Can someone clarify how original 6 teams acquired amateur talent?

[tarheelhockey]

Do we have a list of which junior teams were attached to which pro team? Was every junior team sponsored, or were some "outlaw" teams?

It would be a massive project, but a very valuable one if someone were to take this on as a passion project.

I'd imagine that good sources of information get pretty scarce as we go back in time. Small local papers were much more likely to mention these affiliations than the big city papers.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

Surprised that someone in SIHR hasn't taken this one (it's possible that someone has but they are just quiet, but I don't see any mentions in the archives).

 

[JianYang]

Here’s a blog post that goes into detail on the relationship between the NHL teams and amateur talent.

Historical Hockey Stats & Trivia: The Sponsorship System - The Pre-Expansion NHL's Monopsony on Players

One key point is that if a player chose to play for a junior team or league that was sponsored by an NHL club, his NHL rights were held by that club. This may be the source of the myth that the Canadiens held territorial rights. They held the rights to over 300 players through the dozens of teams they sponsored, not just in Quebec but across Canada. Other NHL teams also sponsored junior clubs in Quebec as there was no territorial restriction. But nobody sponsored as many teams as Montreal. They were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain their junior network and have a pipeline of players to allow them to stay at the top of the league standings year after year.

The sponsorship of junior clubs was the main differentiator between NHL teams in acquiring amateur talent. Boston, for one, was unwilling to spend in this area until Walter Brown died and Weston Adams took over in 1964.

Excellent info. Thanks for this.

So it sounds like we can debunk the theory that there was some sort of formal radius within an O6 city where other teams could not pluck a player away from.

If teams could scour the continent at free will, I guess the process was that you find a player, offer a C form, and then place them in any one of your affiliated franchises?

I'm guessing Montreal invested the most in recruitment and forming team affiliations.

 

[MadLuke]

It was closer to say the Spain league and that league with 20 teams, in the last 30 years 2 teams almost won everything:

Spoiler

1984–85	Barcelona (10)	53	Atlético Madrid (7)	43	Athletic Bilbao	41	Hugo Sánchez	Atlético Madrid	19
1985–86	Real Madrid (21) ‡	56	Barcelona (16)	45	Athletic Bilbao	43	Hugo Sánchez	Real Madrid	22
1986–87	Real Madrid (22)	50	Barcelona (17)	49	Espanyol	43	Hugo Sánchez	Real Madrid	34
1987–88	Real Madrid (23)	62	Real Sociedad (2)	51	Atlético Madrid	48	Hugo Sánchez	Real Madrid	29
1988–89	Real Madrid (24)	62	Barcelona (18)	57	Valencia	49	Baltazar	Atlético Madrid	35
1989–90	Real Madrid (25)	62	Valencia (5)	53	Barcelona	51	Hugo Sánchez	Real Madrid	38
1990–91	Barcelona (11)	57	Atlético Madrid (8)	47	Real Madrid	46	Emilio Butragueño	Real Madrid	19
1991–92	Barcelona (12) †	55	Real Madrid (13)	54	Atlético Madrid	53	Manolo	Atlético Madrid	27
1992–93	Barcelona (13)	58	Real Madrid (14)	57	Deportivo La Coruña	54	Bebeto	Deportivo La Coruña	29
1993–94	Barcelona (14)	56	Deportivo La Coruña (2)	56	Zaragoza	46	Romário	Barcelona	30
1994–95	Real Madrid (26)	55	Deportivo La Coruña (3)	51	Real Betis	46	Iván Zamorano	Real Madrid	28
1995–96	Atlético Madrid (9)	87	Valencia (6)	83	Barcelona	80	Juan Antonio Pizzi	Tenerife	31
1996–97	Real Madrid (27)	92	Barcelona (19)	90	Deportivo La Coruña	77	Ronaldo	Barcelona	34
1997–98	Barcelona (15)	74	Athletic Bilbao (7)	65	Real Sociedad	63	Christian Vieri	Atlético Madrid	24
1998–99	Barcelona (16)	79	Real Madrid (15)	68	Mallorca	66	Raúl	Real Madrid	25
1999–2000	Deportivo La Coruña (1)	69	Barcelona (20)	64	Valencia	64	Salva Ballesta	Racing Santander	27
2000–01	Real Madrid (28)	80	Deportivo La Coruña (4)	73	Mallorca	71	Raúl	Real Madrid	24
2001–02	Valencia (5)	75	Deportivo La Coruña (5)	68	Real Madrid	66	Diego Tristán	Deportivo La Coruña	21
2002–03	Real Madrid (29)	78	Real Sociedad (3)	76	Deportivo La Coruña	72	Roy Makaay	Deportivo La Coruña	29
2003–04	Valencia (6) ‡	77	Barcelona (21)	72	Deportivo La Coruña	71	Ronaldo	Real Madrid	25
2004–05	Barcelona (17)	84	Real Madrid (16)	80	Villarreal	65	Diego Forlán	Villarreal	25
2005–06	Barcelona (18) †	82	Real Madrid (17)	70	Valencia	69	Samuel Eto'o	Barcelona	26
2006–07	Real Madrid (30)	76	Barcelona (22)	76	Sevilla	71	Ruud van Nistelrooy	Real Madrid	25
2007–08	Real Madrid (31)	85	Villarreal (1)	77	Barcelona	67	Daniel Güiza	Mallorca	27
2008–09	Barcelona (19) *	87	Real Madrid (18)	78	Sevilla	70	Diego Forlán	Atlético Madrid	32
2009–10	Barcelona (20)	99	Real Madrid (19)	96	Valencia	71	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	34
2010–11	Barcelona (21) †	96	Real Madrid (20)	92	Valencia	71	Cristiano Ronaldo	Real Madrid	40
2011–12	Real Madrid (32)	100	Barcelona (23)	91	Valencia	61	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	50
2012–13	Barcelona (22)	100	Real Madrid (21)	85	Atlético Madrid	76	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	46
2013–14	Atlético Madrid (10)	90	Barcelona (24)	87	Real Madrid	87	Cristiano Ronaldo	Real Madrid	31
2014–15	Barcelona (23) *	94	Real Madrid (22)	92	Atlético Madrid	78	Cristiano Ronaldo	Real Madrid	48
2015–16	Barcelona (24)	91	Real Madrid (23)	90	Atlético Madrid	88	Luis Suárez	Barcelona	40
2016–17	Real Madrid (33) †	93	Barcelona (25)	90	Atlético Madrid	78	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	37
2017–18	Barcelona (25)	93	Atlético Madrid (9)	79	Real Madrid	76	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	34
2018–19	Barcelona (26)	87	Atlético Madrid (10)	76	Real Madrid	68	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	36
2019–20	Real Madrid (34)	87	Barcelona (26)	82	Atlético Madrid	70	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	25
2020–21	Atlético Madrid (11)	86	Real Madrid (24)	84	Barcelona	79	Lionel Messi	Barcelona	30

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

With a system that put an incentive to develop players to rich organization that got the reward of them at the end, I imagine it was a world where significantly better at doing it.

 

[overpass]

The Ken Dryden and Scotty Bowman book is really good for describing how the system worked. Scotty Bowman was the Montreal Canadiens head scout for Eastern Canada for 2 years, from 1961 to 1963. Here are some notes from that section of the book to give an idea of how scouting worked at the time

