Nalyd Psycho
Registered User
There was talk about how he got Hart votes over Cowley because he was a better backchecker. But could that be more damning praise than true praise?
Dishing the Dirt
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Sturminator
Love is a duel
I have not seen that discussion on Apps. Did anyone seriously entertain the idea that he was better than Morenz or Nighbor? You'll have to forgive my incredulity, especially given what we know about his crappy defensive play.
Sturminator
Love is a duel
overpass
Registered User
Jack Adams was quoted in a late 1930s newspaper article saying that Apps might be the best ever.
At best it's one man's opinion at one time.
i don't think we know that apps was a bad defensive player. that article talked about drillon and jackson, but did not describe apps' defensive play. i think it was conney weiland who said he preferred apps to cowley b/c apps was better defensively. that is not much but it is something. a video from '39 which i used for a bio of bob davidson shows apps and he did not look bad defensively.
frank selke said in the early '60s that apps was strictly an offensive player (also morenz).
adams' comments are more well known, but dick irvin compared apps favorably to morenz and taylor. http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4946,3863268&dq=apps+best&hl=en
here irvin said apps did everything well: http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...gDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3371,4725102&dq=apps+best&hl=en
irvin was apps' coach, though, so that may not be important. irvin could have been using the opening adams gave him to heap praise on apps.
but irvin later said that apps was not really a playmaker (after irvin became coach of the habs). http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...AJ&pg=4301,1318041&dq=lach+morenz+irvin&hl=en
BM67
Registered User
I've added Harris and Walker to the table I made earlier, and added two columns for points per year and per game.
Here are the adjusted career numbers for some early era stars using a slight variation of the Ideal Points method from the Hockey Compendium. The earliest season included is 08-09
Player|Seasons|GP|G|A|Pts|Pts/Yr|Pts/GP
Frank Boucher|18|1345|431|939|1370|76.11|1.02
Bill Cook|15|1173|645|677|1322|88.13|1.13
Cy Denneny|15|1077|499|405|904|60.27|0.84
Tommy Dunderdale|15|1143|436|408|844|56.27|0.74
Frank Foyston|16|1168|457|438|895|55.94|0.77
Smokey Harris|14|1036|322|502|824|58.86|0.80
Duke Keats|10|685|350|531|881|88.10|1.29
Newsy Lalonde|18|1133|598|542|1140|63.33|1.01
Mickey MacKay|15|1118|489|570|1059|70.60|0.95
Joe Malone|15|1042|504|380|884|58.93|0.85
Howie Morenz|14|1066|542|626|1168|83.43|1.10
Bernie Morris|10|758|345|411|756|75.60|1.00
Frank Nighbor|18|1300|448|625|1073|59.61|0.83
Eddie Oatman|16|1162|346|546|892|55.75|0.77
Nels Stewart|15|1169|655|507|1162|77.47|0.99
Fred Taylor|13|813|385|717|1102|84.77|1.36
Jack Walker|16|1120|262|510|772|48.25|0.69
I gave Nighbor his career average of 37 assists (16 year average, not including the 29-30 season where he did not record an assist) for the 12-13 NHA season where assists were not awarded.
I don't have the numbers to include Taylor's 07-08 ECAHA season, and I gave him his average of 60 assists (9 year average, not including the 22-23 season where he did not record an assist) for the 3 ECHA/NHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Lalonde his average of 34 assists (12 year average, not including the 25-26 and 26-27 seasons where he did not record an assist) for the 4 NHA/PCHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Malone his average of 29 assists (9 year average, not including the 22-23 and 23-24 seasons where he did not record an assist) for the 4 NHA/ECHA seasons where assists were not awarded. His 09-10 season was left out, but his 08-09 season was included.
I gave Foyston his career average of 27 assists for the 12-13 NHA season where assists were not awarded.
I gave Oatman his average of 36 assists (13 year average, not including the 25-26 season where he did not record an assist) for the 2 NHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Dunderdale his average of 29 assists (11 year average, not including the 22-23 season where he did not record an assist) for the 3 NHA/PCHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Harris his career average of 36 assists for the 11-12 PCHA season where assists were not awarded.
