Olympics

winter’s first olympics, 1924: le coq glacé

/ puckstruck

Allez, Les Bleus: The French national team lines up in Chamonix a century ago today, Wednesday, January 30, 1924, when they took on the U.S. From left they are: Bobby Monard, Andre Charlet, goaltender Charles Lavaivre, Jacques Chaudron, captain Alfred de Rauch, Pierre Charpentier, Léon Quaglia, and (I think) Albert Hassler. (Image: Agence Rol, Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Hosts France played in Group B in Chamonix in 1924 at the Olympic hockey tournament, matched with the United States, Belgium, and Great Britain. In 1920 at Antwerp, the quirksome schedule had seen the French team play just a single game, which they lost, 4-0 to Sweden.

Several players from that team returned to play for France in ’24, including captain Alfred de Rauch, Pierre Charpentier, and Léon Quaglia. The latter, like teammates Bobby Menard and Albert Hassler, was a local, from Chamonix. Quaglia was a centreman who’d played several seasons for Chamonix HC before making a move to Milano HC in Italy. Like Hassler, he had a busy time at these ’24 Olympics: when they weren’t playing hockey, both men competed in several speedskating events, too. Quaglia was the more successful, taking part in four races., finishing 7th in the 10,000 metres and 6th in the overall rankings.

France opened its hockey account in Chamonix with a 15-2 loss to Great Britain on Tuesday, January 29. The next day they suffered again, falling 22-0 to the United States.

According to the Associated Press, the Americans were under strict instructions from manager William Haddock to “subordinate the idea of scoring goals to that of getting their combination and teamplay in working order.”

They achieved that, apparently, and scored, too, piling in 12 goals in the first period past goaltender Maurice del Valle, with Herb Drury claiming four and Taffy Abel three.

Between periods, Quaglia was heard delivering “a fighting speech” to his team, “telling them to take the ice resolved to do or die.”

“Inspire yourself with the Verdun motto: ‘They shall not pass,’” he said, and the Frenchmen took the ice in the second period and played the Americans to a standstill, Drury being the only one able to score.

At the end of the period, Manager Haddock could be heard lecturing his men.

Did he invoke Bunker Hill? The Meuse-Argonne offensive? It’s not clear, but the Americans added nine third-period goals, with Drury and Abel finishing the day with six goals each.

Alfred de Rauch scores against Belgium on this day in 1924.

France played its final game against Belgium the following day — 100 years ago today. That was a consolation, I guess, as they beat their neighbours 7-5 with the help of four goals by Alfred de Rauch. An American witness wasn’t very nice about what he saw, calling the game “a battle possessing many elements of the old-fashioned game of shinny between tow hostile gangs of kids.”

France finished the tournament tied with Czechoslovakia for fifth place, ahead of Belgium and Switzerland, who tied for seventh.

Quaglia, Hassler, and de Rauch would all return with the France hockey team to the 1928 Olympic tournament, where they finished fifth again in a field of 11 teams.

winter’s first olympics, 1924: no mercy for the swedes

/ puckstruck

Pressure Tactics: A Swedish player collects the puck behind his net in a game played 100 years ago today, on Tuesday January 29, 1924, in Chamonix, France. That’s Swedish goaltender Carl Josefsson, I think, during his brief visit to the action. Chasing for Canada is, on the left, Harry Watson and, swooping from the right, Beattie Ramsay. (Image: Agence Rol, Bibliothèque nationale de France)

“The game opened at a fast pace with the Canadian facing the sun,” Billy Hewitt’s account of the game in the Toronto Daily Star began. “Their great speed carried the Swedes off their feet.”

And that was pretty much the story of Canada’s second outing at the 1924 Olympic tournament in Chamonix, their second in two days, played on a Tuesday of this very date 100 years ago.

Going for gold in 1920, Canada’s team had whupped the Swedes 12-1. This time out, they turned up the whupping to edge the Tre Kronor by a score of 22-0.