• The head scout position was a full-time job. It paid better than the job coaching the Peterborough Petes, which was Bowman's previous job.
• He spent the month of November in Toronto, driving out to see players from there every night. Then he spent a month in Northern Quebec and a month in Northern Ontario.
• The other head scouts were Bob Davidson for the Leafs, Jack Humphries for the Rangers, Baldy Cotton for the Bruins, Bob Wilson for the Hawks, and Jimmy Skinner for the Wings. Jimmy Skinner worked out of Hamilton and Davidson, Humphries, and Wilson out of Toronto. Bowman would often see them at the Leafs morning practice and they would discuss where they were going that night.
• Every team had a guy in every town who was their eyes and ears and told them who to watch. "Bird dogs." For example, Stan Tallon, Dale's father, ran the arena in Noranda and was a bird dog for the Habs. Ti-Zyme Renaud, a biscuit salesman who covered the territory of Northern Quebec, did scouting for the Habs on the side and got them Jacques Laperriere, Rogie Vachon, and Serge Savard. The reeve of Kirkland Lake, Len Baird, was a guy for the Habs. Roger Neilson was a guy for the Habs in the Toronto area before he coached the Petes.

Some quotes.

At the time, scouting wasn't about driving around to see junior-age players. "It was about chasing young kids," (Bowman) says. "I spent most of my time watching bantam players (then age 14). Once they slipped past bantam, maybe first-year midget, I stopped watching them. You were trying to get them to play for your junior team--Peterborough was for the Ontario kids, Montreal for the Quebec kids." For an NHL team, if you signed one of those young players, he had to play for one of your teams. But that didn't give you his NHL rights; you could only secure those when a player was older and signed a "C" form and received a payment from the NHL team of $100 -- thus the C. But if you did sign a kid at this young age, by the time he was old enough to sign a "C" form his dreams were already so dressed up in the bleu, blanc, et rouge of the Canadiens or the blue and white of the Leafs that the game was over. He was already part of the program.

"St. Mike's was tough to beat if there was a boy from Northern Ontario--especially a Catholic boy. And if you lived in the north you had to go somewhere to get the competition you needed to develop. You'd have a hard time convincing his parents to let him go to Toronto to a place other than St. Mike's. The parish priests were pretty persuasive. They had a network that was unbelievable. And Bob Davidson was an excellent scout for the Leafs. He was a very personable guy, always well-dressed. Worked hard. If he went into a kid's home and talked to his parents, he'd make a good impression. I scouted against him for two years. He was tough to beat."

"You don't want to go with Montreal," Scotty says, imitating what he heard them say again and again. "They won the Cup five years in a row. You've got no chance playing for them. Really, do you want to play in the NHL or not?" Or, if they were all chasing an English-speaking kid, "they'd use the French angle against us. 'You don't want to go to Montreal. They're a French team.'"

"The players didn't get any real money to sign then. One of the first who did was Ron Schock. He was from Terrace Bay. Boston gave him $10,000 to sign. Before that, we were only offering a few hundred dollars."

Bowman then named Wayne Carleton and Rod Seiling as two other top prospects who sparked bidding wars. They were going to offer Seiling $10,000 but Ken Reardon said no because when they asked him if he wanted to play for the Canadiens, he said he wasn't sure. Toronto got Seiling instead. Wayne Carleton was another top prospect, developed at a young age like he was five years older, and he signed with Toronto too for a big cheque. And of course there was Bobby Orr. Every team wanted him but the Bruins got him with $10,000, a new car, a new coat of stucco for the Orr home, and a promise that the 13 year old Orr could stay in Parry Sound and just play in Oshawa on the weekends.

 

[JackSlater]

There were also cases of players coming up in one system and then ending up somewhere else. Montreal had Ted Kennedy in its system even though he was from a town relatively near Toronto, but he didn't like how Montreal treated him and joined Toronto later on. That situation is fairly similar to Howe leaving the Rangers system for the Detroit system. Lindsay and Kelly both went through Toronto's development system - Toronto basically gave Kelly away, and my understanding is that Lindsay basically just opted to sign with Detroit since he wasn't actually under a contract.

 

[Sanf]

It would be a massive project, but a very valuable one if someone were to take this on as a passion project.