Here are the adjusted career numbers for some early era stars using a slight variation of the Ideal Points method from the Hockey Compendium. The earliest season included is 08-09
Frank Boucher|18|1345|431|939|1370|76.11|1.02
Bill Cook|15|1173|645|677|1322|88.13|1.13
Cy Denneny|15|1077|499|405|904|60.27|0.84
Tommy Dunderdale|15|1143|436|408|844|56.27|0.74
Frank Foyston|16|1168|457|438|895|55.94|0.77
Smokey Harris|14|1036|322|502|824|58.86|0.80
Duke Keats|10|685|350|531|881|88.10|1.29
Newsy Lalonde|18|1133|598|542|1140|63.33|1.01
Mickey MacKay|15|1118|489|570|1059|70.60|0.95
Joe Malone|15|1042|504|380|884|58.93|0.85
Howie Morenz|14|1066|542|626|1168|83.43|1.10
Bernie Morris|10|758|345|411|756|75.60|1.00
Frank Nighbor|18|1300|448|625|1073|59.61|0.83
Eddie Oatman|16|1162|346|546|892|55.75|0.77
Nels Stewart|15|1169|655|507|1162|77.47|0.99
Fred Taylor|13|813|385|717|1102|84.77|1.36
Jack Walker|16|1120|262|510|772|48.25|0.69
I gave Nighbor his career average of 37 assists (16 year average, not including the 29-30 season where he did not record an assist) for the 12-13 NHA season where assists were not awarded.
I don't have the numbers to include Taylor's 07-08 ECAHA season, and I gave him his average of 60 assists (9 year average, not including the 22-23 season where he did not record an assist) for the 3 ECHA/NHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Lalonde his average of 34 assists (12 year average, not including the 25-26 and 26-27 seasons where he did not record an assist) for the 4 NHA/PCHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Malone his average of 29 assists (9 year average, not including the 22-23 and 23-24 seasons where he did not record an assist) for the 4 NHA/ECHA seasons where assists were not awarded. His 09-10 season was left out, but his 08-09 season was included.
I gave Foyston his career average of 27 assists for the 12-13 NHA season where assists were not awarded.
I gave Oatman his average of 36 assists (13 year average, not including the 25-26 season where he did not record an assist) for the 2 NHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Dunderdale his average of 29 assists (11 year average, not including the 22-23 season where he did not record an assist) for the 3 NHA/PCHA seasons where assists were not awarded.
I gave Harris his career average of 36 assists for the 11-12 PCHA season where assists were not awarded.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
I don't have time to type the full quotes out for these articles, but when I do I will add them to a profile of Georges Vezina I am working on.
Jack Adams was a big fan of Georges Vezina. In this article from 1936, Adams says that it is "nearly unanimous" among hockey people that Vezina was the best ever: http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...g=6434,47151&dq=georges+vezina+gardiner&hl=en
It's a fascinating article about the development of goaltending at the time. The "old guys" like Vezina and Benedict were very large, because they were expected to play a stand up style (though Benedict obviously broke that rule). The new glass of goalies - Gardiner, Roach, Worters, etc were much smaller.
Adams mentions that "year after year" hockey experts rank Worters the best in the game, but Adams thinks he is overrated because his team played defensive hockey and he faced a lot of easy shots. Adams thought Tiny Thompson was the best goalie in the league as of 1936.
In this article from 1953 http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...IBAJ&pg=5275,1375270&dq=vezina+benedict&hl=en, Jack Adams stated that he thought Georges Vezina was "the only old timer who might measure up to modern goalies."
The article also talked about how much goaltending had developed over the years: "no matter what other aspects of play have deteriorated, goaltending has steadily improved."
________________________________________
Iain Fyffe's point allocation system isn't perfect, but I think it's a big improvement off of a straight up look at goals against average, as it at least attempts to separate the player from the team. He compared Vezina and Benedict not too long ago here: http://hockeyhistorysis.blogspot.com/2012/02/vezina-v-benedict.html
This is his conclusion:
Jack Adams was a big fan of Georges Vezina. In this article from 1936, Adams says that it is "nearly unanimous" among hockey people that Vezina was the best ever: http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...g=6434,47151&dq=georges+vezina+gardiner&hl=en
It's a fascinating article about the development of goaltending at the time. The "old guys" like Vezina and Benedict were very large, because they were expected to play a stand up style (though Benedict obviously broke that rule). The new glass of goalies - Gardiner, Roach, Worters, etc were much smaller.
