A Great Game (49 page)

Tyner returned to the active priesthood in Nebraska after the armistice in 1918. In 1923, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to take over St. George's Episcopal Church and stayed there for the remainder of his career, becoming emeritus in 1952.

Canon Tyner passed away in 1967, just before his eighty-eighth birthday. Mary lived until 1980. St. George's went on to become part of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in 1986.

Not surprisingly, Charles Tyner was active in his community. His pastimes included an interest in hockey and skating. He served as timekeeper at local games and was honorary president of the Kansas City Figure Skating Club. His obituary declared that, as a hockey player long ago, he had been “with the Toronto team that won a Stanley Cup.”
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The story, it seems, had improved over the years.

Unlike Tyner, by the time Rolly Young headed to Europe, he had
achieved his dream of becoming a physician. After being cut from the Berlin Dutchmen in 1908–09, Young made one brief and final return to the OPHL, with his hometown Waterloo Colts the following season. After that, Young dedicated himself solely to his studies.

Rolly had graduated from McMaster University (then located in Toronto) in 1907. As has been noted, he then studied medicine at the University of Toronto. He finally finished up in 1911.

Dr. Roland W. Young signed up with the British Royal Army Medical Corps in 1914. He served in Malta, Egypt and Macedonia before returning to Canada and joining the Canadian Army Medical Corps. After being demobilized in 1919, he practised medicine in Waterloo, London, Toronto and Bronte, Ontario.

At the age of forty, Young married one Elizabeth Ross Greene, a nurse. Like most of the key Toronto Professionals, he left no descendants.
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Rolly passed away in 1961 and is buried in the family plot at Waterloo.

As has been noted, Young's defence partner, Con Corbeau, was the first of the original Torontos to play again professionally for the Queen City. He was also the first former Professional to drink from the Stanley Cup while wearing a Toronto uniform. The veteran's on-ice career ended the following season with Glace Bay of the dying Maritime pro league.

Corbeau was later a fairly successful coach in the senior amateur game. However, Con died in 1920 at just thirty-eight from heart and kidney disease. Interestingly, his younger brother Bert Corbeau was a prominent NHL defenceman who played his pro hockey in Toronto from 1923 to 1928.

Con Corbeau was one of four Toronto Professionals to play hockey for the Queen City later in their careers. Harold McNamara and Skene Ronan returned in 1915 to join Livingstone's Toronto Shamrocks. Jack Marks would also come back and, like Corbeau, would help bring the Stanley Cup to Toronto.

Marks was the ringer who had substituted in the second half of the 1908 showdown with the Wanderers. He had later accompanied the
club on its disastrous postseason road trip. Jack's career was prominently eulogized after the train wreck of 1909, which had presumably ended his playing days. However, not only was he back with Brantford before the end of the season, but he went on to a long and successful pro career. Although it was spent mostly in Quebec City, Marks would serve as a spare forward on the 1917–18 champion Toronto Arenas.

A couple of other erstwhile Toronto Professionals—the Mallen brothers—have Stanley Cup history that is worth mentioning. Of these, Ken was the biggest star and played until 1917. Acknowledged as the fastest skater of his era, he helped the Ottawa Senators hold the Stanley Cup in 1910. He won Lord Stanley's mug a second time with Cyclone Taylor and the Vancouver Millionaires in 1915. However, it remains a mystery why Kenny's name was never engraved on the jug.

Ken had three hockey-playing siblings, including fellow Toronto Pro Jimmy Mallen. Jim had less success in the game, but he does have one notable achievement to his name. In January 1910, Jimmy and Kenny lined up for Galt and Ottawa respectively—the first brothers to ever play against one another in a Stanley Cup final.

Although most of Alex Miln's squad had some presence in the sport after the team folded, one notable who did not was Hugh Lambe. Lambe never played in another professional match, but he did periodically surface in the local news. The club's perennial spare defenceman—and the only man with the team for the entirety of their existence—he was actually one of their most popular players. This fan following really came from lacrosse. Hughie was regarded as one of the best defenders of all time for the Toronto Lacrosse Club.