I'd imagine that good sources of information get pretty scarce as we go back in time. Small local papers were much more likely to mention these affiliations than the big city papers.

I would be really surprised if nobody has done work with this. It is such a major part of NHL history. Even Wikipedia has good information for some teams sponsorship history. That usually tells me that someone has already done some digging. Maybe we haven´t found that source or those people haven´t published their work in any means.

But if there isn´t work done with this I would be willing to help if someone wants to go with this. Personally I see HockeyDB (again) as amazing tool with this. It often gives junior history of player. Not always complete, but amazing leads. Then dig deeper on the teams that he has played prior NHL and trying to verify the sponsorhip details via newspapers. Not an easy task, but I can see it doable.

 

[Staniowski]

Yes, there would be lots of people who would know about the farm teams of the O6 era, etc. Many people would know most of the teams, and some people would probably know all the teams. This would have been pretty basic information for a lot of people at the time.

But, of course, the vast majority of those people aren't spending a lot of their time hanging out online.

 

[overpass]

I came across a Dink Carroll column from the time when Frank Selke was setting up the Montreal farm system.

I thought it was interesting to see how the connections weren’t all top-down from the NHL club. The Pats had a large existing organization before connecting with Montreal, and the Buffalo Bisons had their own connections with junior clubs.

We also get some numbers here. 420 players in the Regina Pats organization, and 5 teams in the Winnipeg Canadiens organization.

Montreal Gazette, March 30, 1948
The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search

Frank Selke arrived back in the city yesterday, well-satisfied with his trip through the west, where he made a tieup with the Regina Pats organization.

There are some 420 players from juniors
down in the St Pats outfit, which is one of the best organized in the country. Most of their games are played on open air rinks. The tieup will not be official until June, though the connection has been made.

Canadiens’ general manager also visited Winnipeg to inspect the Winnipeg Canadiens, who are sponsored by Canadiens. The Winnipeg Canadiens had five teams going last winter—junior, juvenile, midget, bantam, and minor bantam—and all finished first in their respective leagues.

Selke also revealed that the Barrie juniors, who won the All-Ontario final and who now meet the winner of the Nationals-Halifax St. Mary’s series (St. Mary’s are practically in now) are sponsored by the Buffalo Bisons, who have a working agreement with the Habitants.

“We’ve got a lot of youngsters who are prospective Canadiens,” he concluded. “In two years’ time I don’t think we’ll have much to worry about.

 

[Paul Padovano]

Okay, so if we establish that teams had certain territories all across Canada, then are we saying that guys like ratelle, Keon, and pronovost were never in the habs territory even though they were from Quebec?

Does that imply that certain parts of Quebec contained territories that didn't belong to Montréal?

I've wondered that. Allegedly, teams had territorial rights to junior players within a 50 mile radius. Yet I don't get how Ratelle and Gilbert ended up on the Rangers. Two hall of famers.

 

[Stephen]

There were also cases of players coming up in one system and then ending up somewhere else. Montreal had Ted Kennedy in its system even though he was from a town relatively near Toronto, but he didn't like how Montreal treated him and joined Toronto later on. That situation is fairly similar to Howe leaving the Rangers system for the Detroit system. Lindsay and Kelly both went through Toronto's development system - Toronto basically gave Kelly away, and my understanding is that Lindsay basically just opted to sign with Detroit since he wasn't actually under a contract.

Yeah, never really understood how a local guy like Red Kelly went from playing for the Majors, whom the Leafs used as a developmental system, and ended up Detroit.