Adams mentions that "year after year" hockey experts rank Worters the best in the game, but Adams thinks he is overrated because his team played defensive hockey and he faced a lot of easy shots. Adams thought Tiny Thompson was the best goalie in the league as of 1936.
In this article from 1953 http://news.google.com/newspapers?i...IBAJ&pg=5275,1375270&dq=vezina+benedict&hl=en, Jack Adams stated that he thought Georges Vezina was "the only old timer who might measure up to modern goalies."
The article also talked about how much goaltending had developed over the years: "no matter what other aspects of play have deteriorated, goaltending has steadily improved."
________________________________________
Iain Fyffe's point allocation system isn't perfect, but I think it's a big improvement off of a straight up look at goals against average, as it at least attempts to separate the player from the team. He compared Vezina and Benedict not too long ago here: http://hockeyhistorysis.blogspot.com/2012/02/vezina-v-benedict.html
This is his conclusion:
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
How does this method calculate points between different leagues? I love seeing Duke Keats with the second best "per game" results, but it seems to me that this is probably overrating him a little bit.
BM67
Registered User
It uses a formula based on the top scorers to approximate the playing time of starters on a league by league, season by season estimate. It uses the per game rate for goals and assists for each league season. It then rates that over a season of 82 games at 6.45 goals/game, 8.49 assists/game, and 20 minutes playing time/game.
Duke Keats
1915-16| 24 |7.53 | 2.69 | 34:40 | 24 | 22| 7 | 29 | 82 | 37 | 44 | 81
1916-17| 20 | 10.24 | 4.36 | 37:20 | 13 | 15 | 3 | 18 | 54 | 21 | 13 | 34
1921-22| 25 | 7.02 | 3.52 | 31:20 | 25 | 31 | 24 | 55 | 82 | 60 | 121 | 181
1922-23| 30 | 6.46 | 2.63 | 35:20 | 25 | 24 | 13 | 37 | 69 | 37 | 66 | 103
1923-24| 30 | 5.33 | 2.42 | 30:00 | 29 | 19 | 12 | 31 | 80 | 42 | 77 | 119
1924-25| 28 | 6.52 | 3.28 | 29:20 | 28 | 23 | 9 | 32 | 82 | 45 | 47 | 92
1925-26| 30 | 5.2 | 2.67 | 32:40 | 30 | 20 | 9 | 29| 82 | 42 | 48 | 90
1926-27| 44 | 3.8 | 1.79 | 28:00 | 42 | 16 | 8 | 24 | 79 | 36 | 51 | 87
1927-28| 44 | 3.67 | 1.82 | 30:40 | 37 | 14 | 10 | 24 | 69 | 30 | 57 | 87
1928-29| 44 | 2.8 | 1.67 | 29:20 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 7
It probably needs a tweak for team assist rates to smooth out the huge seasons like Keats 121 assists in 21-22. (Of all the players in the table, there were only 4 100+ assist seasons. One each for Boucher, Keats, Morenz and Taylor.) Overall, Keats gets as much out of his high peak vs short career as from that one huge "distorted" season.
Sturminator
Love is a duel
So Keats' three big seasons are his first three years in the WCHL, then? I'm not too sure about the conversion values generated here. This was the three league era, and until Bill Cook started peaking in 1923-24 (where he beat Keats by 29% in scoring), other than Keats, himself, there are no forwards of any great interest on those WCHL leaderboards.
I don't get it. 1924-25 is actually the most impressive scoring season of Keats' career. In that season, he was right in the mix for the scoring lead in a consolidated western league (after the PCHA merger) with a peaking Cook, MacKay and Frederickson, and yet this formula has that as a much worse scoring season than the year beforehand when Cook smoked him. No offense, BM, but this doesn't pass the smell test.
I don't get it. 1924-25 is actually the most impressive scoring season of Keats' career. In that season, he was right in the mix for the scoring lead in a consolidated western league (after the PCHA merger) with a peaking Cook, MacKay and Frederickson, and yet this formula has that as a much worse scoring season than the year beforehand when Cook smoked him. No offense, BM, but this doesn't pass the smell test.
BM67
Registered User
He had more assists in 23-24, than in 24-25, and there were fewer assists over all, so he gets a big bump there. Keats does get 92 IPts to MacKay's 86 in 24-25 due to more assists. Oliver would be the big winner with his assist totals in 24-25 (71 GP 40 G 68 A 108 Pts).
