Examining the names on the Stanley Cup, one sees hockey’s great cities — champions like Montreal, Detroit, Edmonton — but there are three names that don’t seem to belong: Moncton, Sydney, and New Glasgow.
Those towns have an unusual connection to hockey’s greatest prize. In the early 1900s, before the NHL, the hockey landscape was a patchwork of leagues, and the Stanley Cup didn’t belong to any of them. Instead, it had trustees, who picked challengers to play for the trophy, usually at the end of the season, but sometimes mid- or even pre-season. Most teams came from big cities, but the trustees were surprisingly open minded about giving small-town underdogs their shot.
Among them were the Cubs from New Glasgow, N.S., who challenged the Montreal Wanderers in December 1906. The Nova Scotian team, in flashy gold and blue sweaters, was stacked with local heroes like fearless goalie Frank Morrison and hard-charging centre John D. McDonald, while the Wanderers boasted future hall-of-famer Lester Patrick.
“Not much attention has been paid in Montreal to eastern hockey,” sniffed the Montreal Gazette, adding that the infrequency of challengers “from that section of the country seems to indicate that the Maritime players have not a great deal of confidence in their prowess.”
The Wanderers did dominate the two-game, total-goal series, winning 10-3 and 7-2. Someone, presumably the trustees, decided to engrave the name of the defeated team on the trophy along with the winner. On the top of the Stanley Cup’s bowl, just under the lip, you’ll find “New Glasgow.”
For decades before, the engravings only recorded winners. Happily, the brief practice of also noting defeated challengers happened as the East Coast’s contenders emerged.
Next came the Moncton Victorias in 1912. The defending champions were the Quebec Bulldogs, monsters of the hockey world featuring (Bad) Joe Hall and (Phantom) Joe Malone, who set many scoring records that lasted decades and one that still stands: seven goals in a single NHL game. Despite the daunting lineup, Quebec had a mediocre season, losing almost as many games as they’d won, so Moncton seemed to have a good chance.
Until the puck dropped.
“(Malone) scored early and often, blowing by the Moncton defenders as if they were children,” I wrote in my book Long Shots: The Curious Story of the Four Maritime Teams That Played for the Stanley Cup (Nimbus Publishing). The Phantom tallied five goals in the first game alone, as Quebec won 9-3 and 8-0.
By now, there was more consistency in how the Stanley Cup was engraved, so Moncton doesn’t enjoy New Glasgow’s prominent scrawl, but it’s there in neat block letters near the base of the bowl, just under “Quebec 1912-1913.”
The next season saw the East Coast’s final shot at the cup, as the Sydney Millionaires won the regional title and hopped on a train to La Belle Province to battle the still-champion Bulldogs. In an ideal world, we’d happily conclude with the plucky Maritimers finally winning, but Quebec’s squad was stronger than ever, easily beating the Nova Scotians, 14-3 and 6-2.
Like New Glasgow and Moncton, Sydney’s name was engraved on the Stanley Cup, but no East Coast team won it, and soon the chance was gone forever. Ever-climbing player contracts meant Atlantic Canadian teams could no longer afford to recruit the best players, the Stanley Cup trustees stopped accepting their challenges, and the Maritime professional league crumbled soon after the First World War broke out.
“Professional hockey outgrew the Maritimes,” I concluded in Long Shots, yet the legacy continues. “It was never the big business of hockey that had flourished in the Maritimes — it was the intangible spirit. It was the joy of a uniquely Canadian winter pastime.”
It’s fitting those East Coast towns are honoured on the trophy. They blazed a trail for the generations of hockey players who have represented our region so well, both in professional leagues and on international ice — Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Blayre Turnbull, Brad Marchand, and dozens of others.
Small-town heroes
The idea of a small town like New Glasgow winning the Stanley Cup wasn’t so far-fetched. Consider the Thistles from Kenora, previously known as “Rat Portage,” in western Ontario near the Manitoba border. In 1907, they went to Montreal and astounded the hockey world, beating the defending champions in two games to win the the cup. Kenora (population: 6,158 as of the 1911 census) is the smallest community to ever win it, and the Thistles had the shortest reign as champions, losing a challenge series less than two months later.
The forgotten team
Few recall the team today, but the first Atlantic Canadians to challenge for the Stanley Cup were the Halifax Crescents in 1900. They fared no better than the others, as the Montreal Shamrocks easily won, 10–2 and 11–0. Unluckily, the Crescents predate that brief period when defeated challengers were engraved on the trophy.