Carson Cooper
Due to a lack of coverage of his amateur career, I looked a little bit deeper into Carson Cooper's professional career in the NHL. I have to say that I'm just not really seeing it with him. Unlike when he played in the OHA, there's no shortage of game reports for his NHL days and there isn't any sense that Cooper was seen as a star. And I don't think it's a situation like Dick Irvin where his best days were clearly behind him by the time he came to the NHL - there were plenty of clippings in Chicago and in his old stomping grounds where the papers acknowledged Irvin's age and the fact that he was past it, while Cooper doesn't see any of the same acknowledgement. Therefore, I'm led to believe that Cooper was about the same player in the NHL as he was in Hamilton.
I found a few articles that focused on him and his shot, which was about all he was known for. Both of these were near the end of his NHL career:
The Windsor Star - 28 January 1931 said:
Hockey writers in many cities, and particularly on the American side, persist in describing Carson Cooper of the Detroit Falcons as 'Shovel Shot.' Personally we never could vision one of Cooper's quick deliveries from right wing as being associated in the 'shovel shot' idea and 'Coop' himself laughs every time he reads that 'label.'
Cooper's puck shooting is accompanied by a highly emphasized wrist movement, just as a baseball players obtain a snap to their throw by the use of their wrists. Cooper has an unusually fast delivery. He gets the puck away at a lightning-fast pace, but his stick seldom travels as a 'follow through.' Because of this quick get-away of Cooper's, the puck is seldom blocked by a defenseman. It usually travels all the way to the nets.
Cooper has unusually powerful wrists for his size. He no doubt developed these wrists playing lacrosse, where wrists play an important part in the handling of a gutted stick. But Cooper didn't dig any ditches down around Cornwall and he didn't develop any such puck drive to warrant the label of 'shovel shot' that we can see. Neither can 'Coop.'
The Detroit Free Press - 4 December 1931 said:
Somebody once put 'Shovel Shot' in front of his name a few years ago. But that is a misnomer. There is nothing resembling the process of shovelling in the manner in which Cooper does his shooting. He is the only hockey player in the National League who gets immense power behind his shots without, 'winding up,' which accounts to a great extent his sniping success. Cooper can take a pass and get it away in one motion and there is not a harder or more accurate shot in any league....
There is not a more talkative hockey player than Cooper who never was checked or stymied in the art of repartee. He is the club's 'jockey' and an untiring one... Cooper is a journeyman electrician and works at his trade in Hamilton during the off-season.
It almost sounds like his 'Shovel Shot' nickname was not really complimentary, to be honest. I actually felt compelled to look into exactly what 'shovel shot' meant during this time, because it's a term that I've seen a few times. It's most frequently used when describing a player lifting the puck high into the air at the goal from far out, usually from just outside the blueline, using a shoveling motion. One article said specifically of Cooper that he was "called the shovel-shot artist because he scoops up the puck when he aims," which goes against what the two snippets above said. Appearing much less frequently were accounts of players using a 'shovel shot' in tight to roof the puck over the goaler. I saw reports of Cooper scoring 'shovel' goals via both of these methods. As an aside, I found a few clippings that described Harry Smith, of the famed Smith brothers, as being considered the original 'shovel shot' king, and also another clipping that referred to Babe Dye as 'Old Shovel Shot'.
I also found a few articles that talked about Detroit's cost structure during the time Cooper played for them. One in particular, from January 1931, was written through rose-tinted glasses, comparing the cost of the Falcons' players with what the editor believed they'd be able to command 'on the market.' At the end of the article it included this handy table:
I find this pretty damning for Cooper, since this was in the middle of the 1931 season when he came 2nd on the team in scoring behind Goodfellow, so he was still an important piece of the team, and in the previous season he'd led the team in scoring and finished 15th in the league overall. Yet the homer sports editor of the Detroit Free Press thought he was one of the least valuable men on the team! Was it the fact that he was one of the older players on a team comprised mostly of youngsters? That would make sense, but he was still considered to be worth a little less than George Hay, two years older, and was considered to be worth much less than 35 year old Reg Noble, who was just voted in last round.
I'm also interested in the disparity between Cooper's cost and Jimmy 'Sailor' Herbert's cost, who was through as an NHLer by now and was playing with the Olympics minor league squad (managed by Bernie Morris). They were teammates briefly in Hamilton, and both came to the NHL in 1924 with the Bruins as rookies - Cooper at wing, Herbert at centre. In Cooper's first big NHL year, 1926, he finished 2nd in scoring, while Herbert finished 4th. Sailor received plenty of Hart attention and came 7th in voting (after coming 7th the year before) while Cooper didn't receive any Hart votes. Here, years later, we find out that Herbert cost Detroit nearly 4x to acquire him as what Cooper did. It seems to me like this all points to Cooper not being considered a particularly valuable player, but if anybody is more familiar with the finances of NHL teams from this period and could offer another explanation, it would be most helpful.
As for Cooper's defensive game, there isn't much mention of it good or bad, which for most players usually means they don't impact the game on that end. I did find this from the 1930 offseason:
The Detroit Free Press - 27 April 1930 said:
There will be others missing when the Cougars' roll call is made in October. There are rumours that Carson Cooper will not be back. 'Shovel-Shot,' who takes excellent care of himself, was not exactly an outstanding star under the forward passing rule which requires a lot of back-checking.
As we know, forward passing was introduced the season prior, which is the aforementioned season when he led his team in points and finished 15th leaguewide.
In all, I'm definitely less in on Cooper than I was before. I was looking for reasons to like him, since I've already advocated strongly for a player who gets underrated because of his split amateur/pro career, but I think I'm gonna have to pass on 'Shovel Shot' (or 'Coop').
