W.A. Hewitt

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

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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?

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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

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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?

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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.

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)

 

gold for canada, 1932: apart from these eccentricities, the game more or less made sense

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Gold Guard: Goaltender Bill Cockburn captained Canada’s triumphant 1932 Olympic team. He’s wearing his Winnipeg Hockey Club sweater here.

There was no miracle on the ice at Lake Placid on this date in 1932, just the same old same-old: Canada won Olympic gold.

But it was close.

For the first time in four Olympic hockey tournaments spanning 12 years and 17 games, a Canadian team failed to register a win. That Saturday 90 years ago, the best Canada’s team could manage was a 2-2 tie against the host team in front of a packed house at the Olympic Arena. The Americans were leading 2-1 almost to the end, too: with just 33 seconds remaining on the clock in the third period, Canadian left winger Romeo Rivers sent a shot in from the blueline that beat U.S. goaltender Franklin Farrell.

The teams played three 10-minute periods of overtime without another goal. A U.S. win would have seen the tournament extended by another game, with the two old rivals meeting again to decide a winner. As it stood, the tie was enough to secure the championship for Canada.

Canadians on the were, predictably, exultant. Winnipeg Mayor Ralph Webb was at the game and his exuberance was soon cabled back to Manitoba. “The boys played a wonderful game,” he declared, “and the score does not represent the real game they played. All Canada should be proud as Winnipeg is of them.”

Memories of the mighty Winnipeg Falcons were widely invoked, that plucky team of Icelandic-Canadians who’d claimed gold in Antwerp in 1920. Interestingly, according to W.A. Hewitt in the Toronto Daily Star and others, that original title wasn’t entered in official Olympic records.

“The international Olympic committee a few years ago decided to erase the 1920 Winter Sports from the records,” Vern DeGeer recalled in his Windsor Star column.

“According to the International Olympic committee,” reported Hewitt, a member of Canada’s Olympic committee, “it is only the third title for Canada.”

Amid the celebratory columns that showed up over the next few days in Canadian newsprint were several gleeful accounts of American gaffes.

The game was broadcast across both the NBC rand Columbia radio networks, with Ted Husing providing play-by-play for the latter. “He came out with a flock of new terms,” columnist Johnny Buss wrote in the Winnipeg Tribune, but considering it was his first attempt at broadcasting a hockey game he did well.”

He continued:

The puck was always a ball, according to Husing, and the American players were constantly flashing like “blue streaks” down the “alleys.” The penalty box was the “jury box,” and once Bill Cockburn was guilty of “heeling the ball,” whatever that may mean. Apart from these eccentricities, the report of the game more or less made sense.

Toronto’s Daily Star told the tale of the band that was on hand at the Olympic Arena. With minutes remaining in the game and the U.S. leading 2-1, the bandleader told his charges to be prepared to play the Star-Spangled Banner. The Star’s account of this is unbylined, but it’s likely that it was written by sports editor Lou Marsh, who just happened to be refereeing the final.

“He was all excited and joyed up,” the Star wrote of the bandleader. And went on:

Now the band was stationed in the alleyway around the Canuck players’ bench and they heard his excited orders. Then Rivers scored the tying goal — the winning goal, really — and sent the game into overtime. You can guess what disposition the exulting Canadian players invited the bandleader to make of his anthem when Rivers tied the game up.”

And the band DID NOT play “The Star Spangled Banner!”

Neither DID they play “The Maple Leaf” or “O Canada!”

They just folded up and departed!

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canada v usa, 1932: a little shaken by the unexpected turn of events

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Placid Puck: On outdoor ice on February 4, 1932, Canada and the U.S. opened the 1932 Olympic tournament, with the visitors winning 2-1 in overtime. Broadly banded around the chest to show they’re U.S. defenceman are Ty Anderson (#5) and John Garrison. Canada’s #2 is defenceman Roy Henkel.

“The Canadian team had shown such terrible form … that their officers were commencing to cultivate brows like old-fashioned washboards.”

