanowski came to his coach’s aid, followed by Ted Kennedy, assistant trainer Cliff Keyland, and defenceman Garth Boesch. The fracas spilled on to the ice; general tussling ensued; Boesch was punched in the face; linesman George Hayes and several policemen helped to restore the peace.

Day’s hat was lost, Vipond reported, and Boesch was dazed: he “had to be taken back to the hotel and put to bed.”

The Leafs were, understandably, outraged, but then so were many on the Boston side of things. Boston Globe columnist Herb Ralby went to the Leaf dressing room to apologize. Weston Adams went, too, but Leaf president Conn Smythe pushed him out before a pair of Boston policemen intervened.

“That was a disgraceful occurrence,” Bruins’ captain Milt Schmidt told Red Burnett of the Toronto Star. “They’ll have to do something to curb those morons,” said his teammate Jack Crawford. “The police should step in and chase them before they can molest visiting players. We don’t receive that kind of treatment in Toronto.”

Mrs. Crawford agreed. “That’s the worst piece of sportsmanship I’ve ever seen,” she said. “The better team won and that’s all there should be to it.”

There was more, though. The following day, as the teams prepared to resume their series, a Boston judge issued arrest warrants for linesman George Hayes and King Clancy, who’d been at the game as back-up referee. They stood accused of assaulting a fan by the name of Ed Shallow, an employee of Boston’s housing authority.

Shallow, it seems, had gone after Georges Gravel in the March 30 melee. According to his complaint, Clancy had “grabbed Shallow by the seat of his trousers and hustled into the officials’ room. Inside the room, Clancy and Hayes are alleged to have manhandled Shallow, whose glasses were smashed.”

No fooling: Clancy and Hayes appeared in court on the morning of April 1, with Clancy testifying that he didn’t know how Shallow ended up in the referees’ room, but that no-one had touched him there. Judge Charles Carr acquitted the officials; the assault, he said, was not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. He had strong words nevertheless for Clancy: “I am absolutely certain you are not telling the truth,” Judge Carr told him.

Clancy and Hayes both worked the game that night. The Bruins pulled out a 3-2 win to send the series back to Toronto in what was a relatively peaceful encounter. “The teams tended strictly to their knitting,” Herb Ralby wrote in the Globe. King Clancy, he reported, ruled with an iron hand, “stopping all disturbances in the first period and from there on, the teams just concentrated on hockey.”

Security, he noted, had been stepped up. “There were so many policemen in the rink, it might have been misconstrued as the policemen’s ball.”

“We’ll do everything in our power to protect the visiting players,” said Garden president Walter Brown, “and to prevent a good sport like hockey from being ruined. Anybody who does anything wrong will go right out. Honestly, I can’t understand what’s come over Boston fans to act in the rowdyish way they have this year.”

Bruins’ games were normally policed by 20 patrolmen at this time; on this night, the crowd of some 13,000 was swelled by 50 Boston policemen, three sergeants, and a lieutenant, along with 12 Boston Garden security officers.

Back in Toronto two days later, the Leafs closed out the series with a 3-2 win of their own. Later in April, they went on to beat the Detroit Red Wings in a four-game sweep to take their second consecutive Stanley Cup championship.

band of bentleys

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Starting Siblings: The brothers Bentley line up during the 1938-39 season, when five of them skated for the Drumheller Miners of the Alberta Senior Hockey League. From left they are (eldest to youngest) Roy, Scoop, Reg, Doug, and Max. Born in Delisle, Saskatchewan, on a Monday of today’s date in 1920, Max, who was a 19-year-old centreman here, went on to a 12-year NHL career with the Chicago Black Hawks, Toronto Maple Leafs, and New York Rangers. Like brother Doug (Black Hawks and Rangers), he’d end up in the Hall of Fame. (Reg played briefly in Chicago, too. joining his brothers on a line.) Missing from the photo is another brother, Jack, as well as seven Bentley sisters: Ruth, Jane, Grace, Pearl, Tannis, Florence, and Mary — hockey players all, in their day.

box seats

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Published 73 years ago today, the February 1, 1949 edition of Maclean’s magazine featured a couple of longstanding roughhouse rivals, Toronto winger Bill Ezinicki and Montreal’s Maurice Richard occupying the penalty bench at the Montreal Forum, as rendered by artist Franklin Arbuckle.

Richard was 27 that year and, as usual, in the thickest of things, scoring goals and, in the week before the magazine appeared, fighting Detroit’s Gordie Howe and Boston’s Fern Flaman.

