A Great Game (43 page)

How totally it had all turned around was demonstrated on the last night of the season. On March 5, the hapless Tecumsehs were beaten at the Mutual Street Arena 10–3 by the Montreal Wanderers and finished in the cellar of the six-team league. At the same time, in Montreal, the Blue Shirts bested the Canadiens 6–2 to end up third. They finished well back of Quebec, who had just won eleven straight games to take their second consecutive Stanley Cup, but the result was good enough for most local fans to proclaim, “Wait until next year.”

All in all, it was a pretty successful year for the professional Torontos. When the dust settled, the club had almost broken even. The loss of a mere $300 represented a decent first-year bottom line for Montrealer Frank Robinson, Torontonian Percy Quinn and their fellow investors. The fine showing after such a shaky start, however, was not quite enough for them to leave management alone.

In truth, the manager should have seen what was coming. As the season wore on, there had been a growing tendency in reports to see every Blue Shirts' victory as the coach's. Yet, when they lost, accounts talked about the coach's boss. In other words, it was Marshall's men who won hockey games, but “Ridpath's roustabouts”
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who went down to defeat. Given Jack's complete command of the squad, this was perhaps not surprising. Nonetheless, it was Bruce who had assembled them all—Marshall included.

In any case, when the Toronto Hockey Club assembled at the King Edward Hotel for its annual meeting on November 6, 1913, Marshall had become both manager and coach. Ridpath had quietly vanished. Oddly, though, he did turn up in December for the Blue Shirt tryouts. To everyone's surprise, Bruce was trying to make a comeback as a player. Press reports of his performance were, for a few days, quite positive,
even noting Riddy's strong performance in scrimmages. Then, just as quickly, his name again disappeared from the dailies. No explanation was ever offered.

More than just Bruce Ridpath would depart the Toronto pro hockey scene prior to the 1913–14 season. So would the Tecumseh Hockey Club. With attendance plummeting near the end of the previous year, the Indians had lost $2,500—not an enormous amount, but substantial just the same. W. J. Bellingham had had enough, and he unloaded the organization.

The Tecumsehs' problems at the gate underscored a difficulty for the NHA in Toronto. Amateur advocates claimed the Queen City was simply not a pro town. There may have been a grain of truth there, but attendance figures do not entirely bear the argument out. Both the Blue Shirts and Tecumsehs had played before big crowds—even at prices substantially higher than for the OHA—for much of the season. The latter's attendance really tailed off only once the team fell hopelessly out of contention.

This was not a problem for Toronto's OHA clubs. Whereas the NHA teams played a twenty-game schedule, the amateur “regular season” consisted of small round-robins of just four to eight games. After that, the winners of the various groups participated in a series of two-game, total-goals playoffs until only the champion remained standing. In short, an OHA team never really had to sustain fan support over a losing season. Any such campaign ended very quickly.

What this pattern did highlight was the importance of winning for Toronto's pro clubs. If they were not winning, their campaigns at least had to generate some intensity. This may have been what the NHA had in mind when the Tecumsehs were sold, although it would not have been immediately evident.

The franchise was bought by Tom Wall, a Montrealer who was manager of Spalding's Canadian operations. With no longer even a tenuous link between the NHA team and its Tecumseh Lacrosse Club namesake, Wall decided a rebranding was in order. Thus, the Indians became the Ontario Hockey Club. To run it, Wall brought in one of his Toronto business partners, the famous Jimmy Murphy.

Jimmy Murphy was renowned in hockey as the longtime coach of St. Michael's College. Under his direction, St. Mike's had captured the senior OHA championship in 1908–09 and 1909–10. In the latter year, they had also taken the Allan Cup, giving Toronto its first national hockey title. A few observers might also have remembered Murphy's even earlier life as a sometime advisor and coach to Alex Miln's Toronto Professionals.

A more intriguing part of Murphy's background was on the lacrosse side. Murphy was president of the National Lacrosse Union. Before that, he had been manager of the Toronto Lacrosse Club. When that team's ownership changed, he had been replaced by Percy Quinn, who had gone on to run the Dominion Lacrosse Association after its split from the NLU.