Goals and assists took a sizable jump from 23-24 to 24-25, but Keats had only 1 more point, and fewer assists. Keats may have looked better in the scoring race, but that doesn't mean he had a better scoring year.
Cook does indeed smoke Keats in 23-24 with 146 IPts, again mainly on the strength of his assists total.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
sounds like you're saying that it treats all NHA, PCHA and WCHL seasons equally. I definitely do not agree with that. The first couple years of the WCHL and last few years of the PCHA were pretty weak, to start with.
Sturminator
Love is a duel
The leagues consolidated in the intervening offseason, and some very different hockey got played in 1924-25, including what appears to have been the first regular pressure/shift system in Victoria under Lester Patrick. The WCHL was also flooded with goaltending talent (where it had been pretty barren before), as both Holmes and Lehman came over, both still at the tail end of their primes, as far as I can tell.
I just don't see any way to forge any kind of clearminded formulaic equivalency between the leagues/seasons during this period. I am analytical by nature and implicitly prefer quantitative arguments, but the western leagues are such an enormous chaos that I think an "educated fudge" ends up being more enlightened than any kind of numerical system that I have seen to this point.
I doubt that Cook was really a different player from one season to the next at that point...certainly not a worse one (he was still developing to some extent). And we know what big stars MacKay and Frederickson were. To me, it is more meaningful to see Keats neck-and-neck with those guys in the first consolidated western season than it is to see him nowhere close to Cook in the season before, although nominally he scored more points. I don't see anything close to a one-to-one equivalency between those seasons.
seventieslord
Student Of The Game
I think dreakmur and jarek, on separate occasions, both did some equivalancy formulas between the NHA/NHL and PCHA in order to make leaderboards and/or adjusted totals. While the work is fundamentally sound from a formulaic standpoint, the problem that I had to point out to jarek is, you could take the calculation and apply it to any league (like, say, the 1988 QMJHL) and it would spit out results that "fit" with the results from the 1912 NHA, but what that really would show is which players dominated which league more. If you just ranked all the players by those "scores" you'd be making the assumption that both leagues were exactly equal in quality. I don't know that this is true for any year from 1912-1926. In a few years it is probably "close enough" but in the early 20s I would definitely say it wasn't.
I think what BM is saying is that he did something similar to the above. But it doesn't account for the weakening of the PCHA and the humble beginnings of the WCHL.
I think what BM is saying is that he did something similar to the above. But it doesn't account for the weakening of the PCHA and the humble beginnings of the WCHL.
BM67
Registered User
The PCHA and WCHL had been playing each other for several years before they merged. The PCHA teams played 14 games against the PCHA teams and 16 games against the WCHL teams in 23-24. The WCHL teams played 18 against each other and 12 vs the PCHA teams. It basically was a two conference league rather than two separate leagues.
They merged for the 24-25 season, but still played an unbalanced schedule. Edmonton played Calgary 8 times, but the other teams only 5 times.
Cook didn't have as good a year in 24-25 as he did in 23-24, but he was back to his more productive self for the next season.
The scoring race with a modern level of assists isn't going to look just like the unadjusted leader board with fewer goals than assists.
For this method the PCHA and WCHL were treated as one league, which will give different numbers, than if the two leagues were calculated separately. Plus this is an adjusted points method, not a dominance point method, so scoring level is the key and not competition level.
For those that missed it. This is a slightly adjusted Idealized Point Method taken from The Hockey Compendium. The tweaks I use are 82 game schedule length rather than 80 games, games missed included rather than giving everyone a full season, and no neutering of the assists totals. Otherwise it is Klein and Reif's system.
Here is the idealized point totals for Bill Cook out west.
Bill Cook|22-23|30|9|16|25|82|14|80|94
Bill Cook|23-24|30|26|14|40|82|57|89|146
Bill Cook|24-25|27|22|10|32|80|44|52|96
Bill Cook|25-26|30|31|13|44|82|64|69|133
Here's the WCHL 24-25 leader board with IPts
Mickey Mackay|28|27|6|33|82|55|31|86
Harry Oliver|24|20|13|33|71|40|68|108
Duke Keats|28|23|9|32|82|45|47|92
Bill Cook|27|22|10|32|80|44|52|96
Frank Fredrickson|28|22|8|30|82|43|41|84
Frank Boucher|27|16|12|28|80|32|63|95
Sturminator
Love is a duel
Here is a link to an extremely interesting book on hockey written in 1899 called Hockey: Canada's Royal Winter Game, by Arthur Farrell (who was a Stanley Cup champion in 1899 and 1900).
