When Frank Boucher tried to "fix" hockey

[The Macho King]

I found a mention of Frank Boucher advocating for eliminating the red line in 1951. Along with Art Ross, one of the original hockey innovators.

Montreal Gazette, April 13, 1951
The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search

Art Ross is the man who suggests that the red line be removed from centre ice and that a team be allowed to pass a puck right up to the other team’s blue line. He also wants to make it compulsory that the puck be carried over the blue line and not shot in, which he thinks would eliminate the ganging in the end zones. Frank Boucher may be the only hockey executive who endorses the idea.

“It’s the ganging in the end zones that makes the game deteriorate into shinny,” he said. “Anything that will eliminate it is an improvement.”

But Frank Selke, Jack Adams and Conn Smythe are all for maintaining the status quo.

“There isn’t anything with the present rules of hockey as long as they are enforced,” says Frank Selke.

I found mention of him wanting to eliminate the red line in 1949.

"Frank Boucher...does not approve or applaud the rules of this era which have turned hockey into a combination of shinny and wrestling with no holds barred. Mons. Boucher has also declared that the red line, which he says he invented as a wartime measure, has outlived its welcome and should be scrapped."

Additionally some thoughts from that same article on goaltender interference:

"I would increase the goal crease by a foot out front and six inches to each side of the goal. There also should be a penalty for anyone who moves into the crease and interferes with the goalkeeper before the puck enters said crease. Gaolkeepers have little enough chance without allowing players to park on their toes."

 

[namttebih]

So would the proposed removal of "tenacious forechecking" a desire to remove dump and chase?

 

[overpass]

I think Win, Tie, or Wrangle went into some detail on this. From memory I think they said Weldy Young was known for his backhand lifts that could almost hit the rafters. Possibly exaggerated of course.

My sense is that lifting was less of an offensive move than your dump and chase from the offensive blue line or red line. Used to get the puck out of trouble, or like a punt in football to trade possession for territory.

There’s a mention of lifts in this article.

Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge ... (by Tim Falconer)

The second half started with the points and cover points trading long lifts. But it quickly became clear the Klondikers lacked the necessary conditioning and were now too tired to compete with the champions.

Since conditioning is brought up, it occurs to me that in a time when players played the full game, they wouldn’t have the wind to repeatedly execute a modern style dump and chase. Which is why lifting usually led to a change in possession.

I have my copy of Win, Tie, or Wrangle by my desk. The strategy of lifting is mentioned in their description of the early Ottawa defencemen, particularly Weldy Young. It looks like Young lifted the puck to test the goalie with a bouncing puck.

"Between 1893 and 1903, when the Ottawas rose from also-rans to champions, three defensive players stood out at the positions of point and cover point: Harvey "the Slugger" Pulford, Weldy "Chalk" Young, and William Duval. These were not glamorous positions; they did not afford much opportunity for creativity. The point and cover point defended against oncoming rushes, bowled over opponents at any opportunity, and retrieved the puck. Occasionally one or the other would take off on a solo dash, but mostly those defenders were content to find a forward to pass the puck to, always laterally of course, since forward passes were not allowed. Other than through tough physical play, the best way for a defensive player to gain notice was by perfecting the art of lifting. Crowds loved it when a defender would flick his stick under the puck and hoist it high in the air and down the ice, both teams in pursuit. Occasionally the disk would disappear in the rafters and not return. Sometimes it would break a globe.

Chalk and the Bytown Slugger were quite the defensive pair. From 1894 to 1898 they were the dominant combination in the game, feared because of Chalk's spectacular rushes and the Slugger's punishing body checks. Chalk played cover point, the Slugger was at point.