Ernie Collett got the start for Canada in goal, replacing Jack Cameron. Einar Olsson took the Swedish net and, yes, he had his troubles. In the first, when Canada went up 5-0, a snow squall screened him; in the second, referee (and forward for the U.S. team) Frank Synott warned him for falling to his knees, which was forbidden. Olsson was soon afterwards knocked unconscious by a Canadian shot, and understudy Carl Josefsson replaced. Olsson was out cold for three minutes, but only seems to have been off the ice for five; he returned to his net and the Canadian barrage.

It was 12-0 after two periods. The Swedes body-checked hard, Hewitt reported, but they had difficulty getting hold of the puck. When they did, defencemen Dunc Munro and Beattie Ramsay foiled them. When the Swedes managed a chance on the Canadian net, their shooting was “wild.”

In the third, Swedish captain Birger Holmquist almost scored.

On yet one more Canadian rush, this one led by Harry Watson, goaltender Olsson dropped again, and the referee awarded Watson a goal.

In the latter stages of the game, the entire Swedish team lined up in front of their net to try to stop the carnage. “Through this jam,” it was Hewitt’s duty of report, “the Canadians managed to squeeze the puck for goal after goal.”

Harry Watson ended up with six goals, giving him 17 in two days. Beattie Ramsay scored five, Hooley Smith four, Dunc Munro and Bert McCaffrey three each, Sig Slater one.

Also that Tuesday, the British beat the hosts from France 15-2.

winter’s first olympics, 1924: why did the canadians run up such big scores?

/ puckstruck

Running Up That Score: Canada keeps up the pressure on the Czech goal on this day 100 years ago. Is that Canadian goaltender Jack Cameron heading in on goal, second from left? I think so. Visible in the background is the second rink at the Stade Olympique.

What’s one paltry goal among 30?

A century-old mystery is what it is. On Monday, January 28, 1924, when Canada played its first game of the Olympic tournament at Chamonix, France, the defending champions ran up a mighty score of 30-0 against the toiling team from Czechoslovakia. It was, at the time, the biggest tally of goals in the tournament’s brief history, with the Canadians exactly doubling the bounty Canada’s 1920 team had bagged against Czechoslovakia.

How much of a rout was it, out there on the open-air rink beneath Mont Blanc? Enough that the last goal Canada scored in the first period — the eighth — happened so quickly after the seventh goal that the official scorer didn’t see who scored it, leaving a hole in the summary, a blank that lasts to this day.

Could the scorer not have asked the Canadians whodunit? You’d think so, but apparently that didn’t happen. Paging back through historical newspapers doesn’t clarify anything. Dispatches that reached Canadian papers tend to mention Harry Watson scoring the seventh, followed by “another Canadian.”

W.A. Hewitt, who was on hand as both manager of the Canadian team and sporting editor of the Toronto Daily Star, credits Hooley Smith with three goals in the first period and Watson with five. But then most other accounts give right winger Bert McCaffrey a goal in the first while limiting Watson to just three.

Papers in the U.S. reported the score, but they were more interested in the outcome of the American game that same day against the Belgians. European papers that were covering the Olympics didn’t bother reporting names of goalscorers at all.

So: the mystery persists.

Chamonix Set-Up: Map of the Olympic venue in 1924. Speedskaters and skiers raced around the perimeter of the hockey and figure-skating rinks while curlers kept to their own ice, at bottom right.

Until it’s solved definitively, the consensus is that Harry Watson scored 11 goals that afternoon 100 years ago, Hooley Smith 4, Bert McCaffery 3, Dunc Munro 3, Beattie Ramsay 3, Harold McMunn 3, Sig Slater 2, unknown 1.

None of the contemporary reports of the trouncing mention any of the Czech players, so let’s at least name Vladimir Stransky, the goaltender. This was his first Canadian onslaught, though several of his teammates had played in the 1920 undoing by the Winnipeg Falcons, including Josef Sroubek, Otakar Vindys, and Vilem Loos.

There were some good skaters among the Czechs, Hewitt allowed, and they checked “very strenuously at times.” The Canadians weren’t much scathed — “except Hooley Smith, who had his tongue cut slightly in a tumble.”