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

The Ken Dryden and Scotty Bowman book is really good for describing how the system worked. Scotty Bowman was the Montreal Canadiens head scout for Eastern Canada for 2 years, from 1961 to 1963. Here are some notes from that section of the book to give an idea of how scouting worked at the time

• The head scout position was a full-time job. It paid better than the job coaching the Peterborough Petes, which was Bowman's previous job.
• He spent the month of November in Toronto, driving out to see players from there every night. Then he spent a month in Northern Quebec and a month in Northern Ontario.
• The other head scouts were Bob Davidson for the Leafs, Jack Humphries for the Rangers, Baldy Cotton for the Bruins, Bob Wilson for the Hawks, and Jimmy Skinner for the Wings. Jimmy Skinner worked out of Hamilton and Davidson, Humphries, and Wilson out of Toronto. Bowman would often see them at the Leafs morning practice and they would discuss where they were going that night.
• Every team had a guy in every town who was their eyes and ears and told them who to watch. "Bird dogs." For example, Stan Tallon, Dale's father, ran the arena in Noranda and was a bird dog for the Habs. Ti-Zyme Renaud, a biscuit salesman who covered the territory of Northern Quebec, did scouting for the Habs on the side and got them Jacques Laperriere, Rogie Vachon, and Serge Savard. The reeve of Kirkland Lake, Len Baird, was a guy for the Habs. Roger Neilson was a guy for the Habs in the Toronto area before he coached the Petes.

Some quotes.









Bowman then named Wayne Carleton and Rod Seiling as two other top prospects who sparked bidding wars. They were going to offer Seiling $10,000 but Ken Reardon said no because when they asked him if he wanted to play for the Canadiens, he said he wasn't sure. Toronto got Seiling instead. Wayne Carleton was another top prospect, developed at a young age like he was five years older, and he signed with Toronto too for a big cheque. And of course there was Bobby Orr. Every team wanted him but the Bruins got him with $10,000, a new car, a new coat of stucco for the Orr home, and a promise that the 13 year old Orr could stay in Parry Sound and just play in Oshawa on the weekends.

Re St Mikes, the big draw that the setup had in that era was putting your teenaged kid in an environment where the priests would be keeping an eye on them 24/7 instead of being dropped off at a boarding house with easy access to booze, too much time on their hands, etc, as would be the case in the Bruins or Hawks systems

Now that I think of it, the whole St Mikes saga would make for a great british style parish sitcom setup. Make it happen CBC

I've wondered that. Allegedly, teams had territorial rights to junior players within a 50 mile radius. Yet I don't get how Ratelle and Gilbert ended up on the Rangers. Two hall of famers.

I dont know the exact logic of how they got there, but Ratelle and Gilbert played for OHA Guelph, which was the Rangers feeder. Bathgate, Fontinato, Shack all came through as well

 

[JackSlater]

Re St Mikes, the big draw that the setup had in that era was putting your teenaged kid in an environment where the priests would be keeping an eye on them 24/7 instead of being dropped off at a boarding house with easy access to booze, too much time on their hands, etc, as would be the case in the Bruins or Hawks systems

Now that I think of it, the whole St Mikes saga would make for a great british style parish sitcom setup. Make it happen CBC



I dont know the exact logic of how they got there, but Ratelle and Gilbert played for OHA Guelph, which was the Rangers feeder. Bathgate, Fontinato, Shack all came through as well

New York got Gilbert the normal way. The team had a scout in Montreal who signed Gilbert, and Gilbert told him that he should sign Gilbert's linemate Ratelle.

 

[buffalowing88]

The Ken Dryden and Scotty Bowman book is really good for describing how the system worked. Scotty Bowman was the Montreal Canadiens head scout for Eastern Canada for 2 years, from 1961 to 1963. Here are some notes from that section of the book to give an idea of how scouting worked at the time

