A time would come when Smythe would concede that the Rangers made the right decision in firing him.
“Patrick did a better job than I ever could have,” he said. “I’ve seen what happens to other men who go to New York and can’t handle all the wine, women and song. What the hell was I – 32? – right down in New York with all the girls you wanted and nothing to do … In time I came to see that Col. Hammond had done me a favour.”1
Frank Boucher couldn’t have been happier: Smythe’s demanding style would never have produced the “comradeship” and “maturity” the Rangers developed under Patrick, he argued. “Smythe ruled by the sword; Lester had discipline, but he was one of us, too.”2 Murray Murdoch, one of the substitutes he had signed for the Rangers, didn’t dislike Smythe as Boucher did, but conceded the players weren’t upset to see him go. “Conn and Lester were totally different personalities,” he said. Smythe set high standards, expected them to be met, and singled out anyone who failed. Patrick was quieter and less given to outbursts and face-to-face confrontation, though in the end his message was just as stark. At one of his first team meetings, he warned the players: “When we start playing in the National Hockey League you’re going to win some games and you’re going to lose some. I just want to stress this: If you lose more than you win, you won’t be around.”3
Even his critics conceded it was Smythe’s lineup that produced the success the Rangers would enjoy over most of the next decade. Boucher and the Cook brothers, backed by Abel and Johnson, with Chabot in goal, won the 1928 Stanley Cup. Boucher, the Cooks, and Johnson remained the heart of the team when it won again in 1933. Of the six starters hired by Smythe that summer, four would make the Hall of Fame, with pudgy Taffy Abel and, oddly, Lorne Chabot being the only exceptions. Bill Cook was already thirty when he signed but would score more goals than any player in the league over the next seven years. Boucher won the Lady Byng Trophy so often – seven times in eight years – the league told him to keep it and introduced a new one for everybody else to compete over. Even Murray Murdoch proved his worth, turning into the league’s iron man by playing in 508 straight games over eleven years.
All that was in the future, though. Smythe was still grumbling about his lost $2,500 as he and Irene chugged to New York in November 1926 for the opening game. It wasn’t the money itself that was important. Smythe made plenty of money from his sand and gravel business and would have been wealthy even if he’d stuck to Varsity hockey. It was getting cheated out of something he felt he was owed that rankled. It also annoyed him that no one in New York seemed to appreciate what he’d done for them. Since the Rangers hadn’t cost much, and few had even played in the NHL before, New Yorkers assumed they couldn’t be much good. Even the press jumped to the conclusion the no-name manager had assembled a no-hope squad. The morning of the first game, against the Stanley Cup champion Maroons, a headline in New York read: “WORLD’S BEST MEET WORLD’S WORST TONIGHT IN GARDEN.” Rickard had obviously been reading the papers and believed what he read: when the Smythes arrived at the Garden that night and were seated in Rickard’s box, he came by to say hello and asked Smythe: “Well Connie, do you think we can hold the score to single digits?”4
That only added to Smythe’s irritation. “Keep your eyes open and you’ll see your team win,” he replied.5
Frank Boucher left behind a vivid portrait of the first Rangers game ever played, which took place before a packed house on November 16, the women in evening dress and furs, their men in tuxedos. The heat from the crowd – reported as eighteen thousand – was so intense that little puddles formed on the ice, sending patches of mist rising from the surface. Even before the puck was dropped the rafters were fading into a haze of smoke.6 The referee was Lou Marsh, who moonlighted as a referee, enabling him to officiate the game and still cover it for the Star. Marsh was an old-school referee who used a school bell in place of a whistle, having experienced temperatures so frigid that whistles would stick to the lips.