The game got going around 3.30 in the afternoon, in daylight, but it didn’t end there: it finished under lights — distant lights, mostly, according to Hewitt. “Darkness falls very quickly in the valley, and it was pitch dark when the game finished.”

The French enjoyed our Canadian vim and vigor. Here’s Paris-Soir:

The matches played yesterday Monday allowed us to see the teams of the United States and Canada play, which we will certainly see again, because it is not going too far to predict that we will find them battling in the final. It is also certain that in this next part, the advantage will remain with the Canadians who yesterday proved a truly overwhelming superiority. It is true that they only played against Czech-Slovakia; but they still inflicted 30 goals to 0! This Canadian team combines remarkable power with skill and virtuosity which are truly a feast for the eyes.

Why did Canadian players run up such big scores? Billy Hewitt addressed this very question in a Toronto Daily Star column headlined

WHY CANADIAN PLAYERS RAN UP SUCH BIG SCORES

in which he explained that, under tournament rules, goal average would count in the final in case of a tie: there would be no overtime. “It was most important, therefore, to get as many goals as possible in the 60 minutes.”

Man About Olympics: Billy Hewitt (Foster’s dad) was a busy man in Chamonix, managing Canada’s team, filing reports home to the Toronto Daily Star, and refereeing a couple of games.

The week before the games got going, the Olympic hockey committee had re-iterated that the tournament would be played mostly by “Canadian rules,” which is to say OHA regulations, as had been the case in 1920. This time, though, the U.S. introduced an amendment that would forbid goaltenders from falling to their knees or lying down, and won the day on this: as had been the rule (briefly) in the NHL until a week into the inaugural 1917-18 season, goaltenders in France had to stay on their feet or risk penalty. Canada voted against this amendment, as did Great Britain and Sweden: they lost.

U.S. coach and manager William Haddock had also lobbied to play three 15-minute periods, which was the custom in the U.S., but the committee voted him down on that, so the games played with 20-minute stanzas.

What else? The Olympic rink was, as mentioned, outdoors. And big: 230 feet long by 98 feet wide, bigger than the North American indoor norm (NHL rinks would eventually settle on dimensions of 200 x 85). In Chamonix, there were two of these side by side on the vast expanse of ice that made up the Olympic stadium. The nets were Canadian-pattern, but rickety — “very unstable,” Hewitt said.

Rather than regular boards familiar to the North Americans, the rinks were surrounded by six-inch bumpers. This surprised the Canadians, but didn’t faze them. Hewitt:

The players found they could play the sides by keeping the puck low, and it was extraordinary how few times the puck left the ice at the sides. No time was lost when it did, as the Canadians had a good supply of the best Canadian-made pucks along, and kept the referee supplied with sufficient to keep the game going all the time. Netting was put up at the ends of the rink and saved many a long chase after a puck when the shot was wide. The committee had men on skates stationed on all sides of the rink to retrieve the puck, and only one was lost the first day, when three games were played.

First up, in the morning, Sweden opened the tournament with a 9-0 win over Switzerland. “The Swiss seemed to know little more than the rudiments of the game,” was the gist of one report; an unattributed Toronto Daily Star dispatch classed it a “a tame affair.” That might have been Billy Hewitt saying that: he refereed the game, so maybe preferred not to put his name to an opinion.

The U.S. took the ice next, at 1.30, with Canada’s captain, Dunc Munro, as referee. The Americans carried the day easily, winning by a score of 19-0. Coach Haddock complained that while he was pleased by the win, he thought his players had relied too much on individual efforts and needed to play more as a team. “A passing game will be required when stiffer opposition is encountered, he pointed out,” according to the Associated Press.

Leading the way for the Americans was centreman Herb Drury, who scored six goals. (He stayed on the ice to referee Canada’s game.) Wingers Willard Rice, Frank Synott, and Jerry McCarthy scored five, three, and two goals, respectively, with defenceman Taffy Abel chipping in two past the Belgian goaltender, whose name no North American report mentioned.