• The head scout position was a full-time job. It paid better than the job coaching the Peterborough Petes, which was Bowman's previous job.
• He spent the month of November in Toronto, driving out to see players from there every night. Then he spent a month in Northern Quebec and a month in Northern Ontario.
• The other head scouts were Bob Davidson for the Leafs, Jack Humphries for the Rangers, Baldy Cotton for the Bruins, Bob Wilson for the Hawks, and Jimmy Skinner for the Wings. Jimmy Skinner worked out of Hamilton and Davidson, Humphries, and Wilson out of Toronto. Bowman would often see them at the Leafs morning practice and they would discuss where they were going that night.
• Every team had a guy in every town who was their eyes and ears and told them who to watch. "Bird dogs." For example, Stan Tallon, Dale's father, ran the arena in Noranda and was a bird dog for the Habs. Ti-Zyme Renaud, a biscuit salesman who covered the territory of Northern Quebec, did scouting for the Habs on the side and got them Jacques Laperriere, Rogie Vachon, and Serge Savard. The reeve of Kirkland Lake, Len Baird, was a guy for the Habs. Roger Neilson was a guy for the Habs in the Toronto area before he coached the Petes.

Some quotes.









Bowman then named Wayne Carleton and Rod Seiling as two other top prospects who sparked bidding wars. They were going to offer Seiling $10,000 but Ken Reardon said no because when they asked him if he wanted to play for the Canadiens, he said he wasn't sure. Toronto got Seiling instead. Wayne Carleton was another top prospect, developed at a young age like he was five years older, and he signed with Toronto too for a big cheque. And of course there was Bobby Orr. Every team wanted him but the Bruins got him with $10,000, a new car, a new coat of stucco for the Orr home, and a promise that the 13 year old Orr could stay in Parry Sound and just play in Oshawa on the weekends.

What a post. Thank you for all of these insights! I have Dryden's "big" book and he can get a bit...self-righteous at times and makes it out to seem as if he walked away from hockey as the greatest goalie who ever played. But his ability to just capture other moments, like in the Habs lockerroom at that time or just being a Canadien who is driving from home to the game, is a revelation.

 

[Kranix]

I've heard at least the Broonz went around Canadian cities in the 50s signing up minor hockey players to be "in the organization." Can someone verify?

 

[Section 104]

I know in reading about the New York Rangers that they seem like a real small time outfit before Emile Francis took over in the 1960s. When Jacques Plante was traded to the Rangers, he noticed the Ranger bench was the one further away from the goalie for the first and third period. He suggested to management they change it so players changing on the fly could get to protect the goalie quicker. Nope, they said. We have fans who buy season tickets so they can be behind the Rangers bench and they would be upset if we changed. Andy Bathgate said when he would do off season promotional trips to fraternal organizations in the 1950s and the ilk, many locals had no idea who the Rangers were.
In other sports of the era, Hank Greenberg who after his playing career became general manager of the Cleveland Indians and later the Chicago White Sox, once said that the American League in the 1950s consisted of the Yankees, Indians and six midgets…teams that had no idea what they were doing. Yes, the Yankees had the largest population (they shared with two other teams who left after 1957) but they also had people running it who were determined to win.
Don Cherry has no great love for the Canadiens but he has said in his 20 year career he played for just about all the franchises and Montréal treated its minor leaguers the best in training camp. First class equipment like the big league team had and his locker was next to Boom Boom Geoffrion and across from Dickie Moore.

 

[Habstakes]

Excellent info. Thanks for this.

So it sounds like we can debunk the theory that there was some sort of formal radius within an O6 city where other teams could not pluck a player away from.

If teams could scour the continent at free will, I guess the process was that you find a player, offer a C form, and then place them in any one of your affiliated franchises?

I'm guessing Montreal invested the most in recruitment and forming team affiliations.

From the Original Six wiki: "The league had a rule that gave each team exclusive rights to negotiate contracts with promising local players within 50 miles (80 km) of its home ice."

I would guess this rule had some effect, but is not the main reason for the Leafs and Habs success. What the location did give was a financial advantage compared to their US-based counterparts, allowing them to invest into better player development and so on.