“To tell the honest truth, the team Canada has to depend upon looked worse than awful.”

Oh, it all worked out in the end in February of 1932, at the Winter Olympics, for Canada, in hockey. It just wasn’t as easy as it might have been for the Winnipeg Hockey Club, the team charged with upholding Canada’s golden honour at hockey’s fourth Olympics. That the gloomy words above were written and published for a national audience to ponder by the man who refereed every one of the Canada’s games during the tournament might seem a little strange, but, well, that’s how it went in those years. Lou Marsh, the sports editor for the Toronto Daily Star whose record of racism has recently come under renewed scrutiny, was in Lake Placid in ’32 as a working reporter, albeit one with a unique perch: along with an American colleague, Donald Sands, Marsh was one of the officials who oversaw every game at of the tournament. (He was, it’s true, a seasoned veteran, having moonlit as an NHL referee for more than a decade.)

By February 7, when Marsh was furrowing his own brow, Canada had played three games. After opening the tournament against the hosts from the United States with a 2-1 overtime win on February 4, they’d (reluctantly) skated in an exhibition game, losing 2-0 to McGill.

Next, back to the fight for gold, came Germany, who insisted on succumbing by a mere 4-1. This was just getting silly. Four years earlier, Canadians had been lapping Swedes and Czechs by scores of 33-0 and 30-0.

Lake Placid had a brand-new indoor hockey rink that year, but as Marsh explained it, the organizers preferred a second, outdoor, venue at the local Stadium, where they could accommodate more spectators and sell more tickets. The Stadium rink was narrow and, for the first meeting between Canada and the U.S., its ice was soft and spongy. That worried Marsh, on Canada’s behalf. “If these games continue on these outdoor rinks, Canada is not out of the woods yet, Anything can happen.”

The Americans, the referee warned, were a real threat.

“True enough,” he wrote following the overtime win, “it was nothing like a good hockey match to look at, but those Yanks know what it is all about and they made the going tough for the Canucks.”

Wearing his newspaperman’s hat, Marsh had done his best to toughen the going for the Americans before the tournament got underway. In January, Ralph Winsor’s U.S. aggregation of college players had played an Olympic warm-up game at Boston’s Garden against the NHL Bruins. The pros prevailed by a score of 5-1, with Art Chapman netting four goals.

But (the Boston Globe judged) “the amateurs left an impression that the shield of these United States is to be worn by a group of right smart hockey players.” The U.S. team further profited from the experience by receiving gate receipts from the game to help finance their foray to Lake Placid. If no-one south of the Canadian border saw anything untoward in this, there were those to the north who did. Lou Marsh took it upon himself to cable Paul Loicq, president of the Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace (forerunner of the IIHF), to wonder whether the U.S. hadn’t broken rules governing amateurism and the Olympics.

After years as a sports columnist at Toronto’s Daily Star, Marsh had in the fall of 1931 succeeded to the role of editor when his long-time boss, W.A. Hewitt, accepted a job from Conn Smythe as attractions manager of his brand-new Maple Leaf Gardens. Hewitt, Foster’s father, had strong Olympic hockey ties himself, having accompanied the 1920 Canadian team to the very first tournament in Antwerp as a reporter and representative of the Canadian Olympic Association.

In 1932, Hewitt was serving as the COC’s manager of winter sports while still writing for the Star. Pointing out the U.S. transgression, Marsh quoted Hewitt in his COC role as saying he didn’t think Canada should lodge an official protest. Which they didn’t, in the end. While Paul Loicq confirmed that the U.S. had broken the rules, without Canada’s objection, no further action was taken.

Back on the ice in the Adirondacks, Canada recorded a restorative 9-0 drubbing of the Poles on February 8, and that must have calmed some nerves. The Germans got the message, sort of, losing 5-0 when the teams met for a second time. Next day, when it was Poland’s turn again, the Winnipegs patiently re-drubbed them 10-0.