Alphonse Lacroix was the American goaltender, or Frenchy, as they called him back home. Like Drury and Abel, he’d make it to the NHL. The circumstances weren’t optimal for Lacroix: he was the man Leo Dandurand drafted to fill the Montreal Canadiens’ net when legend Georges Vézina fell ill in the fall of 1925.

Backing up Lacroix in France was a goaltender named John Langley. With three minutes left in the U.S. lambasting of the Belgians, he petitioned coach Haddock to let him take the ice as a forward. When the coach agreed, Langley doffed his pads and skated into the action. Before he could touch the puck, though, Belgian captain Andre Popliment raised his objection. According to Olympic rules, goaltenders were only eligible to play goal. Langley, it was reported, “retired gracefully.”

Winterland, 1924: The Stade Olympique at Chamonix, in the valley below Mont Blanc.

winter’s first olympics, 1924: swearing in and skating away, with flags flying

/ puckstruck / 1 Comment

On Parade: U.S. Olympians make their way through Chamonix on Friday, January 25, 1924. Leading the way is Herb Drury, followed by captain Irv Small (with his skates and stick) and flagman Taffy Abel. Hockey manger William Haddock is behind Abel, to the left of the flag, in hat and fur coat. (Image: Courtesy George Jones)

“The fog has lifted and a real snap is on the way,” Billy Hewitt wrote from Chamonix, in France, while the Associated Press was forecasting “prospects of sharp weather” that would assure the success of the first wintry Olympics.

On a Friday of today’s date, January 25, 1924, the games opened with a parade of athletes, a waving of flags, and a taking of oaths. The hockey was still a few more days away.

Still, on Friday, when the opening ceremonies were over and done with, the 150 athletes from 16 nations taking part in the games tied on their skates and took to the ice in a crowd under Chamonix’s towering Mont Blanc. All of them, including bobsleighers, ski-jumpers, and military-patrollers (what today we’d call biathloners)? That’s what the New York Times reported, noting that the speedskaters, including Canada’s Charles Gorman, took off in an impromptu race that brought the 5,000 spectators to their feet. The week had been a thawful one, and rainy, curtailing pre-competition training across all the sports, so I guess everybody was eager to get moving.

Embed from Getty Images

The parade of nations leading up to this (as seen above) wound from Chamonix’s Hôtel de Ville through the town to the Stade Olympique. A French military band from the 27e bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins (a.k.a. the Blue Devils) played them in, striking up the anthems of all 16 nations, including “God Save The Queen,” “O Canada,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Hockey players (carrying their skates and hockey sticks) led both the Canadian and U.S. delegations. For the Americans, 27-year-old centreman Herb Drury was at the fore, bearing the U.S. nameplate. He was a veteran of the U.S. team from 1920 and would go on to play in the NHL for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Quakers. He was followed by the team’s veteran captain, the 32-year-old captain Irv Small. Waving the American flag was his defence partner, Taffy Abel, 23, who would go on to a long and distinguished career with the New York Rangers and Chicago Black Hawks. Of Ojibwe background, he’s now generally recognized as the NHL’s first Indigenous player. He remains the only Indigenous athlete to have borne the Stars and Stripes at an Olympics.

For Canada, goaltender Ernie Collett, 28, carried the flag, with 21-year-old centreman Hooley Smith leading the way with Canada’s standard, just ahead of the 23-year-old captain, Dunc Munro.

In the stadium, the Times reported, the teams from Belgium, Canada, the U.S., and France received the most enthusiastic welcomes. Gaston Vidal, France’s Undersecretary of State for Physical Education was on hand to hear the athletes take the Olympic oath. On behalf of the Americans, Abel and Drury swore that they would be “loyal competitors, and respect the rules and regulations in a chivalrous spirit for the honour of our country and the greater glory of sport.”

“Abel stumbled over his French a few times in repeating the oath,” the Times noted, “but he told M. Vidal that he would rather be tripped up for his French delivery than while shooting for a goal in the hockey competition. This brought a cordial laugh form the Under-Secretary.”

The hockey players had more waiting to do before they hit the ice in earnest: their tournament would begin until Monday, January 28, when the U.S. was scheduled to take on Belgium while the Canadians faced Czechoslovakia.