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/hockey/024002-4000-e.html
...and a direct link in case that one doesn't work:
http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/300/corneil_cr/hockey/hockey_canadas_royal_winter_game.pdf
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/hockey/024002-4000-e.html
...and a direct link in case that one doesn't work:
http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/300/corneil_cr/hockey/hockey_canadas_royal_winter_game.pdf
Sturminator
Love is a duel
Sturminator
Love is a duel
Sturminator
Love is a duel
In regards to Bowie - he was born in 1880, and was seven years old at the beginning of the "second epoch" of Canadian hockey. He was a Montrealer, and so at the epicenter of the new hockey phenomenon. He played at the Tucker school, which according to this document:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...RcctAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6JgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6906,512256
...was one of three schools in Montreal (along with Montreal High and St. Mary's) which was turning out the best hockey players at the turn of the century. It is not clear when the Tucker school first organized a hockey team or when Bowie joined, but it appears they were competing against other high schools, so we can probably place his joining organized hockey at the age of 13-14, though he was likely skating and whacking something resembling a puck around with his friends before that.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...RcctAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6JgFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6906,512256
...was one of three schools in Montreal (along with Montreal High and St. Mary's) which was turning out the best hockey players at the turn of the century. It is not clear when the Tucker school first organized a hockey team or when Bowie joined, but it appears they were competing against other high schools, so we can probably place his joining organized hockey at the age of 13-14, though he was likely skating and whacking something resembling a puck around with his friends before that.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
I'll have some comments on this later. I don't think it should be just about Bowie - the other top players of the era - Tommy Phillips and Hod Stuart at least, but probably also Harvey Pulford, Frank McGee, Alf Smith, Si Griffis, and Ernie Russell (who I've become convinced we have been understating) should also be part.
Sturminator
Love is a duel
Ok, I'm trying to get my head around just when hockey began spreading rapidly throughout Canada, and just how rapidly it spread. I think the easiest way to measure the spread of hockey throughout "the dominion" is to look at where the star players grew up from one generation to the next. I'm not really interested in the really ancient players who competed in the Montreal Winter Carnival and whatnot, so we'll start with Russell Bowie's generation. Here is a list of the stars, and where they grew up. If a player grew up somewhere other than where he was actually born, I list his birthplace in parentheses.
So Bowie's generation seems to have drawn almost all of its talent from a few hockey hotbeds. Ottawa is most prominent, followed by Montreal, and then you have the Rat Portage area, Belleville and Quebec City that all produce a few. Hockey at this point was still drawing from a very geographically limited talent pool.
---------------------------------------------------------
Right at the end of Bowie's career, you start seeing the talent pool diversify. Here are the star players who pop up during the last couple season of Bowie's career in the ECAHA.
The talent pool seems to be diversifying towards the end of Bowie's career. Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City combined are still producing a good chunk of the top players in Canada, but just a few areas no longer have a chokehold on all of the hockey talent.
-----------------------------------------------------------
And then we get to the next generation, which is vastly more geographically diverse. Here's how that generation breaks down (leaving out the above players who appeared during the end of Bowie's career).
What's really striking here is the explosion of talent in the rest of Ontario. Ottawa still produces its share of great players, but represents a much smaller piece of the pie than it did before, and Montreal's place in the hockey world has shrunken down to only one of many cities producing a few star players. There is no way to convert this information into some smooth formula to equate performance from one generation to the next, but I think the above shines a relatively clear light on the expansion of hockey talent in Canada from the Bowie to the Nighbor generation.
So Bowie's generation seems to have drawn almost all of its talent from a few hockey hotbeds. Ottawa is most prominent, followed by Montreal, and then you have the Rat Portage area, Belleville and Quebec City that all produce a few. Hockey at this point was still drawing from a very geographically limited talent pool.
---------------------------------------------------------
Right at the end of Bowie's career, you start seeing the talent pool diversify. Here are the star players who pop up during the last couple season of Bowie's career in the ECAHA.