Which was better. More Canadian, certainly. In the final (indoors at the Arena), the Winnipegs faced the United States again, on February 13. Lou Marsh noted a quirk of the American wardrobe in his Star column before the game: as seen in the image at the top, Ralph Winsor’s defencemen wore sweaters featuring a broad white band around the chest, to distinguish them and remind their teammates on the forward line of their defensive responsibilities.

“Any time a forward sees a player with this broad white band pass him going down the ice,” Marsh wrote, “he knows that the defence is temporarily weakened and that he must cover up for a return rush.”

In the game, the Americans twice had the audacity to take the lead and twice — “a little shaken by the unexpected turn of events,” as the Toronto Globe reported — Canada was forced to tie it up. That’s how the game ended, 2-2, which was just enough to give Canada the gold, on points, even as the country considered the disturbing shift in Olympic hockey that we’ve been struggling with ever since: other teams, from other countries, seemed like they wanted to win gold just as much as we did.

Reftop: When he wasn’t writing and editing sports at the Toronto Daily Star, Lou Marsh worked as an NHL referee. Not certain why he was up on the roof in his skates and his reffing gear, but it’s fair to surmise that he’s up atop the old Star building in Toronto at 80 King Street West. (Image: City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 3610)

olympicsbound, 2022: here’s to muscle cars and america’s industrial past

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Star-Spangled Nine: The U.S. team that lined up on Chamonix ice for the 1924 Olympics included (in back, from left) captain Irving Small, Willard Rice, John Lyons, Alphonse Lacroix, Taffy Abel, Frank Synott, and Justin McCarthy. Sitting, up front, are Art Langley and Herb Drury. (Image: Agence Rol, Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Canada’s botanically flawed 2022 Olympic sweaters weren’t the only ones to debut this week; USA Hockey divulged the wardrobe its players will be wearing in Beijing in February, too:

As in the north, so too in the republic to the south: USA Hockey is insisting on explaining the many meanings of its design. Like Canada’s own exegesis, it’s a brave bit of nonsense. Inspired by “American pride and ingenuity,” the look “pays homage to America’s industrial past, while representing the future of innovation.”

There’s more:

In a nod to America’s symbols, a subtle band of stars is set between red, white, and blue stripes that surround the chest and arms on the home and away [sic] jerseys. Drawing inspiration from American ‘muscle cars’ and traditionally bold hockey designs, Team USA’s alternate jersey bears a deep blue double stripe running around the chest and arms.

And then there’s “the internal back neck message.” No, it’s not XL … or it’s not just XL. “‘Driven by Pride’ serves as a reminder to athletes and fans,” USA Hockey alleges, “that they are, in part, driven by the pride of competing for their country.”

While we’re nodding at American symbols, I’m going to revert to a time before internal back neck messages and conclude here with the 1924 U.S. team. That’s them at the top here, on the ice at Chamonix in France, showing off a truly superlative suite of sweaters that, as far as I’m concerned, require no further explanation.

Pride was, I will add, a souvenir of the American experience in France that year. William Haddock was president of the U.S. Amateur Hockey Association at this time, and he coached the Olympic team in that second tournament. As the U.S. had done in 1920 in Antwerp, Haddock’s charges came home with silvery second.

“While I regret that I will not be able to report a championship victory,” he said in early March of ’24, “I nevertheless can say that I felt very proud of the team, which won all of its matches until it met our neighbors, the Canadians, and they only lost after a magnificent battle which was more closely contested than the score would indicate. I believe that our boys, as individuals, proved themselves every bit the equal of the Canadian players, but the Canadians had the advantage in having played together longer and therefore were superior in team play.”

The score indicated was 6-1 and while I’m not able to adjudicate on the closeness of the contest, I can report that Beattie Ramsay, who played on Canada’s defence in that game, did report at the time that the U.S. didn’t worry the Canadians so much.