A 1912 report noted Lambe's marriage to Eleanor Rubidge Barron. Miss Barron was the daughter of Stratford judge John Augustus Barron. Barron, it may be recalled, was captain of the old Rideau Rebels and chaired the founding meeting of the OHA. We know that the marriage, which eventually ended in separation, was troubled due to Hugh's drinking.
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Lambe died tragically in 1941 from a fall down the stairs while running to catch a taxi to the railway station. Interestingly, he was then apparently travelling the world as a tea examiner with the Department of National Revenue. Why such an occupation was necessary is not
self-evident, but the
Toronto Star
reported that “the position is one which requires years of special training—training possessed by not more than a handful of experts in the whole country.”
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The most significant member of the Toronto Professionals, Bruce Ridpath, also never played another game of hockey. In retrospect, the trajectory of Ridpath's shinny career was already apparent when the modern hockey rivalry between Toronto and Montreal began on Christmas night 1912. The man chosen to be the franchise player of the new Queen City team was behind the bench in street clothes. Bruce was still very much in the early stages of a long convalescence from his near-fatal automobile accident.

Ridpath did, however, eventually return successfully to canoeing, his original claim to fame in sporting circles. It also appears he was able to regain much of his former expertise. In the summer of 1919 an advertisement appeared in the
Toronto
World
, stating, “On the lagoon in Jubilee Park the expert canoeist, Mr. Bruce Ridpath, will demonstrate the correct method of steering a canoe, the proper positions for paddling, either with single or double paddle, and safety-first rules.”
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Riddy kept his youthful looks, but largely lost the fame hockey had brought him. He became a sales representative for a sporting goods company. Bruce also remained a bachelor—it is remarkable how rarely these early hockey stars appear to have married—and ran a summer camp for boys where, naturally, canoeing was a key activity.

Ridpath also never fully shook off the health effects of his head trauma. In the spring of 1925 he suffered a minor stroke while playing cards with friends. A week later, he had a more serious seizure and was taken to St. Michael's Hospital. Bruce never regained consciousness and passed away three weeks later, on June 4. He was only forty-one.

Bound for the Hockey Hall of Fame before fate intervened, Ridpath is the ultimate “forgotten Leaf.” His role as the founder and first captain of the original Toronto Hockey Club was washed away as quickly as the memory of that team. So too was his role as the designated captain of the reborn Toronto Hockey Club. This is even more striking in that, as
manager, it was he who, against all conventional wisdom, assembled the Stanley Cup lineup, Jack Marshall included.

And yet, when the Blue Shirts took that historic first Stanley Cup, no mention, let alone credit, was given to Ridpath.

The same anonymity was not in store for the other of the Toronto Professionals' two big stars. As Ridpath stood in street clothes, watching helplessly from the sidelines, Newsy Lalonde stood at centre ice as the captain of the Montreal Canadiens on December 25, 1912. Booed out of Toronto in 1909—and booed in Toronto many times after that—he was by then well on his way to becoming one of the greatest players in the history of the game. On January 5, 1910, he had scored the Habs' first-ever goal. By the spring of 1916, Lalonde would be their playing manager, leading the club to the first of its two dozen Stanley Cup championships.

Newsy Lalonde has been gone for so long that his legendary careers in both hockey and lacrosse have gradually faded from popular culture. Yet it took a long time because, for the first two decades of the twentieth century, he was arguably the single most dominant player in both of Canada's national sports. A true gentleman off the ice, Lalonde established
himself as one of the fiercest and roughest competitors the rink has hosted.

Lalonde's various fights and ongoing feuds were epic even for the time. Demanding only the best effort from himself and others in every match he played, he probably dropped the gloves in more circumstances than any other player in history. At various times, Newsy punched out not only opponents, but also fans, officials and even teammates. At least once, as a referee himself in a lacrosse game, he pummelled a player who gave him too hard a time. Still, Lalonde was one of those who lived by a hockey “code,” refusing ever to speak or act against an opponent outside the arena.

Newsy also honed his instinct for scoring in a way that would completely overcome his average skating ability. In fact, before the arrival of Maurice Richard, Lalonde was the highest scorer in pro hockey history. He is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. He was chosen to light the torch for the Sports Hall when it opened in Toronto in 1955. He was a grand old eighty-three when he passed away in 1970.

Not surprisingly, Lalonde was named “Athlete of the Half Century” for lacrosse in 1950. In 1998,
The Hockey News
ranked him thirty-second in a list of “The 100 Greatest Hockey Players.” This placed him highest among those who had played prior to the founding of the National Hockey League.