WHENEVER THE WORD “golden” is used to describe a time period, people are invariably led to imagine a special, exceptional age. This is certainly the case with the Golden Era of the National Hockey League, a period covering the seasons between 1942 and 1967 in which six teams battled for on-ice supremacy. This “golden” time period ironically began with a failure: the franchise last known as the Brooklyn (New York) Americans folded after the 1941–42 season. The departure of the Americans left six NHL teams in operation—the Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Toronto Maple Leafs. And although World War II was still going on in Europe, the slimmed-down league was about to embark on a period of great stability and excellence that has not been seen before or since. There was no expansion during this time and franchises did not leave one city for another, so great players were able to play for many years and set new standards of achievement. Young players were always welcome and given a chance to play—provided they were good enough.
Describing an era as “golden” can also suggest simpler times, an uncomplicated, purer age. And certainly, one of the most striking aspects of the NHL’s Golden Era was its simplicity. With just six franchises, only 120 players made up the entire league. Practically all of these players were born or developed in Canada, and fans could literally name everyone on each team (try doing that now with over 700 players and thirty teams!). It was a simple game with no helmets, much smaller equipment—especially on the goalies—and hockey sticks with straight blades so players could take a great backhand shot. And, in a situation that is hard to imagine now, there was no advertising along the boards. At the time, fans could not get very close to the players (newspapers, radio, and eventually television offered basic coverage) but they could buy a pack of hockey cards for five or ten cents or send away labels in return for five-by seven-inch black-and-white “Bee Hive” photos of the players. Hockey magazines did not start up until the fifties, though the Hockey News began as an in-house NHL-approved publication in 1947, making the information it provided about the hockey stars rather sanitized. However, there was no great sense that the public wanted to know everything. Unlike today when the Internet reigns supreme and nothing is sacred, players’ private lives were respected.
If fans were somewhat in the dark about the off-ice exploits of their heroes, they were absolutely thrilled with the feats they performed on the ice. As the Golden Era was a time when many hockey players were looking for jobs and NHL positions were limited with only a six-team circuit, competition for work at the highest level was fierce. Players who had had a bad season or even a few bad games in a row might feel threatened by a coach or general manager all too willing to remind them that their positions were easily replaceable. At the time, the athletes feared management and few dared to challenge the upper echelons of the league’s administration. In 1957, the NHL players tried to unionize—with great trepidation—but were not able to start their association until the league doubled in size ten years later. There was never any talk of lockouts or strikes, and hockey fans never even heard the term “free agent.”
The popularity of the league grew as postwar prosperity boomed. Most NHL arenas were generally filled to capacity as the fifties turned into the sixties, even in Boston where the struggling Bruins could still draw a large crowd. Also during this period the advent of television helped launch the popularity of the game beyond the six cities in which the games were played. In 1952, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) started devoting national airtime every Saturday night during the hockey season to show games from Toronto and Montreal. (In the U.S., CBS began televising hockey games in 1957.) Gathering around the TV to watch Hockey Night in Canada became a family ritual right across the country. As mid-week games did not start until the sixties and were not always a given, the weekend broadcast was a program no hockey fan would miss. Many epic contests played right before their eyes, and youngsters watching in their pajamas begged mom and dad to let them stay up a little longer to watch the stars of the NHL strut their stuff. Bobby Hull, Chicago’s legendary and flamboyant goal scorer once said, “Everything stops when Hockey Night in Canada comes on.” Now that fans can watch all the games on cable, satellite, or Internet TV, however, this weekly ritual has lost much of its special aura of ceremony.
Team dynasties flourished during the Golden Era. During that period, teams could stay together without worrying about a salary cap (few contracts exceed a yearly sum of twenty thousand dollars), and trades were made based on player performance rather than on team budgets. Between 1943 and 1967, the Stanley Cup was won by one of three teams—Montreal won 10; Toronto, 9; and Detroit, 5—except for one win by the Black Hawks in 1961. Some fans may like the variety offered by today’s game, where the Cup changes hands every year, but this modern version will likely never produce a great dynasty like the Montreal Canadiens, whose attacking “firewagon” hockey (end-to-end rushes, exciting scoring chances, and wide-open play) won five straight championships between 1956 and 1960. Many long-time observers believe the Habs of the fifties are still the greatest team in hockey history. Certainly there were dynasty teams in the seventies (Montreal) and eighties (Islanders and Oilers) but many of those teams were augmented by trades along the way, which was not as often the case in the Golden Era when players were cultivated by one franchise and stayed with that team, often until retirement.
The rosters of these great dynasty teams were, of course, filled with great players. That generation of hockey stars set the gold standard for NHL records, with each future player chasing the milestones set by his childhood hero; for example, Wayne Gretzky following Gordie Howe. In 1957, the explosive and exciting Maurice “Rocket” Richard of the Canadiens became the first to score 500 career goals. A kind of folk hero in Quebec, Richard was also a respected and feared opponent in all the NHL cities. In 1960–61, another Canadien, Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion, and Toronto’s Frank Mahovlich (known simply as the “Big M”) tried to challenge the fifty-goal barrier but could not exceed the magic mark (though Geoffrion at least tied the record first set by the Rocket in 1944–45). In that era, no player reached the 100-point mark and a twenty-goal season was considered to be a very good, if not excellent, year.
Among goaltenders, Richard’s teammate Jacques Plante, the quirky but inventive netminder, was a standard bearer, becoming in 1959 the first goalie to wear a face mask on a regular basis. Meanwhile, rival goaltender Glenn Hall played a remarkable 502 consecutive games for the Black Hawks (a streak that ended in 1962) without ever wearing a mask.