The talent pool seems to be diversifying towards the end of Bowie's career. Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City combined are still producing a good chunk of the top players in Canada, but just a few areas no longer have a chokehold on all of the hockey talent.
-----------------------------------------------------------
And then we get to the next generation, which is vastly more geographically diverse. Here's how that generation breaks down (leaving out the above players who appeared during the end of Bowie's career).
What's really striking here is the explosion of talent in the rest of Ontario. Ottawa still produces its share of great players, but represents a much smaller piece of the pie than it did before, and Montreal's place in the hockey world has shrunken down to only one of many cities producing a few star players. There is no way to convert this information into some smooth formula to equate performance from one generation to the next, but I think the above shines a relatively clear light on the expansion of hockey talent in Canada from the Bowie to the Nighbor generation.
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overpass
Registered User
I think this is a really interesting topic. Part of the appeal of hockey history for me has always been the close tie to Canadian history and geography. I live in the Ottawa area and have lived in Southern Ontario as well, so there are a lot of familiar places on those lists. Do you have any Canadian ties, Sturm, or are you coming at this as an outsider to Canada?
I wonder why hockey spread all the way to Rat Portage/Kenora. It could have been just one person who spread it and popularized it there before the rest of Ontario west of Ottawa. Looks like it was spreading down the St Lawrence/Lake Ontario as well (Kingston, Belleville) but hadn't hit Toronto.
Lalonde and Kerr continued the St Lawrence/Lake Ontario representation. Looks like Riley Hern was the first star to come out of Southern Ontario, followed by Cyclone Taylor.
The Ottawa Valley opens up after that, with Nighbor, Cameron, etc. The game also spreads to the Georgian Bay region (McNamara, Noble, etc) and into Northern Ontario (Duncan, Walker, Keats). And Northwestern Ontario has spread beyond Kenora to the Thunder Bay area (Harris, Adams).
Important note: The Toronto area is still barely represented. I knew that Alf Skinner was a Toronto boy, because when I researched Skinner in the Toronto Star they never lost a chance to mention he was from Toronto. Apparently he was just about the only high-level hockey player from Toronto. Granted, the GTA wasn't an enormous share of the population, but still, high-level hockey players were not coming out of the GTA at all. While Tom Paton may have introduced hockey to Toronto in 1887, for whatever reason, hockey culture didn't establish itself in Toronto like it did in other parts of Ontario.
We also have yet to see stars coming from west of Manitoba, but that's in part because Canada's West was still very much being settled and developed at this time.
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
That is the best read on the expansion of the early talent pool that I've seen. To really put it in context, I would want to see how it compares to the expansion of talent between the Taylor and Morenz generations.
I also want to see the difference between the Dan Bain/Mike Grant generation and the Bowie/Phillips generation. I'm not ready to write off the late 1890s as "primitive" like Sturm seems to be. I realize the 1887 Winter Carnival is pretty questionable from a competitive standpoint, but the Cup was first awarded in 1892 and the HHOF has seen fit to honor some players from the late 1890s
I also want to see the difference between the Dan Bain/Mike Grant generation and the Bowie/Phillips generation. I'm not ready to write off the late 1890s as "primitive" like Sturm seems to be. I realize the 1887 Winter Carnival is pretty questionable from a competitive standpoint, but the Cup was first awarded in 1892 and the HHOF has seen fit to honor some players from the late 1890s
TheDevilMadeMe
Registered User
Actually this is a great way of looking at it, but the Art Hooper article reminded me that the Winnipeg Victorias were a very good hockey team that competed for Cups. They won Cups in 1896, 1901, and 1902 and then competed in the same league as the Cup winning Kenora Thistles in the second half of the '00s. So Winnipeg really needs to be included as a source of hockey talent during Bowie's time.
Edit: never mind, I was under the impression that the Winnipeg team was stocked by homegrown players like most teams of the era, but it seems like their most notable players were born in Montreal or Western Ontario.
Edit: never mind, I was under the impression that the Winnipeg team was stocked by homegrown players like most teams of the era, but it seems like their most notable players were born in Montreal or Western Ontario.
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overpass
Registered User
Winnipeg was a boomtown at the time - the population grew from 25 000 in 1891 to 179 000 in 1921. While early Winnipeg hockey stars were mostly born in Eastern Canada, so was the rest of the population.