But as the Globe and Mail reminded its readers later that week, Ezinicki, who led the NHL in penalty minutes, remained the Rocket’s “arch-enemy.” The main chatter as February got going was the — semi-serious? half-facetious? — offer the Leafs were said to be prepared to make to bring Richard to Toronto. Montreal’s management scoffed. “All the money in Toronto wouldn’t buy him,” said Canadiens GM Frank Selke. Coach Dick Irvin, a former Leaf himself: “It’s propaganda. All this is merely an attempt to upset my boys on the eve of a game.”

Maybe it worked. Thursday, February 3 was the date of the game in question, two days after Maclean’s hit the newsstands. In front of what Al Nickleson of the Globe described as “a violently partisan Forum gathering of 11,226,” Ezinicki and Richard duly engaged in the second period. Richard ran into Ezinicki, breaking his stick; Ezinicki loosed a “mild punch.” Nickleson:

Referee George Gravel blew his whistle to assess minors and both skated slowly toward the penalty box, talking quite earnestly, nose to nose.

Suddenly, Richard let go a right that caught Sweet William around the shoulders. Then they were into it, with [Leaf defenceman] Gus Mortson, never one to miss a battle, rushing to the fray, followed by other players. Combatants wrestled, tugged, and threw an odd punch as the main-bouters went into a wrestling hold. They were separated three times and at the end it looked as if the Rocket had earned a wrestling decision over Ezinicki, who took a couple to the chops, didn’t land any hard ones in return, although he tried mighty hard.

They went to off to serve the majors and minors that Gravel doled out. They were joined in detention by Mortson and Montreal defenceman Glen Harmon. Unlike the Maclean’s version, Canadiens and Leafs were separated in what was then still one big communal penalty box.

The Leafs won the game 4-1, on the strength of two goals by Max Bentley.

flyby

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Lift-Off: Posing here in 1940-41, Sam LoPresti puts Emile Francis to shame, I’d say, when it comes to sailing across his net in search of a puck that may or may not ever show up.

Like Frank Brimsek and Mike Karakas (Bob Dylan, too), Sam LoPresti hailed from Minnesota’s Iron Range. Born on a Tuesday of this date in 1917 in the now-ghostly mining town of Elcor, LoPresti grew up in nearby Eveleth. He played two seasons for the Chicago Black Hawks, and was a stand-out in his team’s (ultimately unsuccessful) playoff series in the 1942 playoffs against the Boston Bruins.

In March of 1941, as a rookie, LoPresti played another famous game against the Bruins. In this one, he faced 83 shots, stopping all but three in a 3-2 Boston win. LoPresti’s teammate Doug Bentley was, for one, disgusted … with Boston. “They must have been lucky because they certainly weren’t good,” the winger told a reporter next day. “Any team which has to take 83 shots at a goalie isn’t good in my book. What a bunch of Deadeye Dicks. Phooey.” (Doug Bentley did not himself score in this game, it might be pointed out, though his brother, Max, did.)

“I couldn’t sleep all night,” offered LoPresti. “I was so exhausted from the game that I kept tossing and turning in bed.” When he did manage, finally, to sleep, his roommate, Chicago’s Eveleth-born defenceman John Mariucci, woke him up to remind LoPresti how wonderfully he’d played. “I’m so tired now I’m going to sleep all the way back to Chicago,” LoPresti said.

Following the 1942 season, he joined the U.S. Coast Guard, then transferred to the Navy. In February of 1943, he was serving as a gunner’s mate on a merchant ship that was torpedoed by a German U-Boat on an Atlantic crossing. Along with 20 or so shipmates, he spent 42 days in a lifeboat before being rescued off the coast of Brazil. He did eventually return to hockey, though never to the NHL: he played senior hockey in Duluth and Eveleth before retiring from the ice in 1951. LoPresti was a charter member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, inducted in 1973. His son, Pete, followed him into the crease, tending NHL goals in the 1970s for the Minnesota North Stars and (briefly) the Edmonton Oilers.

Sam LoPresti died in 1984 at the age of 67.

americans pastoral

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Bentleys Backcheck: It was on this date in 1972, a Friday, that Hall-of-Fame left winger Doug Bentley died at the age of 56. Here he is in early 1942, during his third season with the Chicago Black Hawks; the following year he’d lead the NHL in goals and points. Chicago was in at Madison Square Garden this January night to meet and beat the Brooklyn Americans: the score was 7-4 Chicago, with Doug Bentley contributing a pair of goals. He’s at the far right above, with brother Max checking back beside him. Brooklyn’s Ken Mosdell is the lone Brooklyn attacker, with Earl Seibert and Art Wiebe of the Hawks alongside. In goal, having made the save, is Sam LoPresti.