Back home in late February, he unpacked an immaculate ingot of Canadian pride to tell a Saskatchewan newspaper that the Americans had tried to impede Canada “by rough work.” There had a row before the final over who should referee: both Haddock and his Canadian counterpart, W.A. Hewitt fretted that a European wouldn’t be up to the task. In the end, they’d settled on Paul Loicq, the Belgian lawyer and Continental hockey pioneer who’d played for his country at the 1920 games and had recently been elected president of the International Hockey Union, forerunner of the IIHF.

Beattie Ramsay, for one, wasn’t impressed by Loicq’s umpiring. “With an efficient referee, he declares, Canada could have won the final game by 20 goals. As it was, it was poor hockey.”

Ramsay did pick out a pair of Americans for praise, defencemen Herb Drury and Taffy Abel. Both went on to play in the NHL, Drury for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Abel as both a Ranger in New York and Black Hawk in Chicago.

In goal for the U.S. in 1924 was Alphonse “Frenchy” Lacroix, who would, a year hence, step into the breach in Montreal when the illustrious Canadiens’ career of goaltender Georges Vézina came to an abrupt end with the onset of his final illness.

 

 

antwerp, 1920: canada gets what she goes after

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Golden In Belgium: Winnipeg’s Falcons line up at Antwerp’s Palais de Glace on Monday, April 26, 1920. From the left, they are (trainer) Gordon Sigurjonsson, (club president) Hebbie Axford, Wally Byron, Slim Halderson, Frank Fredrickson, (Canadian Olympic Committee representative) W.A. Hewitt, Konnie Johannesson, Mike Goodman, Huck Woodman, Bobby Benson, Chris Fridfinnson, (secretary) Bill Fridfinnson. (Image: courtesy winnipegfalcons.com)

The King of the Belgians hoped that Antwerp’s shell-pocked roads would be repaired in time for the summerside Games of the VII Olympiade. In place of an athlete or a mythological god, the statue at the stadium when the main event launched that July depicted a Belgian infantryman hurling a grenade. In a city that had been under siege in 1914, then occupied by German troops through to the Armistice in 1918, it’s no surprise that the First World War shadowed every aspect of the 1920 Olympics. Canada’s Games got underway earlier, in April, with the first ever hockey tournament in Olympic history. Winning gold a hundred years ago, Canada’s team set a standard for Olympic hockey dominance that would last for three successive Games. After they’d finished up on the ice, the hockey players spent a week touring Belgium’s battlefields.

Wearing the maple leaf that year were the Winnipeg Falcons, who’d earned their place in the Olympics as national senior amateur champions. Rooted in Manitoba’s Icelandic community, the team had been a fixture of Winnipeg’s hockey landscape for more than a decade. In the spring of 1916, the roster had enlisted, almost to a man, with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, going on to serve in the infantry on the Western Front or, as in the case of 1920 team captain and future NHL star forward Frank Fredrickson, to take to the skies with the Royal Flying Corps. Another NHLer-to-be, defenceman Bobby Benson, had been shot in the knee on his previous visit to the Continent, when he was in the fight in northern France.

Having defeated the University of Toronto for the Allan Cup in March, the Falcons kept on going, training east to Saint John, New Brunswick. The weather was fair for their nine-day crossing to Liverpool aboard Canadian Pacific’s S.S. Melita, with Frank Fredrickson the only casualty: he cut his head falling out of his bunk. The team took light training on deck, jogging and calisthenics, and entertained their fellow passengers with “musical entertainments.”

Along with the hosts, the other teams that gathered in Belgium came from France, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, the United States, and Sweden. The skilled U.S. squad was Canada’s main challenger; most of the Swedes were bandy players who’d never seen a competitive hockey game before, let alone played in one.

Antwerp’s rink then was the downtown Palais de Glace, demolished in 2016. In 1920, it featured a full and energetic orchestra, with room for an audience of some 1,500, many of them accommodated at rinkside at café tables. “Spectators dined and drank as they watched the various nations play hockey,” wrote W.A. Hewitt, Foster’s father, who accompanied the Falcons and reported on the proceedings for several Canadian newspapers. The nets were unconventional — “like a folded gate” — and the rink was narrower than what the Canadians were used to. Still, Hewitt reported, “The Canadians declare the ice in excellent shape.”

