Nitzy's Hockey Den

Gordon Keats was nicknamed by his young friends "Duke" after a warship. His professional career began with the Toronto Blueshirts of the National Hockey Association in 1915 where he finished fifth in scoring with 22 goals in 24 games. His hockey career was delayed due to two years of military service during WWI. Upon returning he took his career out west joining the Edmonton Eskimos playing seven seasons with them mainly in the Western Canada Hockey League. He was named a first team All-Star for five straight seasons with Edmonton. When the Western League folded in '26 he finally made the jump to the NHL, playing 3 seasons with the Boston Bruins, Detroit Cougars and Chicago Black Hawks. At the age of 33 he would join the Tulsa Oilers of the American Hockey Association leading that loop in scoring one season. Lester Patrick once praised Keats for being "the brainiest pivot that ever strapped on a skate". His career scoring totals of 393 games, 271 goals and 417 p...

Over the years, the NHL All-Star game has included a few somewhat questionable "All-Stars". Whether it was the league's unofficial policy to have every team represented or an injury to more deserving star player, a few guys have been included in the mid-season classic that you probably have forgotten about. Pictured above we have Bob Woytowich who played for the West Division team in 1970. That season, he had a respectable 33 points as a defensman for the Pens. Pittsburgh also had Dean Prentice representing them. Woywotich was however one of only five d-men on the West squad that year, a fairly weak field I suppose. Doug Roberts was a bit more of a stretch on the 1971 squad. He was the only rep from the California Golden Seals, ending up with 17 points and a -56 plus minus rating. A better choice would have been rookie teammate Ron Stackhouse or goalie Gary 'Suitcase' Smith could easily have replaced the Blues Ernie Wakely for the West team. Bob Manno was a 1982 ...

Bruce Bell made the NHL All-Rookie Team in 1984-85, along with Mario Lemieux, Chris Chelios, Tomas Sandstrom, Warren Young and Steve Penney. My most prominent memory of Bruce Bell, was when Wendel Clark absolutely destroyed him with a clean body check in the 1986-87 season. Clark caught Bell with his head down coming around his own net...pretty much ending the career of the promising defenseman. Bell was drafted in the 3rd round by Quebec in 1983. In his rookie year, Bell tallied 37 points and a plus 32 rating for the Nordiques before being traded to the Blues. After the 86-87 season, and Clark's hit, Bell would play only 14 more NHL games. He would end up playing five different years in the AHL, as well as the IHL,CHL, Colonial League, British and Austrian Leagues and finished in the WCHL with the powerhouse Phoneix Mustangs. His career totals of 76 points in 209 games tell of a promise unfullfilled. Currently he runs the Bruce Bell Hockey School out of Lethbridge, Alberta.

Tommy Dunderdale was born in 1887 in Australia. He moved to Ottawa with his family as a 17 year old in 1904, within two years he was playing pro for Winnipeg of the Manitoba Hockey League. After three seasons he went to Montreal to play with the Shamrocks, then to the Quebec Bulldogs, both of the National Hockey Association which preceded the NHL. At age 24 in 1911, he moved out west to the Pacific Coast Hockey Association and the Victoria Aristocrats. He would play 13 seasons on the coast, also with the Portland Rosebuds, being named First team All-Star six times. He led the league in goals three times and retired as the PCHA career leader with 194 goals. Dunderdale's career professional totals through 19 seasons were 309 games played, 267 goals and 336 points. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in the player's category in 1974.

For some unknown reason, I was goofing around with my favourite site, www.hockey-reference.com ....must have been a slow day at work. I have recently been looking for the worst goals against averages in junior hockey history, (a future blog posting) and decided to check all NHL goalies with a single season GAA over 4.50. On this fantastic site, I'm able to create my own criteria for searching. I choose goalies that played at least 20 games in a season and produced an average of at least 4.50. It turns out that the worst average in NHL history of 7.11 was spit out by the "immortal" Frank Brophy of the Quebec Bulldogs in 1919-20. The Bulldogs that year went 4-20 in spite of Joe Malone's league leading 39 goals. Goaltender, Brophy was 19 that season which proved to be his only NHL showing. The second worst GAA in history belongs to New York Ranger Ken McAuley, who in 1943-44 had a 6.24 average over 50 games. McAuley went 6-39 -5 in playing every minute that year except...

Another cool fact about Johnny Bower is the fact that he is one of only four men in professional hockey history to have won their league MVP award in three consecutive years. Two of the other three, you may have heard of, Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky. The fourth gentleman you may not have heard of, Paul Polillo (pictured above) in the old Colonial Hockey League. Other men have come close to three consecutive MVP's, only to fall short. Guyle Fielder of the old Western League actually won four MVP's in a row, but these were not true league-wide awards. There were two awards given out in three of those seasons, one for the Coastal Division and one for the Prairie Division. On top of that, each division had only four teams from which to choose an MVP. Eddie Shore won three MVPs in four years in the early '30s. Gordie Howe won three of four in the late '50s. Len Thornson won three in four years and four in six from 1959-1964 with the Fort Wayne Komets of the IHL. Johnny Bow...