maximum bentley

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Studio Proof: Born in 1920 in Delisle, Saskatchewan, on another Monday of this date, centre Max Bentley might have been a Boston legend — but the Bruins thought he was too small when he auditioned for them in 1938, and sent him on his way. He tried Montreal next, and he might have been a hero there — but the Canadiens doctor told him he had a weak heart, best to quit hockey altogether if he wanted to survive. So Bentley end up in Chicago, with brother Doug; a trade later took him to Toronto, where he won three Stanley Cups. (He also took a turn, later, with the New York Rangers.) Elevated to the Hall of Fame in 1966, Bentley also won a couple of NHL scoring titles, along with a Hart Trophy and a Lady Byng. That’s photographer Nat Turofsky here, sizing up a portrait of the Dipsy-Doodle Dandy at the Turofskys’ Toronto Alexandra Studio in the early 1950s. (Image: Toronto Archives, fonds 1257, series 1057, Alexandra Studio fonds)

a brace of shakes

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“He is a man of serious mien. He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t drink. He dresses conservatively, favoring brown suits and white shirts with French cuffs — except on the golf course, where his raiment looks as though it had been dragged through a maze of molten rainbows. He never hurls a harsh word into the sensitive ears of a referee.”

“Kennedy, who carries 180 pounds on a frame that is just an inch under six feet, is a dogged player, full of stamina and courage,” Lunny continued. “He combines the brainy play of a Bentley with the robust aggressiveness of, say, Boston’s Milt Schmidt.”

That’s Vince Lunny profiling legendary Leaf centreman Ted Kennedy in 1951. Born in Humberstone, Ontario, on this date in 1925 (also a Saturday), Kennedy played 14 seasons with Toronto, half of them as captain. The Hart Trophy he won in 1955 was the last to have been claimed by a Leaf.

Kennedy  was aboard for five Stanley Cup championships, including one in 1949, happening here, above. It was April and the Leafs had swept past the Detroit Red Wings in four straight games to become the first team in NHL history to win  the Cup three seasons in a row. That’s Wing captain Sid Abel sharing a moment with Kennedy. Both men, of course, would be elevated, eventually, into the Hall of Fame, Kennedy in 1966, Abel in ’69. Ted Kennedy died in 2009 at the age of 83.

 (Image: City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 132804)

bentley bro

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Dipsy Doodle Doug: A birthday today for Doug Bentley, Hall-of-Fame left winger and Saskatchewan wheat farmer, who was born on a 1916 Sunday of this date in Delisle. He died in 1972 at the age of 56. He played 12 of his 13 NHL seasons for Chicago’s Black Hawks, turning out (alongside brother Max) for one final campaign with the New York Rangers in 1953-54. In 1942-43, he led the NHL in scoring, amassing 33 goals and 73 points in 50 games. There were six brothers in the Bentley brood growing up in Saskatchewan, and seven sisters. “The girls had a hockey team when they were kids,” father Bill Bentley told Maclean’s in 1948, “and they could beat the blisters off the boys nine times out of ten.”

won and all

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Yours, Truly: NHL President Clarence Campbell, suited on the right congratulates Toronto coach Hap Day, on the ice at maple Leaf Gardens on April 16, 1949. Arrayed behind are (from left) Leaf captain Ted Kennedy, Vic Lynn, Bill Barilko, Garth Boesch, (obscured by the Cup, so hard to say, but maybe) Sid Smith, Turk Broda, Cal Gardner, and Tod Sloan. (Image: City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 132795)

“The boys were whooping it in slightly mad fashion,” The Globe  and Mail’s Al Nickleson wrote of the April night in 1949 that the Toronto Maple Leafs wrapped up another championship, “when through the bedlam of the crowded Maple Leaf dressing-room came the stentorian tones of portly Tim Daly. ‘I don’t know why you guys are so excited at winning the Stanley Cup,’ he needled. ‘We do it every year.’”

The long-time team trainer wasn’t far off: the Leafs had just, it’s true, won their third consecutive Cup, and their fifth in eight years. (They would claimed it again two years later, in 1951, on the strength of Bill Barilko’s famous final goal.) In ’49, coached by Hap Day, Toronto had dispatched the Detroit Red Wings in a four-game sweep. They won the decisive game 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens on goals by Ray Timgren, Max Bentley, and Cal Gardner. Ted Lindsay scored for Detroit. Once it was all over, NHL president Clarence Campbell presented hockey’s most coveted trophy to Leaf captain Ted Kennedy — as seen above — before the Stanley Cup was carried in the Gardens’ press room and (as Nickleson recounted) “filled with bubbling champagne.”

In street clothes, Leafs joined officials, newspapermen, and friends to sip from the Cup. Garth Boesch, hard-hitting defenceman, stroked the outsize trophy gently, and said, “See you again next year, honey.”