Chalk lived at the fire station where his father was the chief superintendent. He worked as an engraver in the watchmaking and jewellers business he operated with brothers George and Robert. George had been a member of the original Ottawa Hockey Club. Chalk was best known for hockey, but he was also a good football player as a fullback with the Ottawa Football Club, where he was captain in 1895. His football teammates included Pulford, Chittick, Alf Smith, and Frank McGee. Chalk broke in with the Ottawas as a nineteen-year-old in 1890, and immediately became active on the organizational side. He was a member of the club's executive committee for four years, was team captain in 1893 and 1894, and was a vice-president of the AHAC from 1893 to 1897. Chalk was also a referee, and one so trusted for impartiality that he was chosen to officiate the MAAA-Victoria match in March 1894 to decide which team would play his own Ottawa for the league championship. He also had the distinction of refereeing the December 1896 Stanley Cup match in Winnipeg between the local Victorias and the Victorias of Montreal.

As a cover point, Chalk loved to take chances rushing the puck. His charges up ice were described as "ambitious", "splendid", and "beautiful" runs that usually resulted in a shot on goal or a sharp pass. Occasionally on these adventures he would lose control of the puck and not get back in time to defend. That's when Pulford, the Slugger, would come to his assistance by riding the attacker off to the side, punctuating his action with a shoulder to the chest. Chalk was also an excellent lifter who had a talent for lobbing a shot so that it would bounce a couple of feet in front of the goalkeeper and bounce crazily. For someone known as an even-handed referee, he could get into trouble as a player. He was not above taking a vicious slash at an opponent's ankle or going into the stands after a heckler."

 

[tarheelhockey]

So would the proposed removal of "tenacious forechecking" a desire to remove dump and chase?

It would seem so. Boucher wanted a game based on successful offensive rushes, not turnovers.

The underlying concept of dump-and-chase had been in development for a long time, but I believe the term "dump and chase" first gained popularity during the early 1960s, right around the same time Boucher's criticisms were published.

 

[DJ Man]

Nice research there. Some of that I wouldn't want to see enacted (slap shots, obviously, the tripping stuff, and no checking three feet from the boards could get messy), but a lot of that was very forward thinking. I do think that the no icing unless down two men idea is interesting. I don't know how well I think it would work, but it would be pretty interesting to see how it would play out in some sort of experiment.

The WHA still called icing even when a team was shorthanded, and I do recall that the penalty-killers would accept an icing and a faceoff just to break the offensive momentum. Maybe there's some historical evidence as to how their rule worked out.

 

[overpass]

In late 1964, in the wake of the USSR's first gold medal, Boucher made a prescient observation: the Russians were still playing and perfecting a style of hockey they had learned from Canadians prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain... prior to the introduction of the red line. A style heavily focused on puck possession, crisply coordinated neutral zone passes, smooth entries across the blue line, and methodically working the puck toward the net. The Canadians were looking to turn dump-ins and chaotic forechecks into goalmouth scrambles and ugly goals. In Boucher's view, the Canadians needed to re-learn how to pass as well as the Russians, or they would be in for a hard battle for world supremacy.

You know who else was a proponent of passing, possession-based hockey and was against dump and chase hockey? Eddie Shore. Like Boucher, Shore was sidelined by the hockey establishment.

Tim Burke wrote in his Montreal Gazette column of March 19, 1985, after Shore's death:

When Bill White, the superb Chicago defensive defenceman, was with Team Canada in the epic Canada-U.S.S.R. series in '72, I asked him what magic the Soviets had used when they blew our heroes out 7-3 in Game 1 here. White, who played five years in Springfield, smiled and said "No magic. They just pulled all the old Eddie Shore stuff on us."

Bep Guidolin, the youngest player in NHL history (16) who played for Shore at the end of his career, said that if anyone dumped the puck in "he was benched immediately...Like the Russians, you held on to the puck until you found an opening. And like the Russians, you never stood still."

Bill White said that the best experience a young player could have was "two or three years...then it was time to leave."

White, who works with his old defence mate Pat (Whitey) Stapleton in Fundamentals in Action (a program of how to perform in game situations) laughed and said:

"Most of it is the stuff Eddie showed us."

 

[overpass]

Here's an article from 1958 contrasting the Russian style of play to NHL clutch and grab hockey, and comparing Russian hockey to old-time NHL hockey. And another mention of Eddie Shore being for skilled hockey.