Swearing In: The flagbearers lower their standards as they take the Olympic oath at Chamonix’s Stade Olympique, while raising their arms in Olympic salute in the days when the gesture didn’t have more insidious associations. Taffy Abel is on the left, and Ernie Collett, too, I think.

 

 

all aboard for the 1924 olympics: why the hell don’t they hold the games at oakville?

/ puckstruck / 5 Comments

Full Steamer Ahead: RMS Montcalm underway in 1933. In January of 1924, the CPR liner bore Canada’s Olympic hockey hopefuls from Saint John to Liverpool. (Image: Clifford M. Johnston/Library and Archives Canada/PA-56802)

Cruising the seas in search of Olympic gold: that’s how it worked, a century ago, sort of, when Canadian hockey teams wandered the world to proclaim their hockey supremacy.

It was 100 years ago this month that a Canadian hockey team landed in Chamonix, in the French Alps, to take part in the very first Winter Olympics. Sixteen nations competed in 1924 in 16 events across five sports. For Canada, puck-chasing was the main event: other than hockey players, Canada sent just three other athletes, a speedskater and a pair of figure-skaters.

There had been Olympic hockey, of course, four years earlier, but in 1920, when the Winnipeg Falcons won gold for Canada in Belgium, hockey and other wintry events were in fact components of the regular summer games.

In 1924, Canada’s hockey team was again built on a readymade team, the Toronto Granites, who’d earned the honour of representing their country and upholding its hockey honour by winning the 1923 senior-hockey Allan Cup, defending the championship they’d won in 1922.

They were a talented bunch, these Granites. Two years after going undefeated and winning (spoiler alert) the ’24 Olympics, the team’s goaltender was the Montreal Canadiens’ first choice to replace Georges Vézina (he turned them down). Canada’s captain at Chamonix was, by then, leading Montreal’s other team, the Maroons, to its first Stanley Cup championship. To score its goals in France, the 1924 Olympic team relied on a couple of future Hall-of-Famers, one of whom was a Newfoundlander and former First World War flying ace, the other a star-to-be with the Ottawa Senators and Maroons. Canada’s team in 1924 also had a Hall-of-Fame coach rinkside, calling the shots. After the Olympics, there was talk — brief and more than a little pie-in-the-sky, but still — of the gold-medal-winners joining the NHL as a second Toronto team.

Canada’s opposition at these Olympics, it’s true, was thin. As had been the case in 1920 for the Falcons, only the United States was expected to put up any kind of opposition. With Austria dropping out just before the tournament got underway, eight teams remained, drawn into two groups for the preliminary round. Joining Canada and the Czechs in Group A were Sweden and Switzerland. Group B collected France, Belgium, Great Britain, and the United States. Following a round-robin series within each group, the teams finishing first would meet in the final. All games would be played outdoors on the natural ice of Chamonix’s Stade Olympique du Mont Blanc.

Starting in November of 1923, the Granites spent the winter preparing for overseas action. With a couple of their Allan-Cup regulars unable to travel to France, the team did cast around for reinforcements. They considered a couple of future NHLers in Dr. Bill Carson and Hap Day before adding a pair of wingers in Harold McMunn (from Winnipeg) and Sig Slater (from Montreal).

They said farewell to Toronto after beating the NOHA Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds 5-3 at Arena Gardens on January 5. They skated their way east from there, playing exhibitions in Kingston and Montreal against local all-star teams (winning those, 7-0 and 5-2, respectively) before playing a final tune-up in Saint John on Thursday, January 10, against the Charlottetown Abegweits, senior champions of the Maritimes. The Olympics (as the Granites were by then mostly being called) beat them 4-1. A flock of telegrams followed the team to New Brunswick, including one from the Winnipeg Falcons, bidding them good luck. “The Maple Leaf forever,” was its sign-off.

