• Hector “Toe” Blake: Few hockey personalities have excelled as both player and coach and become legends, as well. Blake did all of that with only one team — the Montreal Canadiens. During the 1930s and 1940s, Blake, a left winger, was part of the explosive Punch Line with Maurice Richard and Elmer Lach, scoring the winning goals that gave the Habs Stanley Cups in 1944 and 1946. Earlier, in his rookie season with the Montreal Maroons, Blake won his first Cup in 1935. After breaking his ankle in 1948, he left the Canadiens and played some minor-league hockey for a few seasons until retiring from the game as a player in 1951. Blake debuted as a coach with the Habs in 1955–56 and went on to lead Montreal to eight Stanley Cups, five of them in a row from 1956 to 1960. His other three were in 1965, 1966, and 1968. As a coach, he won 500 regular-season games and 82 playoff matches.
• Glen Sather: Some might say the formidable Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s didn’t need a coach, but credit should be given to Sather as their backbencher. As a player in the 1960s and 1970s, he was a journeyman left winger, but he found his true calling as a coach, debuting behind the bench with the Oilers (when they were in the World Hockey Association) in 1977–78. He helmed Edmonton for four Stanley Cups in the 1980s and added a fifth as general manager in 1990. In his coaching career he won 497 regular-season games and 89 playoff contests.
When were the fastest three goals in NHL history scored?
In 1951–52 the Chicago Black Hawks were bottom feeders in the NHL. The club had the worst record in the league, and scores of empty seats in Chicago Stadium attested to the contempt even their own fans held them in. Long before March 1952 it was pretty obvious the Hawks weren’t going to make the playoffs, but on March 23 something magical happened, one of the greatest feats ever accomplished by an NHL player. On that day the
Hawks and the New York Rangers played their last game of the regular season (both were out of the playoffs) at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. By the end of the second period, in what was a pointless match attended by fewer than 4,000 fans, the Rangers had a commanding 6–2 lead over the hapless Hawks. In the third period, though, at 6:09, Chicago right winger Bill Mosienko scored. A few seconds later he put a second puck into the net behind Rangers goalie Lorne Anderson. Then, at the 6:30 mark, Mosienko scored a third time. The Chicago sniper had scored a hat trick in 21 seconds, a record that has stood for more than a half-century. Only the Montreal Canadiens’ Jean Béliveau, who scored three power-play goals in 44 seconds in 1955, has come close to breaking this record. As for that seemingly nothing game in March 1952, the Hawks eventually won it 7–6.
Winnipeg-born Mosienko, who had been a pretty good but not exceptional forward with Max and Doug Bentley on the Pony Line in the 1940s, played another couple of seasons and retired in 1954–55 with a record that may well be his for many more decades to come.
Quickies
Did you know …
that Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president still in office to attend an NHL game? On May 25, 1998, Clinton showed up at the second game of the Eastern Conference finals between the Washington Capitals and the Buffalo Sabres at the American capital’s MCI Center. The president took in the game from Capitals owner Abe Poulin’s personal suite and said at the time that he was impressed with the game’s speed and intensity.
How did the Detroit Red Wings and the New York Rangers get their names?
In 1932 James Norris purchased the Detroit Falcons hockey team and renamed them the Red Wings. Norris had played for a Montreal team named the Winged Wheelers, which inspired the name and the winged wheel logo on the NHL’s motor city franchise. After Madison Square Garden president “Tex” Rickard bought the New York team in 1926, people began calling them after their owner — Tex’s Rangers.
When did the NHL’s first expansion occur?
Everyone associates NHL expansion, at least the first one, with 1967–68 when the league added six new U.S. teams (Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota North Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Oakland Seals, now defunct). However, the league had contracted and expanded a number of times before the days of the fabled but misnamed Original Six (Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, and Boston Bruins). At the NHL’s inception in 1917 there were only four clubs — Toronto Arenas (later Maple Leafs), Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators (the originals), and Montreal Wanderers. The last were gone within a couple of weeks when their arena burned down. The Quebec Bulldogs (later the Hamilton Tigers, and still later part of the New York Americans) came onboard in 1919. However, the first actual expansion occurred in 1924–25 when the Montreal Maroons and the Boston Bruins signed up. The next season the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Americans, both now long expired, started playing. Then, in 1926–27, things really began cooking when the Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, and Detroit Cougars (now the Red Wings) joined the party, bringing league membership to a height of 10 clubs. It wouldn’t be that numerous again until 1967–68. Today the NHL has 30 teams (24 in the United States, six in Canada).
What NHL goalie nearly bled to death on the ice?
On March 22, 1989, in a game between the Buffalo Sabres and the St. Louis Blues, the latter’s Steve Tuttle crashed into a Sabres defenceman and went hurtling through the air at Clint Malarchuk, Buffalo’s goaltender. Tuttle’s skate blade pierced Malarchuk’s neck, severing his jugular vein. The goalie would have likely died on the spot if not for trainer Jim Pizzutelli, who stanched the gusher of blood until doctors could operate. Malarchuk ended up with 300 stitches to close a six-inch wound, but he returned to the Sabres’ net 11 days later.
When was the first NHL game played outdoors?
Outdoor NHL games have been a big hit with the fans, the media, and the players lately. The first regular-season match held outdoors was dubbed the Heritage Classic and took place on November 22, 2003, in Edmonton, Alberta. It pitted the Edmonton Oilers against the Montreal Canadiens and was staged in Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium. More than 57,000 spectators braved a bone-chilling -18 degrees Celsius temperature to watch the Habs edge the Oilers 4–3. Less than five years later, on January 1, 2008, a second regular-season NHL match, called the AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic, was played in Orchard Park, New York, between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins. An NHL-record-setting 71,217 fans turned out to see the Penguins beat the Sabres 2–1 after a shootout in which Pittsburgh’s young superstar Sidney Crosby got the final goal. For the first NHL game presented outdoors, though, one has to go back to September 27, 1991, to an exhibition match played in Las Vegas, of all places. The Los Angeles Kings and the New York Rangers took part in an odd promotional affair in the pre-season in an outdoor rink constructed in the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace. No one froze at this game — the desert temperature was about 29 degrees Celsius. But the players had to put up with melting ice and a plague of grasshoppers!
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Did you know …
that baseball titan Babe Ruth dropped in