Later, Gordie Howe, the big kid from Saskatchewan, plowed his way through all defenders and eventually shattered Richard’s career mark for goals scored when he netted his 545th (in 1963), all of them in a Detroit uniform. A year later, stoic teammate Terry Sawchuk recorded his ninety-fifth shutout as a Red Wing and tallied 103 over his entire career to establish a mark that would last almost forty years. Hull, the burly left winger of the Black Hawks, became the first player to score more than fifty goals in one season (in 1965–66). Hull’s nearly 120-mile-per-hour shot and blond good looks made him the darling of the NHL and he was more than willing to be the people’s star. In 1965, Jean Béliveau, the classy captain of the Canadiens, became the first-ever recipient of the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and in 1967 the smooth-skating and industrious Dave Keon became the first (and still only) Maple Leaf to win that coveted trophy. In the same year, Stan Mikita of Chicago, a slick playmaker with a deadly shot, became the first player to win three major trophies in one year.
Reviewing the list of great accomplishments by players of the Original Six era, it doesn’t take long to realize that the Maple Leafs, Canadiens, Red Wings, and Black Hawks dominated the list of best—or perhaps, most-famous—stars. But there were good players in Boston and New York as well. High-scoring winger Johnny Bucyk, hard-hitting Leo Boivin, and iron-man goaltender Eddie Johnston (who played in all seventy games for Boston in 1963–64) were Bruin stalwarts whereas top scorers like Rod Gilbert and Jean Ratelle were youngsters who led the Rangers back to respectability along with goalie Eddie Giacomin, a netminder plucked out of the minor leagues. The end of the Golden Era saw the great Bobby Orr (a rookie in 1966–67) change not only the fortunes of the Boston Bruins but the very nature of how the game was played.
The stars of the era also set the standard for gritty, physical hockey. Players had to be tough in those days. And while they respected each other more on the ice (no hitting from behind or direct blows to the head), it was also a time filled with bench-clearing brawls. Fighting was very much a part of the game, and on occasion sticks were swung haphazardly. Every team had tough guys and they could be pretty scary characters. Montreal winger John Ferguson always had a scowl on his face and Reggie Fleming of the Black Hawks would never hesitate to stir the pot. Toronto’s Eddie Shack was big and fearless and he gave the Maple Leafs some much-needed color and character. No one wanted to go into a corner with Boston’s Ted Green, and New York’s Vic Hadfield was a big, rangy winger who liked to throw his weight around.
The most celebrated physical battle of the era featured Detroit’s Gordie Howe rearranging the nose of Lou Fontinato, who fancied himself as the league’s toughest player when he was with the Rangers. A 1959 fight between the two changed all that, and Howe was crowned the unofficial heavyweight champ. Even he did not want to tangle with Orland Kurtenbach, a centerman who began his NHL career in 1960 and who could inflict real damage in a fight. Perhaps the toughest of all was Toronto defenseman Tim Horton whose famous bear hug was known to squeeze the breath out of his opponents. Fans loved the rivalries between the teams, and unlike today’s enforcers, the tough guys of the Golden Era were also expected to play hockey.
Many of the players mentioned are members of the Hockey Hall of Fame and they were heroes to many youngsters who followed their superlative careers, especially as television rose to prominence. Being able to see players on TV gave kids the chance to put a face to a name, emulate a style of play, and even learn a way to tape a hockey stick. With more meaning than ever before, kids playing hockey on the streets, in school yards, or on frozen rivers and ponds could call out the name of their favorite player before starting an epic battle of their own.
Nowadays, hockey fans who were around for any part of the Golden Era long for the time when all games were pure tests of skill, toughness, and team play. It was these players and their Original Six teams who developed the game of hockey to the point where the league was stable and profitable (if only for the owners). They provided the league with the opportunity for expansion in North America, including to other Canadian cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa (as well as Winnipeg and Quebec City for awhile) and to other American cities, even in the south, where the appreciation of hockey, a traditionally “northern” game, varies greatly. It also helped spread the game to other parts of the world such as Europe and the vast country that used to be known as the Soviet Union.
The Golden Era officially ended on the night of May 2, 1967, the day that also marked the last time the Maple Leafs and Canadiens played for the Stanley Cup. Toronto captain George Armstrong put a shot into an empty Montreal net to seal the Leafs a 3–1 win and the fourth Stanley Cup of the decade (and the last in team history to date). The following season ushered in six new teams with funny names (Penguins and Seals, for example) and strangely colored uniforms (purple and gold for the Los Angeles Kings), and the total number of players in the league doubled. The NHL has kept expanding (while diluting the talent pool) and now comprises thirty teams. The halcyon days of the league’s Original Six era have become the stuff of legend.
Thankfully, the Toronto Star newspaper had a hockey legend of its own in photographer Harold Barkley (more about him in the pages ahead). His color action photography, taken during the Golden Era, was a very important part of the Star Weekly, which was available every Saturday as a supplement to not only the Star but to other newspapers across Canada. Full-page reproductions of his excellent photos became collector’s items even at the time and kids often posted his images on their bedroom walls as a reminder of their special hockey heroes.
Let’s go back to a time when the world was a little less complicated, and sports fans—and arguably society in general—focused less on the banalities of celebrity trivia and more on skill and substance. It was an era when legendary players filled every roster and made any NHL game truly memorable. These larger-than-life heroes played gallantly for the simple love of the game. Many worked every summer to boost their meager incomes and they did not complain about learning skills other than hockey because they thought that once their careers came to an end they would get a regular job (like their fathers). It was this attitude that reminded hockey fans that the players, despite their special talent, were just like them. However, make no mistake: it was their exceptional skills and abilities that made hockey in the Original Six period a dazzling game to watch and follow. Enjoy this look back at the Golden Era, through the magic lens of Harold Barkley.