The Falcons impressed the locals even when they practiced. After one work-out, curious Belgians surrounded winger Mike Goodman, also an accomplished speedskater, asking to examine his skates in order to understand just how their motors worked.

Olympic hockey that year was seven-aside, no substitutes permitted, and games played out over two 20-minute periods rather than three. Under the tournament’s knock-out format, Canada’s road to gold lasted just three games. Having swamped Czechoslovakia 15-0, they took on the talented Americans next. Soldiers from the local British garrison cheered on the Canadians, while U.S. occupation troops backed their team as the Canadians prevailed, 2-0. Next day, they wrapped up the championship by overwhelming the plucky Swedes, 12-1. Before the game, the Falcons ran a clinic for their opponents, tutoring before they trounced. Still, the lone goal Sweden scored came as something of a shock: Canadian goaltender Wally Byron was so surprised to see a puck pass him that he fell to the ice.

Once they’d finished their sombre battlefield tourism, the Canadians set sail aboard S.S. Grampian. It was mid-May when they docked on the east coast. Fêted in Montreal and Toronto, the Falcons were welcomed home to Winnipeg with a parade and a banquet and gifts of gold watches. “On the ice as on the battlefield,” a proud editorial asserted, “Canada gets what she goes after.”

(A version of this post appeared in Canadian Geographic in April of 2020.)

the right way to rout: do not purposely avoid scoring against a team that has already lost

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While much of Canada slept Sunday morning, the team battling in our name at this year’s IIHF World Championships in Denmark swept past South Korea by a score of 10-0. Maybe you woke up to watch the TV broadcast, but if not, and you relied on tidings from the internet, then it’s possible that you saw the victory framed as a kind of gratis Royal Caribbean vacation on the IIHF’s news-feed, where the headline over Andrew Podnieks’ report read: Canada Cruises At Korea’s Expense. A Team Canada “made up of NHLers started gently but poured it on,” he wrote. On Twitter it was deemed both a convincing and a dominant win; the Koreans were duly thrashed (Sportsnet.ca) and demolished (Hockey Night in Canada).

Was that really necessary, though? It’s the question that comes up after lopsided wins against lesser opponents, if not for those players on the ice perpetrating the lopsiding, then for some certain observers at home with an interest in sportsmanship and mercy. Could the Canadians have let up a bit yesterday — after, say, Pierre-Luc Dubois scored in the second period to make it 5-0? Or what about closing it down for the third, at the start of which Canada, ranked first among hockey nations, was leading the Southern Koreans, 18th in the world, by a score of 8-0? Wouldn’t that be a kinder way of administering a whomping?

There’s no easy answer, of course. You can’t really expect a parcel of NHL players notto do what they’re trained to do, i.e. skate and score right to the end. And in a round-robin tournament, wherein goal-difference can be a deciding factor, there’s no such thing as an excess of goals.

If you want the original written ruling on the matter, well, in fact the book that’s considered to be hockey’s very first has something to say. Arthur Farrell, a Hall-of-Fame forward, published Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game in 1899, the same year he helped the Montreal Shamrocks to the first of their two successive Stanley Cup championships. Over the course of 122 pages, Farrell waxes long and eloquent on everything from history and equipment to conditioning and tactics.

Hockey, he’ll tell you, is as salubrious an occupation as you’re going to find anywhere. “The very adhering to the rules,” he advises, “the spirit of fair play that characterizes a manly game, the overcoming of all fears and all difficulties, the modest victory, the frank acknowledgement of defeat, all tend to build up, to educate, the mental faculties, just as the long practice, the swift race, and the hard check help to develope [sic] the physical man.”

Keep fighting is advice that features, too, as in never give up. “It is a mistake,” he counsels, “to lose courage because your opponents score the first three or four goals.” Don’t start fighting, though, as in punch somebody: “Do not begin to play roughly because you are losing.”