The Province, Feb 1, 1958, Alf Cottrell

It seems strange now, the way some of us were for years banging away at the moguls for sticking to the clutch and grab style of hockey, and getting nowhere. From the cold reception we got you would think we were asking for the moon wrapped up in a red bandanna.

I recall Eddie Shore making himself unpopular in 1953 by asking that these features be eliminated. Not that being unpopular was anything new to him, for he was never a man you could break to saddle. Said Shore, as Hockey News then quoted him: "Name your favorite star. Then consider the factors that suddenly halt his eye-appealing displays. He gains possession of the puck. Because of superior speed, or innate skill, he starts a dash down the ice.

"Then, before he can make noticeable headway a lesser, often a tawdry performer either holds or hooks him, and the glittering effort is ruined."

Shore was laughed out of court by a bunch of eastern scribes who always wrote as if the National Hockey League was paying half their salaries.

At last came the winter of hockey's discontent. A bunch of tourists from Russia came over to play hockey and suddenly, when they started playing hockey, they ceased to look like tourists from Russia. They played hockey as it was played before hooking, holding and interference became things to be winked at. And the fans liked this almost forgotten game.

 

[overpass]

I found two more articles discussing Frank Boucher, pre red line hockey, and the Russians.

The first was written in 1964 by Vern DeGeer, a longtime columnist for the Montreal Gazette who had covered the NHL as sports editor for the Border Cities Star/Windsor Daily Star back in the 30s. DeGeer wrote that watching the Russians play took him back in time to the pre red line NHL of 1928-1943. DeGeer preferred the pre-red line style of play, and was happy to see the Russians bring it back. And he predicted that the Russians would pass the NHL in five to ten years if the NHL continued with board-checking, interference, stick-grabbing, and sweater-holding.

DeGeer passed away in 1968 and didn't see the 72 Summit Series, but it sounds like he would not have been surprised that it was a close series.

Montreal Gazette, Dec 14, 1964 - column by Vern DeGeer

PATTERNS OF PASS PAST
Although it has to be guesswork, this observer would reckon that at least 50 per cent of the overflow crowd of 15,678 wide-eyed customers at the Forum Friday night for the Russians versus Quebec Aces and their junior altar boys, were being exposed to pre-redline hockey for the first time. They were seeing a play-back to hockey of the 1928-1943 era.

The red-line was introduced into the NHL and its affiliate circuits in 1943. When the three-zone passing system vanished as war-time ice legislation to offset forechecking, and incidentally also to cover up the deficiencies of emergency replacements whose sole asset was ability to skate, the whole pattern of hockey changed.

Through the 20 years since, our game has not only developed an accent on speed, hell-for-leather puck pursuing tactics, but also excessive board checking, highly developed interference wrinkles, the slap shot and the screened shot. It's a new deal that has forced most of the goalies to wear masks for self-preservation, and most clubs to carry two alternate netminders in order to weather the storms. You can't argue that it hasn't packed NHL rinks.

In my mind's eye, I saw in the Russians Friday night much that countless numbers of fuzzy veteran observers like myself remember from the 1928-1943 period. Goalie Victor Konovalenko was the reincarnation of little Roy Worters of Pittsburgh and the N.Y. Americans; defencemen Victor Kuzkin, Edouard Ivanov and Alexander Ragulin were Lionel Conacher, Ching Johnson, and Bucko McDonald, reborn for the occasion; any one of three Russia forward combinations was a throwback to pattern pass lines like the Cooks and Boucher. Schmidt, Dumart, and Bauer. Bill Cowley and any of his mates (he made more wings than Boeing or Canadair). Schriner, Apps, and Drillon.

This department liked what he saw Friday night, particularly in the whirlwind first period; and in the third period when the Russians took full advantage of the no-checkee, no bumpee system under international rules, and stood off the seasoned pros while two men short.

Post-game observations by a long line of distinguished hockey authorities, executives, former and present-day players, coaches, and referees tended to down-grade the hockey performance and general ability of the visitors. Apart from praise for the fine condition, skating, and passing of the Soviet players, many of those interviewed seemed to be groping for an excuse to explain the 3-2 defeat; this brash invasion of our sovereign sports territory.

