January 16, 1905: The strangest Stanley Cup Finals come to an end, with the biggest blowout in hockey history. Whether the most famous story about the series is true remains in dispute.
The Dawson City Nuggets were an amateur hockey team -- pretty much every hockey team was amateur at the point -- based in Dawson City, in Canada's Yukon Territory. In the country's 2021 Census, its population was 1,577. That's considerably lower than it was at the beginning, in 1896, due to the Klondike Gold Rush.
Due to the weather conditions, sports other than ice hockey were pretty much impossible. And the Nuggets were good. Good enough, they thought, to challenge for the Stanley Cup. This was the era when the Cup was still a challenge trophy: You challenged the holder to a game, or a series, agreed upon the format before playing, and, if you won, you received the Cup.
This was also a time when, instead of 6 men on a side, hockey usually had 7, with the addition of a "rover," who alternated between offense and defense. When the NHL was founded, it did away with the position. By 1923, all professional leagues had. And defensemen were called "point" and "counter-point."
Anyway, because of the 7-man setup, the holders of the Stanley Cup, the Ottawa Hockey Club, were known as "The Silver Seven": Goalkeeper Dave Finnie, point Arthur "Bones" Allen, counter-point Arthur Moore, rover Harry "Rat" Westwick, left wing Fred White, center Frank McGee, and right wing Alf Smith. Harvey Pulford was a reserve defenseman, and had previously been a bigger star for the team. They had already won the Cup in 1903 and 1904.
But the Nuggets thought they could beat them, with goalie Albert Forrest, point Jim Johnstone, counter-point Lorne Hanna, rover Randy McLennan, left wing Norman Watt, center Hector Smith, and right wing George Kennedy.
In October 1904, the Silver Seven accepted the challenge. It was set for Dey's Arena in Ottawa, Ontario, the national capital and the OHC's home, starting on January 13, 1905 -- a Friday the 13th. All the Nuggets had to do was show up. It's only 6,000 kilometers. Well, 5,969. Or, 3,709 miles. Actually, due to the roads available at the time, it was more like 6,400 kilometers, or just under 4,000 miles. But it was possible, right?
Yes, it was possible. First, they had to get to Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon Territory. They started on December 18, 1904. Why so early? Because, at the time, the only way to get from Dawson City to Whitehorse was by dog sled. No, I'm not joking: That's what happened. The team spent the nights in police sheds along the road.
When they got to Whitehorse, the weather turned bad, causing the trains not to run for 3 days. That caused them to miss their steamer ship from Skagway, Alaska to Vancouver, British Columbia. (You're reading that right: They had to cross the border into the U.S., and then again, back into Canada.) The next steamer could not dock for 3 days, due to the ice buildup.
The club found the sea journey treacherous, causing seasickness amongst the team. When the steamer reached Vancouver, the area was too fogged in to dock, and the steamer headed south, and docked in Seattle -- so they had to go through Customs again. From there, they caught a train to Vancouver -- so they had to go through Customs again. Through all this, they spent Christmas away from their families.
They finally left Vancouver on January 6, 1905, arriving in Ottawa on January 11, 24 days after leaving Dawson City, just 2 days before puck-drop. The Nuggets received a huge welcome at the train station, were given a welcoming dinner, and the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club offered them free use of their rooms for the duration of their stay. But the Silver Seven refused to postpone the series, to give them a little bit of rest.
The 1st game started decently for Dawson, as they trailed only 3–1 at the half. But things turned ugly afterwards. Norman Watt of Dawson tripped Ottawa's Art Moore, who retaliated with a stick to the mouth of Watt. Watt promptly knocked Moore out, hitting him on the head with his stick. The game ended 9–2 for Ottawa, with Alf Smith scoring 4 goals. The game left a poor taste in the Yukoners, who claimed that several goals were offside.
Frank McGee, then Ottawa's biggest star, scored 1 goal in the game. Afterward, Watt was quoted as saying, "McGee doesn't look like too much." As Michael Jordan would say, "And McGee took that personally." He scored 4 goals in the 1st half, and 10 in the 2nd half. Ottawa clinched the series, winning the 2nd game 23–2.
This game proved that the "challenge cup" idea really wasn't a good one. The Nuggets did not belong on the same rink as the Silver Seven. It was, and remains, the most lopsided in Stanley Cup Playoff history. McGee's 14-goal game, which included 8 consecutive goals scored in less than 9 minutes, is still the record for the most goals scored by a single player in a Stanley Cup game, or any other major senior hockey game.
After the second game, The Globe reported:
The visiting team was outclassed to-night quite as decisively as the score indicates. In fact had it not been for the fact of Forrest's presence in the Dawson goal the score against them might have been a great deal larger. Ottawa simply skated away from them at the whistle, and continued to pile up the goals with a merciless monotonous regularity which was farcical in the extreme.
Ottawa celebrated its victory by hosting Dawson at a banquet at the Ottawa AAA clubhouse. Legend has it that the Ottawa players took the Cup and attempted to drop-kick it over the Rideau Canal. The stunt was unsuccessful, with the Cup landing on the frozen ice, and was retrieved the next day. Hockey historians disagree on whether the attempt was actually made. Given the size of the Cup at the time, it would seem that a good solid kick would have seriously damaged it.
from its 1893 inception until 1912
The news got worse for McLennan and Watt, who were employed by the Yukon Territory gold commissioner's office when not playing hockey. The day after the 2nd game, the Territory announced that the pair would be laid off from work, effective immediately, albeit with pay until June 30, 1905.
After playing Ottawa, the Nuggets team played a series of exhibition games in the east before returning to the Yukon. The team did not last much longer. The Silver Seven lost the Cup to the Montreal Wanderers in 1906, but would win it again in 1909 (by which point, they were known as the Ottawa Senators), 1911, 1920, 1921, 1923 and 1927. They went out of business in 1934, and were replaced by a new Ottawa Senators in 1992.
By the time they won again in 1909, Frank McGee was no longer playing for them, having retired at the age of 23. He was killed in action for the Canadian Army in World War I, in France in 1916.
The Dey brothers, directors of the Ottawa Hockey Club, built 3 different arenas with their name on it, on the same plot of land. The 2nd, the site of this series, lasted from 1902 until a fire in 1920.
In 1997, a team from Dawson competed against Senators alumni in a re-enactment of the 1905 match, this time at the Senators' arena, then named the Corel Center (now named the Canadian Tire Centre), complete with organ music, spotlights, and other such hullabaloo.
The Dawson team symbolically recreated the trip to Ottawa, though train service no longer ran between Whitehorse and the Pacific Coast. Dawson managed a slight improvement in score: 18–0, with 25 shots-on-goal. The event was held for charity with 45 percent, the Senators' take of receipts, was contributed to the Heart Institute, while the Dawson team donated 25 ounces of gold, or the cash equivalent, to the Yukon Special Olympics, another 45 percent of the receipts. The rest was designated to Yukon Minor Hockey.
Shortly before the re-enactment, Michael Onesi, a Whitehorse newspaper columnist, wryly commented that had the Dawson team triumphed in 1905, they would have had the longest dynasty in Stanley Cup history. Challenges normally took place in the cupholder's town, and visiting teams could not effectively play, after the brutal journey by overland coach to Dawson, their bodies blacker than a hockey puck from all the bruises of a dog sled ride.
In 1945, Frank McGee and Harvey Pulford would be 2 of the 1st 9 players elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
*
January 16, 1905 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. And basketball barely existed. So there were no other scores on this historic day.
No comments:
Post a Comment