They took ship the next morning. That’s how hockey players got to Olympics in those years. In 1920, the Falcons took passage aboard RMS Grampian; in 1928, Toronto’s Varsity Grads shipped out on the RMS Arabic. Canada’s 1932 team, the Winnipeg Hockey Club, went overland, south from Montreal, but then those games were in Lake Placid, New York. The 1936 team sailed on the Duchess of Atholl, from Halifax, to get to Germany, while the 1948 RCAF Flyers boarded the Queen Elizabeth in New York on their way to Switzerland. It was the 1952 Edmonton Mercurys who broke the streak, taking to the air for their Olympics in Norway.

In 1924, the ship Canada’s team sailed out on was the CPR’s RMS Montcalm. She was young, the Montcalm, launched in 1920; she’d just started sailing the Atlantic two years earlier. On board, she had room for some 540-cabin class and 1,200+ third-class passengers, though on this sailing she was well below capacity, setting course with 240 cabin passengers and 165 in third. Because, maybe, January?

“Reflecting the prosperous conditions prevalent this year in the Canadian West,” Montreal’s Gazette reported on the eve of the ship’s departure, “is the fact that almost one-third of the passengers sailing … hail from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.” The presence of the (mostly Upper Canadian) hockey players was duly noted in the press, as was that of Lady Borden (Nova Scotian-born), wife of former prime minister Sir Robert Borden.

The official hockey party was small, consisting of just nine players —

Goal
Jack Cameron
Ernie Collett

Defence
Dunc Munro (captain)
Beattie Ramsay

Centre
Hooley Smith

Right Wing
Bert McCaffery
Harold McMunn

Left Wing
Sig Slater
Harry Watson

— along with coach Frank Rankin and W.A. Hewitt, Foster’s dad, who served as the team’s manager. Hewitt had served in a similar role for the 1920 Olympic team and would do so again in 1928. He was also a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee and the sporting editor of the Toronto Daily Star, for whom he’d contribute reporting throughout the Games. He also found time in his Chamonix schedule to referee a pair of games. The Granites’ trainer, Harry Westerby, stayed home. In 1926, he’d take his talents from Toronto to New York, where he became the first trainer of the expansion New York Rangers.

Billy Hewitt wasn’t the only one filing dispatches. That winter, the U.S. Olympic Committee went out of its way to forbid its athletes from writing newspaper columns, but no such embargo was imposed on the Canadians, so readers in 1924 were treated throughout the winter to first-hand accounts under the bylines of former flying ace Harry Watson (in the Toronto Telegram) and Dunc Munro (the Star). Hewitt may well have been ghosting for one if not both of these players — still, they make for lively reading.

“The trip started in a not too promising manner,” Watson wrote of the Montcalm’s departure, “as the Bay of Fundy was on its bad behaviour and certainly showed its mean disposition with a wind, rain, and fog storm from the time we set sail till the morning of Jan 12.”

As a result, Watson said, most of the hockey players chose to stay on deck as long as they could that first night. Hooley Smith, feeling feisty, had bet Watson $10 that he wouldn’t be seasick. He lost his money, along with his dinner, around 11 p.m.

“At that time,” Watson noted, “Hooley’s main cry was, ‘And we’ve got to come back.’”

Only three members of the team made it to breakfast the next day. Captain Dunc Munro was suffering a particular quease. This was the day of his “famous quotation,” as Watson had it (with original censorship): “Why the — don’t they hold the games at Oakville?” Our narrator contributed a pretty good line of his own, regarding Munro’s misery: “He was afraid he was going to die; the next day he was afraid he wasn’t going to die.”

For all the unsettled Canadian stomachs, the Montcalm does seem to have had a smoother passage than the President Garfield of the U.S. Line on which Canada’s rivals from south of the border sailed. They left Hoboken, New Jersey, on January 9, reaching London on January 19, though not before running into a gale at sea on Sunday, January 13. American defenceman Taffy Abel was the one to reporting that wind and waves carried away two stairways on one side of the ship and stove in a couple of lifeboats — “but we managed to come out of it all right except for missing a few meals.”

Over on Montcalm, Hooley Smith rejuvenated on the Monday, recovering his appetite, as Harry Watson chronicled: “Hooley eats everything but the tableware.”