The post-mortems reminded one of the kid who took a belting from the new boy who had just moved in next door, and went away screaming: "I'll get my big brother. He'll knock hell out of you. I'll bet my old man can lick your old man."

The thought here is that many highly qualified critics were highly critical of the visitors in their post-game interviews. They came to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

Originally the Russians had suggested that games be arranged with the Toronto Leafs, and, or, the Montreal Canadiens. Soviet officials said they wanted to find out how much they had to improve before reaching major hockey brackets.

This suggestion was broached too late for consideration.

Then the Russians asked for opposition that would give them some better test than most of the international competition of recent years. They also asked that international rules be in vogue.

The rules deal was accepted without any protest, for which Allah be praised. It gave many oldsters a chance to tell the kids: "this is the kind of hockey your mother and your dad was exposed to before the red-line, and liked."

It also gave the younger element, which represents a good percentage of the Forum clientele, a chance to see for themselves what hockey was like before the red-line, board-checking, interference, and goaltender harassment.

Bringing it back to Frank Boucher--after the 1972 Summit Series, columnist Dink Carroll of the Montreal Gazette wrote that throughout the series, he kept thinking of a conversation he had with Boucher about the decline of puck-carrying and passing in the NHL. And he also mentioned the old Ranger line of Boucher and the Cooks in reference to the Russian style of play.

Montreal Gazette, Oct 3, 1972 - column by Dink Carroll

Boucher's comments:
"Not many players can carry the puck any more. Now they dump it in over the blue line and chase in after it. You don't see those beautiful passing plays because it's become a helter-skelter affair."

"There is far too much emphasis on the slapshot...how many times are they on the net with it? The wrist shot is a lot more accurate and they can get it away much faster because they don't have to wind up with it."

"They should do something about those curved sticks. You can't get away a backhand shot with them and I think they make it harder to pick up a pass.

Carroll's comments:
"Head-man the puck" is the cry you have heard incessantly in the NHL for the last 20 or more years. But what's the point if you throw it up to the head man and he immediately loses possession by shooting it in over the blue line. Then there is the scramble to forecheck and keep it in there. There is nothing aesthetic about it and the only time a goal results is when one of the players on the defending team makes a mistake.

It used to be a pleasure to watch Jean Beliveau, who could really handle the puck, carry it over the blue line and set up a play by drawing a defenceman out of position. "It's where Beliveau goes after he gets rid of the puck inside our blue line that worries me," Punch Imlach once said. "I know it's going to come back to him."

The Soviets have the same idea as Big Jean had. They want control of the puck inside the opposing team's blue line to set up scoring opportunities by passing the puck and drawing opposing players out of position. They score most of their goals that way and very few on booming slapshots from the blueline, which somehow look lucky when they wind up in the net.

Foster Hewitt mentioned that the Soviet style of play reminded him of the old Ranger teams coached by Lester Patrick and featuring the line of Frank Boucher and the Cook brothers, Bill and Bunny. That line, which the late Dick Irvin called the "Tic-Tac-Toe line" because of the way the players criss-crossed and threw the puck around, was something to see.

Maybe some of that ability to control the puck will return to the NHL as a result of the series with the Soviets, which would certainly be a plus. They may also have learned something from the way the Soviets work the power play and how they defend against it.

The Soviets never stand still on a power play, as our players sometimes do. They are always skating and they pass the puck so quickly that it's difficult to check them or get it away from them. Our players customarily set up a box formation against the power play but the Soviets use a diamond formation, which Howie Meeker described as a double triangle. Harry Sinden must have been impressed by it because Team Canada used it in the last two games of the series.

 

[The Panther]

Great post by the OP!

Boucher's ideas are certainly interesting and some have come to pass. I understand his dislike of the 'dump-and-chase' in terms of its emphasis on blunt force, scrums, luck, ugly goals, etc., but I don't really understand why he was so against forechecking.

