February 4, 1943: Frank Calder, the 1st President of the National Hockey League, dies of a heart attack in Montreal. He was 65 years old.
Frank Sellick Calder was born on November 17, 1877 in Bristol, in England's West Country. As a young man, he flipped a coin to decide whether to move to Canada or America. Canada won. Given his love for rugby, he might have ended up an executive in American football.
He became a sportswriter in Montreal, and was a key figure in the development of Canadian soccer. At the start of the 1914-15 season, the National Hockey Association named him its treasurer -- not because he had ever been affiliated with their sport, but because he had connections in sports in general, and in journalism.
In 1917, the NHA owners got tired of dealing with Eddie Livingstone, owner of the Toronto Blueshirts, who had won the Stanley Cup in 1914. But they couldn't get rid of him. First one president of the NHA, Emmett Quinn, resigned; then, his successor, Frank Robinson. That left Calder as acting president. He arranged meetings between the NHA's other team owners, and they decided to form a new league. Essentially, they all dropped out of the NHA and formed the NHL, leaving Livingstone with control of a league with one team in it.
The NHL was officially founded on November 26, 1917, and Calder was elected its 1st President. He managed the League through the crisis of the Spanish Flu epidemic that forced the cancellation of the last game of the 1919 Stanley Cup Finals, and fined the striking Hamilton Tigers in 1925, leading to their refusal to play for the Cup, despite having finished 1st in the NHL's regular season, and then to the cancellation of their franchise.
Calder oversaw the expansion of the NHL into America, in 1924 with the Boston Bruins (and also with Canada's Montreal Maroons); in 1925 with the New York Americans (allowing the owners of their rights to basically take over the Tigers) and the Pittsburgh Pirates; and, in 1926, following the collapse of the Western Hockey League, with the New York Rangers, the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Black Hawks.
(The Chicago team always wrote their name as two words, "Black Hawks," until 1986. Their original NHL charter document was found, and it had the name written as one word, "Blackhawks." They informed the NHL office, and the team has been "the Chicago Blackhawks" ever since.)
But he also led the NHL through the Great Depression, which would kill off some teams: The Pirates became the Philadelphia Quakers in 1930, but lasted only 1 season and then folded in 1931; the Ottawa Senators became the St. Louis Eagles in 1934, but lasted only 1 season and then folded in 1935; and the Maroons folded in 1938, despite having won the Stanley Cup only 3 seasons before. In 1942, the manpower drain of World War II forced the Americans to suspend operations. Calder promised team management that they would be able to start again after the war.
Except he wouldn't be able to keep that promise. On January 25, 1943, at a meeting of the NHL's Board of Governors in Toronto, he had a heart attack. He later had another in the hospital. On February 3, he felt well enough to travel, and returned to his hometown of Montreal. But he felt bad again, checked into Montreal General Hospital, and suffered another heart attack the next day, killing him.
In 1933, Calder began naming an NHL Rookie of the Year. In 1937, he began buying a trophy for the annual winner. After his death, it was renamed the Calder Memorial Trophy. The American Hockey League renamed its championship trophy the Calder Cup. In 1947, Calder was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, in the "Builders" category.
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February 4, 1943 was a Thursday. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Rangers and the Chicago Black Hawks played to a tie, 1-1 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins were not scheduled.
Baseball and football are out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet.
This was also the day that the novel The Human Comedy, by William Saroyan, was published. I have a separate entry for that event.
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