November 11, 1930: Philadelphia's Disastrous 1st NHL Team

Hib Milks

November 11, 1930: For the 1st time, a team represents Philadelphia in the National Hockey League. It doesn't go so well. The rest of the season doesn't get any better.

The Pittsburgh Pirates, named for the city's baseball team, had been founded in 1925, and they made the Playoffs in 1926 and 1928. But the Great Depression hurt them, and in 1930, they moved across Pennsylvania, becoming the Philadelphia Quakers, taking the name of a 19th Century baseball team, and also the University of Pennsylvania's teams.

In their 1st game, at the Philadelphia Arena, they hosted the next-closest NHL team, the New York Rangers. The Rangers won, 3-0, getting a goal in each period: Butch Keeling at 4:37 of the 1st, Gene Carrigan at 13:04 of the 2nd, and Ivan "Ching" Johnson at 6:51 of the 3rd. There is no record of how many shots the Quakers had, but Ranger netminder John Ross Roach turned them all away, for the shutout.

The Quakers became the worst team in NHL history. They lost their 1st 3 games, tied the next, and lost the next, before finally winning in their 6th game, a 2-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs, at home on November 25. Then they went on a 15-game losing streak, including going 0-for-December, before beating the Montreal Maroons, 4-3 in overtime on January 10, 1931.

Then they went 0-9-2, before beating the Detroit Falcons, forerunners of the Red Wings, on February 17. This would be their only road win. They lost 6 more, before beating the Falcons in Philadelphia on March 12. They lost their next 2, and closed the season with a 4-4 tie away to the Montreal Canadiens on March 21, 1931. Ironically, the Canadiens were defending Stanley Cup Champions, and would win the Cup again.

In a 44-game season, they won 4, lost 36, and tied 4, for 12 points. Those 4 victories remain the fewest wins in an NHL season. The 4-36-4 record meant that their "winning" percentage, if ties are counted, was .136. That would remain an NHL record low until the 1974-75 expansion season of the Washington Capitals: In an 80-game season, they went 8-67-5, for .131.

The Depression really did the Quakers in: They averaged only 2,500 fans per home game, couldn't afford to acquire good players -- Hibbert "Hib" Milks led them with 12 goals in the 44 games -- and they lost $100,000. The franchise folded, and Philadelphia was doomed to minor-league hockey for the next 37 years.

The Philadelphia Arena opened in 1920, at 46th and Market Streets in West Philadelphia. ABC would build its Philadelphia affiliate's radio and later television studios across the street, broadcasting American Bandstand from there from 1952 to 1964.

The Arena hosted games of the NBA's Philadelphia Warriors and Philadelphia 76ers, but the opening of The Spectrum in 1967, allowing the 76ers and the expansion Flyers to move there, doomed it. It burned down in 1983, and a housing complex is now on the site.

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November 11, 1930 was a Tuesday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 other games in the NHL that night. The New York Americans lost to the Boston Bruins, 1-0 at the Boston Garden. And the Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Maroons, 2-0 at the Ottawa Auditorium.

And in English soccer, in a benefit game for war veterans on this anniversary of the end of World War I, North London team Arsenal traveled to Paris, and beat Racing Club de France, 7-2. I have a separate entry for this event.

April 22, 1947: The 1st NBA Champions

April 22, 1947: The Basketball Association of America, the league that became the National Basketball Association 2 years later, crowns its first Champions.

The Philadelphia Warriors won the Eastern Division Playoffs, while the Chicago Stags won the Western Division Playoffs. The Finals got underway at the Philadelphia Arena, at 4530 Market Street in West Philadelphia, adjacent to the 46th Street station on the Market Street Elevated line, now known as SEPTA's Market-Frankford Line.

The Philadelphia Arena

In those pre-24-second-shot-clock days, the Warriors won Game 1, 84-71. Joe Fulks, the league's 1st-ever scoring champion, scored 37 points.

(In a 1996 ESPN special about picking the greatest NBA team of all time, Bob Ryan of The Boston Globe, born 14 months before this 1st NBA Finals in nearby Trenton, New Jersey, suggested that the 1954 institution of the shot clock was a demarcation line, and, before that, no team, and no player, could be taken seriously among the all-time greats, because the game was just too different. He singled out Fulks: "I'm not going to kid you: I don't think Jumpin' Joe Fulks makes it in today's NBA, except maybe as a 12th man." In other words, the last man on the bench.)

The Warriors also won Game 2, 85-74, even though their leading scorer in this game scored only 18. This was Howie Dallmar, who had led Stanford University to the 1942 NCAA Tournament title.

The series moved out to the Chicago Stadium for Game 3. But only 2,209 fans came out, leaving about 20,000 empty seats. The days when a team going for a professional basketball league's championship meant everything to Chicago were far off into the future. The Warriors won this one, too, 75-72.