Thus, the relationship between the Queen City's two pro hockey clubs had morphed. The Torontos–Tecumsehs version had been based on a crosstown lacrosse rivalry. The one between the Torontos and Ontarios
was also a lacrosse feud, but it was internecine, rooted in two factions originating within the Toronto Lacrosse Club itself. With members of each group surrounding Quinn and Murphy respectively, the newspapers predicted a heated relationship between the two shinny organizations.

A stormy battle for local pro hockey supremacy in 1913–14 may have been expected, but it was not to be. The Ontarios were no match for the Blue Shirts. It soon became evident that the Ontarios were worse than their predecessor, the Tecumsehs, had been the previous season.

In hindsight, Billy Nicholson's failure as a manager should not have been a surprise. Nothing in his background indicated any obvious special talent for the role. Also, frankly, the goaltender's position is not an ideal one from which to organize and coach a team—especially in the heat of a game.

In the case of Jimmy Murphy, however, greater things were genuinely anticipated. He began the year by, quite expectedly, retaining only three previous regulars: Steve Vair and the McNamara brothers. After that, his recruitment strategy seemed to strangely mirror Nicholson's. He ever so slowly gathered a number of unsigned pro veterans, most of whom were well into the back nine of their careers.

A couple of Murphy's signings were good men. Jack McDonald of Quebec, recovered from the PCHA, was a perennially reliable scorer. Fred Lake had at one time been a star defenceman in Ottawa and still had some goods to sell. Nonetheless, beyond these it was largely a collection of has-beens and never-weres.

The sum total was an Ontarios lineup that again had a fair back end but a pathetic offence. They did not merely lack scoring punch; they regularly came up short on what the papers then called “ginger”—i.e., aggressiveness—whether on the attack or backchecking. The team was simply old, heavy and slow—just like the year before.

The Ontarios were consistently lacklustre and on their heels. Despite some competitive games early in the season, they lost seven of their first eight. They then rallied to win three in a row before going into a slow descent for the rest of the campaign.

After nine more consecutive losses, their 4–16 record was again the worst in the NHA—and three games worse than the Tecumsehs had finished the year before.

By contrast, the Torontos picked up where they left off. They entered training camp with virtually the same roster. The only changes were Sue McLean and Frank Nighbor. McLean had been dropped the year before once Marshall became a regular. Nighbor, though a solid young forward throughout the previous season, had been lured away to British Columbia.

The loss of Nighbor was more than compensated for by the return of Jack Walker. Walker was another prospect who had been recruited the previous season from Port Arthur. He had, however, gone to the Maritime league after just one game with the Blue Shirts.

Reading the reports from the season, one is struck by the degree to which hockey was changing. A contender like the 1913–14 Toronto Hockey Club would very much resemble a top team of future eras, and presented a striking contrast to the game of just a decade before.

For example, the Blue Shirts were not wedded to old theories about complex patterns of “combination” offence. They kept their passes short and sparse. They were fast, but they used their speed as much for checking as for attack. Their forwards bore directly in on the net, rarely circling in mid-ice. They harassed and hit the opposition relentlessly, keying on its main men. And they were not afraid to take penalties as long as they were a consequence of tough, hard work.

The team also had magnificent balance—great stars and solid role players. Holmes kept maturing as a reliable, consistent goaltender. Cameron was the flashy, rushing defenceman. In Davidson there was a power forward and with Foyston a quiet, classy centre. Walker was simply sensational as both an offensive threat and a persistent forechecker. For reliable relief, the team could call on Wilson as a utility man.

And then there was McGiffin.

Roy “Minnie” McGiffin—his nickname was said to be short for Minerva, the goddess of warfare—was the most controversial member of the club. Hockey histories now tend to describe him as the original “goon.” More accurately, he was the prototypical “agitator.” Minnie was actually quite small, at a reputed 127 pounds, but he was always willing to mix it up.