29 years ago today, Johnny Bower dressed as an emergency backup for the Maple Leafs. In a Vancouver Sun article by Dave Stubbs, he recounts how Bower, who was retired for over ten years was almost called on as replacement. January 9, 1980, the Leafs goalies, Mike Palmateer and Paul Harrison both had a bad case of the flu. Young Vincent Tremblay was summoned from the New Brunswick Hawks of the AHL, but it was uncertain if he'd arrive on time. Bower was a scout for the Leafs at the time, and was heading out on a road trip when GM Punch Imlach told him not to leave. Imlach signed him to a $1 contract and Bower headed to the Maple Leaf Gardens training room to find his duffle bag of goalie equipment he stashed away ten years prior. Bower spent the game in the training room in full gear while Tremblay was pulled after four goals against in ten mimutes. The ailing Paul Harrison took over in the 5-3 Montreal victory, with Bower on guard as emergency replacement, thankfully not used that ...

The Quebec Major Junior League, Sorel Black Hawks (Epreviers in French) scored 620 goals in 70 games. 620 goals in 70 games, that's an average of 8.86 goals each and every game. Each team in the league that season scored an average of 5.41 goals/game which is quite impressive, however, Sorel's average was 63.8 percent higher than the league average. This percentage abovethe average is by far the greatest differential in modern major junior hockey history. There were two teams in the 1946-47 Ontario Hockey Association that topped Sorel's percentage, yet the disparity in team's talentof that day was the main cause for a few teams dominating the league. Both St.Mikes and the Galt Red Wings scored almost 70% more goals than the league average. The Epreviers du Sorel were a true offensive juggernaut, they had six players top the 100 point mark and an entire line EACH top 90 goals AND 200 points. Pierre Larouche, Michel Deziel (pictured above) and Jacques Cossette totalled ...

Pauli Jaks was goaltender for the Switzerland world junior team in the 1991 and 1992 tourneys. Big deal, one might say. Well, yes it was a big deal, seeing as he was named All-Star AND Top Goalie in 1991. I distinctly remember watching the first game of that '91 tournament held in Saskatoon. Canada beat the Swiss 6-0, but they peppered Jaks with well over 50 shots and they should have easily hit double digits. My friend and I decided to have a contest of sorts later that year by trying to collect the most Pauli Jaks Upper Deck rookies. I think I still have about 60 to this day. Jaks overall record of 1-4 with a 6.00 GAA doesn't seem worthy of Top Goaltender status, and perhaps it was more of a sentimental choice. Canada's Trevor Kidd who went 4-1-1 with a 2.25 GAA would probably have been the better choice. However, Kidd never really stood on his head in a close game and lost a big game to the Czechs to put the Gold medal hopes in jeopardy. It's illustrated how importan...

This past week, Curtis Joseph finally won his first game of this season. It was the 450 th victory in his career, good enough to maintain fourth place on the all-time list. He will in all likelihood remain in fourth for quite a while, he is not going to catch Ed Belfour who is 34 wins ahead, and the nearest active player is Chris Osgood, 75 wins in arears with a 36 year old body that is starting to break down. It's possible that Evgeni Nabokov at 228 wins and 33 years old or Roberto Luongo with 208 wins at 29 years old have a shot at breaking 450 wins. In addition, to his milestone victory, Cujo will most likely soon top the all-time number for losses by a goaltender. Currently he sits at 348 career losses, right behind "leader" Gump Worsely at 352 and Gilles Meloche with 351. One would expect Joseph to get 5 or 6 more starts from the Leafs and with a current winning pct of .167, the record could well be his. In addition to the unenviable feat of most career losses, Cujo...

Finally, the Worst of the Worst… The Cyclones logo has it all. A fantastically horrible drawing with an equally terrible design concept. I am assuming the “goalie” is supposed to be forming the letter “C” with his arms. I really enjoy his stumpy blocker arm that appears to be holding only the bottom part of a goalie stick. The goaltender as we know, is the only player that can play with a broken stick, but there’s no reason to display this fact in a team’s logo. I also really like the fact that the goalie has the actual logo on his own jersey, nice attention to detail I must say. The cyclone that is hovering behind the goalie looks as if it was sketched in as an afterthought. In fact the entire logo appears to have been drawn on a napkin, with that being it’s final stage of design. The Tidewater Sharks of the Southern Hockey League, wow. Pure greatness in this one. By great I mean, awful. This round nosed killer of the sea has had his tail fin sliced down the middle and the ends jam...