The 50 mile rule certainly gave them Maurice Richard, who really is the one that made the Canadiens legendary. However, if other teams had been smarter they could have traded for him at a very low price:

Debunking the Canadiens’ French Territorial Rights Myth

www.habseyesontheprize.com

So if Richard had been traded and doesn't inspire the people of Quebec like he did, maybe you don't get as many great players out of the province, and history changes. As can be read in the article, up until Richard's arrival the Canadiens had little to no benefit of the rule.

After that though, without a doubt, the Habs teams of the 50s and 60s benefited from the 50 mile rule. Henri Richard, Bernie Geoffrion, Jacques Lemaire, Serge Savard among others.

Though by the 70s this 50 mile rule was long gone. Guy Lafleur for example was not brought in by this rule, they got him by trading for the 1971 1st round pick of the Golden Seals. In 1972 they had acquired the 4th pick which they used to select Steve Shutt. Ken Dryden was acquired in a trade from the Bruins.

To summarize: yeah the 50 mile rule was a thing. The dynasty of the 70s was not built by it though. But again, every team had the chance to stop the Habs dynasty in its tracks before it even began!

 

[The Panther]

We tend to think of Montreal as this consistently / historically great organization, but really its success as a franchise was 1955-56 through 1978-79 --- a period during which it won 15 of 24 (63%) Stanley Cups. Before that, Montreal had won 5 Cups in 30 years. In the early 1940s, Montreal was probably the worst team in the NHL.

I agree that the acquisition and success of Maurice Richard is key to all this. He was the first French-Canadian superstar at the NHL level, and he by himself inspired two generations of Quebecers to try harder at hockey, to take the sport more seriously, and to aspire to the NHL.

I also read Dryden's book on Scotty Bowman, and it's clear that the Canadiens, by the late 1940s and certainly by the 1950s, had a well organized and well-developed scouting system in place. I would guess that this well organized system, combined with proximity to Canada's most populous city (then Montreal), and the natural tendency of French players to prefer to be signed to the Canadiens' organization (and maybe even lack of language ability of other NHL clubs' scouts) is what pushed a high degree of talent towards the Canadiens' organization from the late 1940s to late 1960s.

 

[MadLuke]

The 50 mile rule certainly gave them Maurice Richard, who really is the one that made the Canadiens legendary. However, if other teams had been smarter they could have traded for him at a very low price:

Debunking the Canadiens’ French Territorial Rights Myth

www.habseyesontheprize.com

You seem to post an article that debunk the myth and make it very clear that the rules had very little impact (has good player got signed c-form before you could protect them I guess):
“From 1936-43 Montreal protected 14 players (two per season) through this special draft. Unfortunately, none of them ever played a minute in the NHL.

And this was almost all during pre-06 hockey (that start in 1942),

Maurice Richard was signed (in 1940 by mtl farm team) as any other team could have I think, no ?

After that though, without a doubt, the Habs teams of the 50s and 60s benefited from the 50 mile rule. Henri Richard, Bernie Geoffrion, Jacques Lemaire, Serge Savard among others.

The only 2 player of notes of what they called the french Canadian rules were Regean Houles and Tardif, which is not nothing, but far from Richard, Lemaire, Savard, Geoffrion level.

If there was such in effect rules that would have been via team collusion (spoken or not) to keep salary and scout spending low, not an nhl rules, it would naturally look like that as local team being bigger local staff (pro or amateur helping them) and kids-parents wanting to play for their farm teams getting signed early on.

 

[WarriorofTime]

People routinely mix up the formal "Territorial Rights" with the more informal networks that existed at the time. Montreal had all* the best French-Canadian players and invested heavily in the development of players in that region, with the ultimate goal to feed into the Montreal Canadiens. That sort of system is obviously not replicable today. That is different than having a jurisdictional exclusive right to a wide swath of players based on where they were born. Difference between de facto and de jure.

 

[MadLuke]

Is Pronovot-gilbert-ratelle the only big one they missed ? Keon was quite far in Rouyn-Noranda...

Missed a lot of goaltenders I imagine like Bernard Parent, but there is so much spot for them.