Billy Hewitt filed a shipboard account, too. His Monday update on Dunc Munro: “The captain is still a bit seedy and not so sure of himself.” After a manful attempt to join the upright, he returned to his bunk for (Watson said) “another period of retrospection.”

Harry Watson and his roommate, goaltender Jack Cameron, were the only members of the team who never missed a meal. Cameron distinguished himself at the bridge table, too, winning a box of cigarettes for his efforts. Since he wasn’t a smoker, Watson was happy to take charge of those spoils.

Tuesday most of the players were up and at it. “Perfect weather,” Watson wrote. Canada’s hopefuls got in a work-out. Hewitt took note of “the smart walk around the deck, the hippety-hop, the trot, the gallop, the deck tennis, the medicine ball. Let her roll, who cares? The team in action again and going strong.”

Wednesday they were working out again. They also attended an evening concert in support of Seamen’s Charities, in aid of which P.J. Mulqueen, chairman of the Canadian Olympic Committee, auctioned off an autographed photograph of the team for $25.

The Montcalm reached Liverpool on the morning Saturday, January 19. From there, the hockey players caught a train to London, where they checked into the Hotel Cecil, on The Strand, and went to a show, Jerome Kern’s and P.G. Wodehouse’s “The Beauty Prize,” in Drury Lane.

The team crossed at Dover to Calais, and carried on to Paris. They took in more sights there, including the Folies Bergère. “Boxes, if you please,” Harry Watson enthused, “and a wonderful time was had by all, the best parts of which I will withhold until I hear from the censor.”

They took a night train from Paris on the 21, which means that it 100 years ago yesterday, on the morning of Monday, January 22 that Canada’s Olympic team arrived in the Haute-Savoie.

“Chamonix is a picturesque mountain village crowded with visitors and deep in snow,” Hewitt reported in the Toronto Daily Star. “The weather is mild and ice too soft for practice.”

The players did have a week to ready themselves for their opening game against Czechoslovakia. Having been off skates for three weeks, they were eager to get on the ice. Thursday was no-go: still too mild. “The whole valley is enveloped in a fog,” Hewitt reported. “Hockeyists here are indulging in mountain-climbing, but the snow is soft. Harry Watson fell into a shallow stream, but was not injured.”

Dunc Munro re-iterated his team’s impatience to skate, but noted that all the players were in good shape. He himself was restored to health, although he’d shed 15 pounds on the crossing. Hewitt’s spin on this: Munro, he wrote, was “down to his best playing weight.”

Friday, January 25, the day the Olympics officially opened, Chamonix woke up to a hard freeze. There was a parade of nations through the streets of the village, after which the Canadians finally did get out for practice — only to be pulled off the ice after three minutes when representatives of the Norwegian, Finnish, and Swedish delegations protested. Their figure skaters had been denied permission to skate, so why should the Canadians be any different?

“A nasty situation was avoided,” Hewitt reported: the Canadians were finally allowed to skate on the Olympic curling rink, with no sticks.

On Deck: Harry Watson (left, with cigarette) poses with W.A. Hewitt and Canadian captain Dunc Munro aboard RMS Montcalm in January of 1924.

o captain my captain

/ puckstruck

Mr. Maroon: Dunc Munro died on a Friday of this date in 1958. He was 56. A small but solid defenceman, he had his hockey heyday was in the 1920s when he had the unique distinction of captaining four championship teams in seven years. He won a Memorial Cup with the University of Toronto Schools in 1919, then an Allan Cup with the Toronto Granites, with whom he also represented Canada at the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix. Munro went pro (lucratively) after that, joining the expansion Montreal Maroons and leading them to Stanley Cup glory in 1926. He played football, too, for good measure, starring for the Toronto Argonauts in the early ’20s.

henry boucha, 1951—2023

/ puckstruck / 1 Comment

Sorry to see yesterday’s news that a Minnesota legend, the Ojibwe centreman Henry Boucha, has died at the age of 72. Born in 1951 on the hockey hotbed of Warroad, Minnesota, Boucha was a 21-year-old playing for the WCHL Winnipeg Jets when he joined Murray Williamson’s 1972 U.S. Olympic team. Playing alongside Robbie Ftorek and Mark Howe, he helped the team win silver in Sapporo, Japan (the Soviet Union took gold). Drafted by the Detroit Red Wings, Boucha made his NHL debut in the 1972-73 season with a strong showing, scoring 14 goals and 28 points. He was ninth in voting for the Calder Trophy as the league’s top rookie, won that year by Steve Vickers of the New York Rangers. Boucha played six seasons in the NHL in all, skating as well for the Minnesota North Stars, Colorado Rockies, and Kansas City Scouts. He had a season, too, with Minnesota’s WHA Fighting Saints.

