Luck of the Irish won Toronto a Cup 100 years ago

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If the Dallas Cowboys are ‘God’s team,’ you don’t need to ask which hockey club had St. Patrick’s blessing.

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The green-garbed gang named for Ireland’s patron were Toronto’s NHL entry for seven and a half seasons. A hundred years ago this month, in a final series that fortuitously began on St. Paddy’s Day, they defeated the Vancouver Millionaires for the Stanley Cup.

As the Irish proverb tells us, the older the fiddle, the sweeter the tune.

“The St. Pats and their Cup just add so much to the legacy of the Leafs’ franchise,” said Hockey Hall of Fame historian Kevin Shea. “They’re gone and long forgotten and people wish they knew more about them. But because of Conn Smythe’s huge presence of him with the Leafs, it greatly overshadowed the St. Pats and before that, the Arenas and the Blueshirts.

“But I love this team brings out the green jerseys around every March 17. It’s a nodding acceptance that there was NHL hockey here before the Leafs, with some great stories.”

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Shea is the ideal source for such such, author of the club’s official centennial coffee table book in 2017, which devoted a chapter to the St. Pats’ era, their lone Cup and their place in the city. In the early 20th century, Toronto was often called ‘The Belfast Of Canada,’ a heavy mix of Catholic and Protestant Irish.

The Blueshirts were Toronto’s entry in the original NHL and won the 1917-18 Cup. But they faced bankruptcy in a lawsuit from previous owner Eddie Livingstone, who claimed contractual control of some pre-1917 players. To wart him, the team’s owners, who also ran the Arena Gardens on Mutual Street, sold to new investors, led by the St. Patricks’ Hockey Club.

The Pats already had a big athletic organization around town with teams at the senior, junior and beginner level. They changed the Arenas name and sweaters from blue to green and white to lure the Irish population.

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“I don’t know the immigration numbers at that time,” said Shea, whose own family came from Ireland in the 1870s to Markdale near Owen Sound. “But it reflects the potato famine and all that happened there in the mid-1800s.”

It’s estimated 40,000 arrived in Toronto soon after the famine began. Many perished on the trip, hundreds more upon arrival in so-called ‘fever sheds’ on the waterfront. There were ethnic tensions as the immigrants tried to build new lives, but a decade later, the Irish were Toronto’s largest community.

The team’s first two seasons were night and day, from failure to qualify for playoffs in the four-team NHL, then reaching the final in 1921 where they lost to Ottawa. The next year, everything came up four leaf-clovers for new coach George O’Donoghue. They picked up Port Perry’s John Ross Roach in goal after Jake Forbes was suspended by manager Charlie Querrie in a contract dispute.

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“Forbes had a season to remember,” Shea said of his 11 wins and a tie in 22 regular season games. “Their big scorer was (Cecil) Babe Dye, with 31 goals that year, second in the league.”

They met Ottawa again for the O’Brien Cup, emblematic of NHL supremacy at the time. After failing to score in the two-game total-goal series the previous year, they trailed 3-2 in Game 1 before Roach began making saves “with his toe, nose and fingertips,” according to a newspaper account. Corb Denneny broke a 4-4 tie in the third. In Game 2 at Ottawa, after icing the puck ad nauseam to preserve a 0-0 tie, the Pats moved on to the Stanley Cup.

The trophy was then a best-of-five, hosted alternately each year by the NHL and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association’s (PCHA) champion. Vancouver was highly motivated, having lost the Cup to the Arenas in 1918 and Ottawa in ’21.

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Despite the good omen of Game 1 on the 17th, the Pats lost 4-3 on a hat trick by former teammate Jack Adams, the future Detroit Red Wings manager. The increasingly physical series heated up in Game 2, under PCHA rules with a rover added to the mix, but Dye won it in overtime. A game away from elimination after a 3-0 loss and injuries to Harry Cameron and Ken Randall, Roach responded with a 6-0 shutout.

The hard-shooting Dye would not be denied in the deciding game — four goals in a 5-1 win. Roach took a puck in the eye, but refused to leave the match.

A photo with the Pats and the Cup has not survived, nor did Shea’s research tell of a parade or public ceremony.

“I did find out there was a wonderful celebration at the Carls-Rite Hotel on Simcoe St. Mayor Alf Maguire lauded them, Querrie and the players got their Cup checks, NHL president Frank Calder gave them the O’Brien Cup, Maguire presented the Stanley Cup to (co-owner) Fred Hambly.”

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The tradition of Cup rings was many years in the future, but the 12 players did get a unique mounted silver rabbit’s foot.

“The significance of that gift is a crazy story I’ve been chasing for years,” Shea said. “They were given by William E. Saunders, a character who went by the nickname of ‘Oh Boy.’ My sense is he was a hanger-on. but he’s listed as assistant trainer. I went in the city directory of the time, but couldn’t find him.”

The Pats’ name and hierarchy lasted another four full seasons, though they never repeated as champs. Despite star power such as Dye, Roach, Bert McCaffrey and Hap Day, they missed the playoffs three of the next four years and were near the bottom again in February 1927.

Tired of losing money as well as games, the Pats had begun entertaining offers of a buyout. There was a very real chance they’d take a $200,000 bid from CC Pyle, a theater entrepreneur who planned to move the team to Philadelphia.

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Smythe, looking for a role in his local team after being dropped as manager of the New York Rangers, helped convince Pats’ investor JP Bickell to keep his $40,000 stake, while Smythe rounded up new money. The Leafs were born, but would never forget their Irish lineage.

FIVE FACTS ABOUT THE ST. PATS

1. Their combined regular season record (1921-27) was 102-106-9.

2. The Pats’ Babe Dye led the NHL in goals three times, the first player in franchise history to do so.

3. Their home on Mutual St., the Arena Gardens, was Eastern Canada’s only artificial ice up to 1923. The Leafs moved to Carlton St. in 1931, Mutual surviving for years as The Terrace roller-skating rink.

4. For 1924-25, goalie John Ross Roach was the St. Pats captain.

5. Though the team names changed midway in 1926-27, the first Leaf logo was kept green and white that year.

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