The Stags managed to avoid a sweep, by winning Game 4, 74-73, led by 20 points from Max Zaslofsky. But back in Philadelphia, on April 22, in front of a full house of 8,221, the Warriors finished the Stags off, 83-80. Fulks scored 34. Color footage survives, even though the accompanying music sounds more like the 1920s than the 1940s.

The team's head coach, general manager and owner was Eddie Gottlieb, born in 1898 in Kyiv, Ukraine, but grew up in South Philadelphia. He founded the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association team, or the Philadelphia SPHAs, the top pro basketball team in the Northeast in the 1930s and early 1940s. It's been suggested that the Warriors can be traced to this team, and some players did move from the SPHAs to the Warriors. However, the SPHAs continued in the minor American Basketball League for a few years. Gottlieb died in 1979.

Hail the Champions:

* 5, guard Angelo Musi, from West Philadelphia and the city's Temple University, born in 1918, died in 2009.

* 6, guard Jerry Fleishman, from Brooklyn and New York University (NYU), 1922-2007.

* 7, guard Jerry Rullo, from Southwest Philadelphia and Temple, 1922-2016, the last survivor of this team.

* 8, guard, George Senesky, from South Philadelphia and the city's St. Joseph's University, 1922-2001.

* 9, guard, Ralph Kaplowitz, from The Bronx and NYU, 1919-2009.

* 10, Joe Fulks, from Kuttawa, Kentucky and Murray State, 1921-1976.

* 12, forward Howie Dallmar, from San Francisco and Stanford, 1922-1991.

* 14, forward Matt Guokas, from West Philadelphia and St. Joseph's, 1915-1993. He later served as the public address announcer for the Philadelphia Eagles.

* 15, guard Pete Rosenberg, from South Philadelphia and, despite being Jewish, St. Joseph's, 1918-1997.

* 16, center Art Hillhouse, from Rutherford, New Jersey, and Long Island University in Brooklyn, 1916-1980.

The following season, the Warriors reached the Finals again, but lost to the original version of the Baltimore Bullets. They would win the NBA Championship again in 1956, coached by Senesky, and led by former Philadelphia collegiate stars Tom Gola of La Salle and Paul Arizin of Villanova.

Starting in 1952, the Warriors began playing more games at the Convention Hall of the Philadelphia Civic Center. The Philadelphia Arena burned down in 1983.

In 1962, the Warriors were bought and moved to San Francisco, taking the name Golden State Warriors in 1971. In 1963, the Syracuse Nationals were moved to become the Philadelphia 76ers. In 1967, led by Wilt Chamberlain, they won the NBA Championship. Also among their players was Matt Guokas Jr., making him and Matt Sr. the 1st father-son combination to both win NBA titles. Also among their players was Billy Cunningham, who coached the 76ers to the 1983 NBA Championship. They've been to just 1 NBA Finals since, in 2001.

The Stags weren't even that lucky. They made the Playoffs every year they were in the NBA, but they were only in it 4 years, folding in 1950. The Chicago Bulls arrived in 1966, but didn't win their 1st title until 1991, with Michael Jordan.

Fulks, Gottlieb, and public address announcer Dave Zinkoff have been elected to the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. From their 1956 NBA Champions, Paul Arizin, Tom Gola, Neil Johnston, Ernie Beck, Gottlieb and Zinkoff have been elected.

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April 22, 1947 was a Tuesday. Football was out of season. The NHL season had ended 3 days earlier, when the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens, 2-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, to win Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

There were 4 games played in what would later be called Major League Baseball. The Yankees were in one of them, but not the most important one:

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0 at Ebbets Field. All game long, the Phillies' Nashville native manager, former All-Star Yankee left fielder Ben Chapman, led his team's "bench jockeys" in spouting the most despicable of racist abuse at the 1st black player in modern baseball, the Dodgers' 1st baseman, Jackie Robinson.

It got so bad that 2nd baseman Eddie Stanky, who grew up in Philadelphia but, like Chapman, now lived near Birmingham, Alabama, and was worried about his business interests simply because Robinson was a teammate, called timeout, got out of the Dodger dugout, walked across the field, and told Chapman to knock it off.

Robinson led off the bottom of the 8th with a single, and scored the game's only run on a single by Gene Hermanski. From that point onward, Robinson knew his teammates had his back.

* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 5-4 at Yankee Stadium. The game was won by a sacrifice fly by Tommy Henrich in the 8th inning. Bill Bevens went the distance for the win. Charlie Keller hit a home run, Joe DiMaggio went 0-for-1 with 3 walks, and Ted Williams hit a home run.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-0 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Bob Feller pitched a shutout, allowing just 1 hit, a 7th-inning single by Al Zarilla. He stuck out 10, and walked only 1. Joe Gordon, former Yankee 2nd baseman on his way to the Hall of Fame, hit a home run.

* And the Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-6 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Eddie Miller singled home the winning run in the top of the 10th inning.