The Rangers started Hal Winkler in net, who would last just a few games before Chabot took over the job. The Rangers’ publicity man, Johnny Bruno, had hit on a scheme to attract fans from the city’s substantial population of Italians and Jews. When Chabot played in New York, he was listed in the program under the name Chabotsky. He would be Jewish for home games only; Bruno figured he was too well known in Canada to fool anyone. Similarly, a backup winger named Oliver Reinikka, a Canadian of Finnish descent, was listed as Ollie Rocco, to attract New York’s Italians. Bruno had proposed another stunt to stir up local interest. He wanted to arrange for the kidnapping of Bill Cook, which would guarantee headlines for days, until Cook was fortuitously rescued just in time for the first faceoff. But Patrick vetoed the plan.7
From the beginning, pro hockey’s popularity in the United States was related directly to the amount of violence that could be expected. Paul Gallico, a much-respected columnist with the New York Daily News, wrote that the game’s immediate success was due to the fact that “it is a fast, body-contact game played by men with clubs in their hands and knives lashed to their feet, since the skates are razor sharp, and before the evening is over it is almost a certainty that someone will be hurt and will fleck the ice with a generous contribution of gore, before he is led away to be hem-stitched together again.”8
The Rangers gave the crowd what they wanted, as the match quickly developed into a three-period brawl. The Maroons were the toughest team of the era, a take-no-prisoners squad that played to an English crowd in Montreal while the Canadiens played to the French. Like everyone else they assumed the inexperienced Rangers would fold fast, and when Bill Cook scored the game’s first goal, and they were unable to put an equalizer into the Ranger net, they grew surly and violent. Ching Johnson took a stick over the eye and left the ice trailing blood, returning with five stitches and a white patch on his brow. Cook was slashed across the arm, then cross-checked in the head. With no such thing as a flood between periods – the Zamboni was still just a glint in some inventor’s eye – the ice quickly deteriorated, slowing play. Boucher recalled the players struggling along like a group of heavyweights late in a fight “who’d pounded each other through all the early rounds and now were leg-weary and arm-weary though still mean and game.”9 The New York Times reported that the game had been “savagely” played and set a new indoor record for penalties. Things got so rough, as the Maroons sought to avoid an upset, that Boucher was goaded into the one and only fight of his career, twice knocking down a player named Bill Phillips and getting knocked down himself once in return.10
In the end Cook’s goal stood as the only one of the match, and Smythe’s prediction of victory was vindicated. With the crowd in a frenzy, it dawned on Rickard that Hammond may have been hasty in dumping Smythe. Rickard asked him to come by his office in the morning for a chat.
As Smythe told it, he returned to the Garden as requested, was offered a position as vice-president of hockey operations, and turned it down flat. “I wouldn’t work for you bunch of cheapskates if you gave me the franchise,” he replied.11
Rickard was taken aback. He took pride in his reputation for honesty. During his days as a saloonkeeper in the North, many a prospector had trusted him to hold a stash of gold for safekeeping. As a promoter he could raise huge sums of money on his good name alone. He may have done a steady trade with mobsters, hoods, bootleggers, and bent politicians, but he didn’t cheat them.
“What do you mean, cheapskates?” he demanded.
Smythe told his story, and Rickard sought out Hammond for an explanation. Hammond said he’d expected Smythe to move to New York and since he hadn’t, his expenses were lower than anticipated. Rickard waved off the excuse. “Pay this young man what we owe him.”12
Smythe took the cheque and headed home with Irene, travelling by way of Montreal. Never one to hide his accomplishments, he shared news of his victory with several gentlemen of the press. A photo shows Smythe, immaculately dressed as usual, surrounded by sportswriters in a crowded room in Montreal’s Mount Royal Hotel, “being congratulated upon receiving cheque … from New York Rangers hockey club.” Smythe is clutching a bottle – possibly champagne – and showing something to Marsh, who had switched back to being a reporter. The boys were obviously whooping it up: there are at least nine packed into the photo, one of whom appears to be sprinkling something on Smythe’s head.13
With his penchant for timely risk-taking, he bet the extra $2,500 on a McGill football game, and won. He took the $5,000 payoff and wagered it on the Rangers’ second game, in Toronto against the St. Patricks. Everyone thought the Rangers’ opening-night victory was a fluke, but they won easily and Smythe doubled his money again.
In four days he had turned $2,500 into $10,000.
It was a silver lining to his clouded experience with the Rangers, who sent him an engraved loving cup to show there were no hard feelings. Over the remainder of the winter he experienced another run of success, reclaiming his coaching position at the University of Toronto and taking two teams – the Varsity club and the Grads – to championships. The teams were so successful he found himself in the uncomfortable position of coaching both clubs as they headed into a showdown for the right to play for the Allan Cup and represent Canada at the 1928 Olympics.
The Grads that year were one of the great squads of the era. Made up largely of the players he’d coached to the Allan Cup finals the year before, they rolled over opponents without a defeat all winter. On February 14 they overwhelmed the Toronto Canoe Club at Arena Gardens by a score of 14–1. “The losers were completely outclassed and they could do nothing against the superior ability of the club under the tuition of ‘Conny’ Smythe,” the Star reported.*
They won a tough game against a team from London, but were held to a surprise tie by Quebec’s provincial champions, the St. Francois Nationals. The ubiquitous Lou Marsh opened his report on the game in his usual overcarbonated style: “Hot hamburger, what a nice dash of vinegar this St. Francois team … tossed into the Olympic cocktail of Varsity Grads here last night.”
Marsh suggested the Grads were overrated, putting himself deeper into Smythe’s bad books. The Nationals, he wrote, were playing their fourth game in four days and “had their back up against the wall so hard they looked like wallpaper.” Yet they’d managed to hold the Grads to a 1–1 tie.