It's also interesting to read of another Canadian hockey-person who was prescient about Soviet hockey. There seems to be a continual myth that Canadians knew nothing of Soviet hockey and were completely ignorant to their own shortcomings in the game until 1972, but this can't be right. I've seen video of Rocket Richard talking about how good the Soviets were, in like, 1965, and Boucher obviously had a correct impression that they were developing quickly even a bit earlier.

 

[overpass]

I've found a few more quotes about Canadian hockey as compared to European and Russian hockey. All supporting the idea that Canadian hockey went in for dump-and-chase rather than passing hockey after the red line was added in 1943, and the Russian style was more similar to pre red line hockey. All articles are from Western Canada, supporting the idea that there was an East-West divide on this topic and the west favored a skilled passing game as opposed to the dump and chase of Ontario.

Leading up to the 1950 World Championships in London, the Canadian style was already characterized in a way that's easy to recognize as dump and chase hockey. Called "ganging attacks" and "five men up", with "passing plays practically forgotten".

Regina Leader-Post, Dec 15, 1949
Ganging attacks, current vogue in hockey on the North American continent, will be a big feature of the Edmonton Mercurys when they carry Canada's colors in the world amateur hockey championships at London next week.

The Mercurys, who will fly to Great Britain and Europe on Dec 28, will present the same five men up style of powerhouse hockey in Europe as they did in a series of exhibition games in the west.

The Mercurys will show the hockey fans overseas the Canadian style where passing plays are practically forgotten as the puck is shot into enemy territory and the attackers fight for possession. If successful, they count on one passing play and one shot to score. Otherwise the battle for the puck continues.

In 1960, Denny Boyd of the Vancouver Sun watched the Russians play in Kelowna and concluded that Canadian hockey had a lot to learn from the Russians.

Vancouver Sun, Jan 30, 1960
From what I saw of the Russian team in Kelowna this week, there's not much they can learn here. Sure, they're a little weak on tripping, spearing, holding and scrambling. But they will be able to overcome this serious shortage with their superb skating, passing, and shooting.

But we in Canada can profit by the Russian trip. We can realize that we are playing a second-best style of hockey and we can do something about it.

...

Personally, I can watch guys like Lou Fontinato and Harry Dick only for short periods. The ability to knock a man down or paste him to the boards doesn't strike me as a measure of athletic skill.

Gorde Hunter of the Calgary Herald wrote in 1964 that Canada had forgotten the real game of hockey and the Russians were bringing it back, and quoted old-timer Doug Bentley as praising the Russian passing. This was the same Canada tour by the Russians where Frank Boucher observed the Russians were playing the pre red line style of hockey.

Calgary Herald, Dec 22, 1964
Doug Bentley said the other day the Russian display of passing was the greatest he had ever seen. Of course, good passing has been foreign to our game since roughly the heyday of Elmer Piper--and that wasn't yesterday.

Bentley isn't a Johnny-come-lately at the game of hockey and Bentley, unlike some of the other former stars, is simply being realistic. Realistic to the fact the Russians are playing the game of hockey the way it was intended.

Those who witnessed Saturday nights' telecast from Montreal, are still talking about the pretty passing play by Phil Esposito and Bobby Hull in which Hull finally slipped the puck past Charlie Hodge. Some observers claim it to be the prettiest goal of recent years, but hell, the Russians manufacture goals of this type all the time.

...

Mind you, if we ever get back to such a style of hockey, you might have to go without such thrilling manoeuvres as the booming slap shot from the red line, jam-ups in the corners, and that exceedingly crafty ploy, freezing the puck against the boards.

Somewhere along the line we've forgotten the real game of hockey. The Russians, on the other hand, perfected a style we once commanded.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The red-line was introduced into the NHL and its affiliate circuits in 1943. When the three-zone passing system vanished as war-time ice legislation to offset forechecking, and incidentally also to cover up the deficiencies of emergency replacements whose sole asset was ability to skate, the whole pattern of hockey changed.

The bolded is an intriguing little aside, isn’t it? Maybe just one man’s opinion, and perhaps not something that was explicitly identified or even understood at the time. But I’d be very interested in knowing if there’s any substance to this remark.