That’s him here, numbered 16, sporting his trademark headband, in LeRoy Neiman’s vivid 1973 serigraph, “Red Goal.” His happy teammates are harder to identify. Tim Ecclestone? Nick Libett? The referee has a bit of a Ron Wicks air to him — unless it’s a Lloyd Gilmour look?

winterspiele, 1936: storm warming

/ puckstruck

The thermometer had dropped to -7 on the morning of Saturday, February 8 at the open-air rink at Lake Riesser as Japan skated out to play its second (and final) game at the fraught 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Germany. The Japanese had lost their opening Group D game 2-0 to Sweden; now, facing the eventual gold medallists from Great Britain, the Japanese had their chances in front of Jimmy Foster’s goal … just no goals. Final score: 3-0, GB. While the British and Swedes advanced to the second round of the tournament, the Japanese headed home. Seen here during the game is an unidentified Japanese player alongside one of the heaters that was provided to warm the team’s bench.

gold standard

/ puckstruck

On National Indigenous Peoples Day, respect to Kenneth Moore, Peepeekisis First Nation, who played fleet right wing for Winnipeg when they won the hockey championship representing Canada at the wintry 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Born in 1910 near Balcarres, Saskatchewan, Moore is recognized as the first Indigenous athlete to win Olympic gold. He got into the line-up for Canada’s penultimate game on Lake Placid ice, scoring a goal in the team’s 10-0 win over Poland. Moore’s hockey resumé also includes a 1930 Abbott Cup (Western Canadian Junior championship), which he won playing the Regina Pats; a 1930 Memorial Cup (Moore scored the goal that secured the championship over the West Toronto Nationals); and a pair of Allan Cup championships, in 1932 with Winnipeg and in 1936 with the Kimberley Dynamiters. Kenneth Moore died in 1981 at the age of 71.

Manitoba Proud: Coach Jack Hughes steered Canada’s Olympians to gold in Lake Placid in 1932. He’s in the middle of the front row, fifth from the right. Kenneth Moore, also upfront, is second from left. Goaltender Bill Cockburn is next to him, on the end at far left.

dr. d

/ puckstruck

Oiler Toiler: Born in Edmonton on a Sunday of this date in 1956, Dr. Randy Gregg is 66 today, so salutations to him. A long-time Edmonton physician specializing in sports medicine, in days of yore he played a decade on defence in the NHL, standing 6’4″ and winning five Stanley Cups with the Oilers between 1984 and 1990. Twice he represented Canada at the Winter Olympics, in 1980 and ’88.

shovel-ready

/ puckstruck

Plow Share: “A steady snowfall and frequent pauses made today’s game an almost intolerably slow spectacle,” Albion Ross of the New York Times carped in February of 1936 after the U.S. opened its Winter Olympic account against hosts Germany on the outdoor ice of Garmisch-Partenkirchen’s stadium. The pauses were for the snow-plowers, above, who did yeoman’s work in the blizzard that ensued. The Americans managed a 1-0 win, though there was grumbling from the home team, with Herman Kleeberg, head of the German hockey federation,  claiming that the game had ended “irregularly” because, while tournament officials had proposed to suspend play due to the snowfall, U.S. coach Walter Brown had refused because the U.S. was winning. The Germans later clarified that while they had thought that the game should be halted, they respected the referee’s decision to continue, and that the matter was closed as far as they were concerned. Coach Brown said that he’d given up midway through the game trying to assess his own players. “Conditions were so terrible,” he said, “I don’t know anything more about the team than I knew before.”