And if you’re winning? Pour it on, Farrell counsels. “Do not purposely and ostentatiously avoid scoring against a team that has already lost, because even if a bad beating does discourage them they would rather suffer it than be humiliated by any such show of pity.”

Sound advice, I guess, though I’d maybe prefer to hear it direct from the badly beaten and downright discouraged themselves.

Were the Swedes glad to go unpitied to the tune of 12-1 when the met the Canadians at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920? What about the team they sent at Chamonix in 1924, losers to that year’s Canada by 22-0?

W.A. Hewitt was the manager of those Canadian teams, Foster’s father, and he was at the helm again in 1928 in St. Moritz when the University of Toronto Grads wore the maple leaf. Canada opened the tournament against Sweden, surging to a 4-0 first-period lead that … displeased Hewitt. The newspapers back home reported it next day: the boss “became impatient at the slow rolling up of the score.” The players calmed him down, apparently: they thought it best “to let nature take its course.”

Final score: 11-0.

Some of the Grads were still talking about the propriety of running up scores when Canada went to the 1956 Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy and rolled over Austria by a score of 23-0. “It’s no credit to Canada,” opined Dr. Joe Sullivan, Grad goalie in ’28. “They shouldn’t beat these weak teams by more than ten goals.”

A teammate, centreman Hugh Plaxton, agreed. “I don’t think it does hockey any good.”

One last case study might be worth considering. Austria hosted the IIHF’s 1977 World Championships in Vienna, though they didn’t have a team in the tournament, and so didn’t have to worry about humiliations on the ice. Not so Canada. Here was a rare of instance of one of our teams finding itself at the suffering end of a rout and, with it, a chance to see how we’d react.

Canada was back at the Worlds for the first time in seven years, and this time they’d be icing a team of professionals. Not quite the front-line accumulation that had won the 1976 Canada Cup, of course: this one would be staffed by NHLers from teams that hadn’t made the playoffs, or hadn’t lasted far into them. GM Derek Holmes had marshalled Jim Rutherford and Tony Esposito for the Canadian goal, Dallas Smith and Carol Vadnais on defence. Pierre Larouche, Ron Ellis, and Rod Gilbert were up at forward along with captain Phil Esposito, who was also named as a playing assistant to coach Jimmy Wilson of the Colorado Rockies.

Phil E. stressed the need for team unity. He’d seen in 1972 what effect dissension could have on a venture like this. “We must have complete harmony if we expect to do well,” he said. The team was young and the players didn’t know one another. “The results in the first exhibition games might give some people in Canada cause for alarm, but overall, we will be all right.”

By The Banks Of The Not-So-Blue Danube: Wilf Paiement’s 1977 World Championships sweater, and the team in happier, pre-rout formation. (Image: Classic Auctions)

Things did not, shall we say, get off to an auspicious start in Europe. After a pre-tournament stop in Sweden, the Canadian played West Germany in Dusseldorf, where they won, 8-1, in a penalty-filled game, and were jeered by 10,000 fans, many of whom threw their seat-cushions on the ice when it was all over.

A report in The Globe and Mail insisted that the barrage was ironic, “mock rage that actually was a favorable reaction to the hard hitting and sometimes cheap penalties the Canadians received.” As for the German press, they reported that Phil Esposito might have been drunk.

“There they go, mistaking me for my brother Tony again,” Phil said, laughing, when he heard that. “Actually, if I had been drinking, it doesn’t say much for their hockey club.”

Of his refusal to shake hands after the game with one of the Germans, Esposito said, “I guess I do not like him. He speared me in the private parts on the first shift and it got worse from then on.”

The Canadians did peaceably dine with the Germans, post-game, I should report. Then they left for more exhibitions in Prague. “That is when it is down to serious business,” Esposito confided.

The Canadians lost both of the exhibitions they played against Czechoslovakia, 7-2 and 4-1. The Czechs paid a price, losing one of their players in the first game to a bad knee injury and another to a broken arm. “If ice hockey follows the path shown by Canadians on Saturday,” one local newspaper warned, “one can only wonder if it will survive beyond this century.”