His lack of faith annoyed Smythe, who treated doubts about his team as doubts about himself. He promised the Grads would win the rematch by at least three goals and backed it up with a convincing 7–1 victory. Marsh had to eat his words: “It would have taken a team of supermen to have overshadowed Varsity Grads at the Arena last night,” he reported.14
While the Grads were cutting through opponents, Varsity had played its way to the top of the intercollegiate circuit. On the night the Grads played their second game against the Nationals, Smythe was in Ottawa with Varsity for a game against New Edinburgh that resulted in chaos and farce before a crowd of eight thousand fans.
It was to be the deciding match of a three-game series, but ended in a 3–3 tie. According to the rules, the teams should have continued into overtime, but a telegram arrived from league president Dr. Frank Sandercock ordering an extra game to be held in Kingston. Varsity headed to the dressing room, but New Edinburgh insisted on playing on, milling around the ice as the referee debated what to do.
Strenuous efforts were made to contact Sandercock, who proved to know nothing of the situation. The first telegram had actually been sent by W.A. Hewitt, the Star sports editor and OHA secretary, who had the authority to issue rulings in Sandercock’s name. Working in the dark, Sandercock finally cabled back that the ruling was up to the referee, who ordered the game completed in overtime. When Smythe refused to put his boys back on the ice, New Edinburgh lined up, the referee dropped the puck, and a New Edinburgh player fired it into the empty net. Game over.
Smythe, predictably, was livid, denouncing the show of amateurism among league officials. The game took place on Thursday; on Saturday the papers announced that an emergency session of the OHA had settled on a compromise. The Grads would play New Edinburgh in a two-game series beginning Monday, the winner of which would play an additional match against Varsity. New Edinburgh foolishly predicted an easy victory and declared they wouldn’t show up for the added game against Varsity.
As it turned out, they didn’t get the chance. They were humiliated 10–0 in the first game and 7–1 in the second. Reports the next day suggested Smythe’s team could have run up the score higher but were in “a charitable mood.”
Smythe’s Grads were now supposed to play his Varsity team to decide who went to Vancouver for the Allan Cup. He escaped the conflict when several Varsity players, with exams imminent, agreed to cede the championship to the Grads, who were the stronger squad in any case. In return, Smythe promised to add two of the Varsity players to the Grad team if it qualified for the Olympics.
On April 2, the Globe ran a picture of Smythe and his team, stretching across the entire front page of the paper. It was taken as they prepared for the three-day train ride to Vancouver, where they would meet Fort William for the championship. W.A. Hewitt would be travelling with the team to cover the contest for the Star (where he was referee/sportswriter Lou Marsh’s boss) while providing reports for his son Foster to broadcast.15
The confrontation in Vancouver wasn’t decided until the second overtime of the fourth and final game. The first game had ended in a tie, Fort William had won the second game, and the Grads had won the third. The final match drew a crowd of ten thousand and ended when the Grads finally broke a 1–1 tie with just three minutes left in the second overtime period. After the victory Hewitt wrote of Smythe: “A great deal of the team’s success is due to his untiring efforts and uncanny ability to handle the players. He has coached the Varsity teams for a number of years and has been in the Dominion finals with them for the past three years.”16
Smythe was so elated he not only allowed the players to celebrate with a booze-up but joined in and got drunk for the first and only time in his life. “I got pretty high and then I got sick,” he remembered. “Just got over to the basin in the hotel room before I let go. I had never felt so rough. I said, if that’s what drinking is, it isn’t for me.”17 Although he would never be completely teetotal, from then on he drank rarely and usually just at celebrations, generally limiting himself to sips of champagne.
As Allan Cup champions, the Grads qualified for the Winter Olympics, to be held the next winter in Switzerland. They would win easily, so overpowering that the other countries elected to play off against one another first, with only the best teams challenging the Canadians. In the end Canada took the gold, winning its three games by a combined score of 38–0. But Smythe wouldn’t be with them; instead the team was coached by the multi-talented W.A. Hewitt, assisted by the young Harold Ballard. (Smythe’s coaching position with the Varsity intercollegiate team had passed to another up-and-comer named Lester Pearson).
Although Smythe was occupied with other business by the time the Games came around, his refusal to travel to St. Moritz was a matter of principle based on his promise to add two Varsity players to the Olympic squad. As the Games approached, a pair of Grad players blocked his pledge, unwilling to see their own teammates miss the trip. Smythe insisted, but was overruled. If the Varsity players didn’t go, he said, he wouldn’t either. And he didn’t. He also didn’t forgive the two Grad players, goalie Joe Sullivan and forward Hugh Plaxton, both of whom later went into politics, Plaxton as a Liberal MP and Sullivan as a Progressive Conservative senator. Sullivan had a distinguished career as a surgeon and air force captain in the Second World War, but to Smythe he was always the guy who “queered” his promise to a couple of decent hockey players.
“He is just a rotten Roman Catholic mick,” he complained years later. “He’s a skunk, and no good.”18
* Before the Second World War, Smythe was usually identified as Connie or Conny by the newspapers, the reporters picking whichever spelling appealed to them.