In Austria, there was a kerfuffle regarding the IIHF’s insistence that all players wear helmets. Several Canadians complained, saying headgear gave them headaches, and the team doctor gave them medical certificates to that effect. But the IIHF wouldn’t relent. Unhappy, the Canadians still fared well enough in their opening game, beating the US 4-1. The next game didn’t go so well: the Swedes we took such care to whup through the 1920s now prevailed 4-2.

Next up, the powerful Soviet Union, winners of the two most recent Olympics as well as eight of the previous ten world championships. They had Vladislav Tretiak in the crease, and ahead of him, the likes of Alexander Yakushev, Boris Mikhailov, Valeri Kharlamov, and Helmut Balderis.

Final score: USSR 11, Canada 1.

And how did Canada respond to finding itself thrashed and demolished and paying for Soviet cruising?

Larouche called the winners the best team he’d ever seen. Phil Esposito was quoted calling them “a helluva hockey club.”

That’s as gracious as we got. On to self-doubt and recrimination.

“It was humiliating,” coach Wilson said.

GM Derek Holmes announced his disappointment, which was bitter.

Montreal’s Gazette topped its front page the next morning with the bad news, leading with a story that included the words worst drubbing, romped, embarrassingly easy, poor sportsmanship and shoddy play in the opening two paragraphs.

“The prestige and credibility of Canadian hockey was destroyed on the banks of the not-so-blue Danube,” George Gross wrote in The Toronto Sun. In the hours that followed, politicians in Ottawa took up the cry, with Ontario NDP MP Arnold Peters calling for Canadian hockey officials to be called to face a House of Commons committee to explain why we’d sent “second-rate players” to represent us.

The Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport was in Vienna, Iona Campagnolo, and she said this wasn’t something the government would get involved in. She was concerned about the conduct of our players. “I really don’t care whether we lose 20-1 or 2-1,” she said, “as long as we do it in a fashion that portrays us as true sportsmen.”

She did think that the Austrian press was making too much fuss, and the wrong kind. “It almost looked exultant,” she said. “One of the headlines I read was Canada Executed.”

Günter Sabetzki, president of the IIHF was concerned. He suggested that plans for a 1980 Canada Cup might now have to be reviewed. “We are not at all happy with the team representing the country we all considered to be the father of hockey.”

Had they learned nothing from history? “In 1954,” he said, “when the Canadians went to Stockholm, they thought they couldn’t be beaten and they ended up losing to the Russians. They were drinking too much whisky. This Canadian representative is also lacking in conditioning. I do not know whether they are drinking too much whisky, but I have heard the reports.”

Canada did go on to post a 3-3 with the Czechs, the eventual champions. We finished fourth in the end, just behind the Soviets.

Back at the rout, Al Strachan of The Gazette was on hand to document Canada’s failure to heed Arthur Farrell’s 1899 guidance on going goon in a losing effort. Rod Gilbert “swung himself off his feet” taking a “a vicious two-handed swipe” of his stick at a passing Soviet, while Wilf Paiement “acted like a malicious buffoon” swinging his stick at, and connecting with, the head of another Soviet player. “I figured I might as well hit somebody,” he said, later, “maybe hurt somebody. I don’t know. I wanted to do anything to win.” Canada was down at the time by 8-0.

You’d think those Soviets would have shown show respect, but no, they kept on with the scoring. Having argued to avoid putting helmets on, some of the Canadian players now refused to remove them once the game was all over and the teams lined up to hear the victor’s national anthem.

Centre Walt McKechnie of the Detroit Red Wings was one such, and he later shared his reasoning. “I didn’t want to look at them,” he said. “I hate them. I don’t like their way of life. I don’t like anything about them. They stink. They’re great hockey players, you’ve got to give them that, but I hate everything about them. Am I supposed to stand there at attention when their flag is flying? Never in a million years. I’m no hypocrite.”