Australian Hockey Star


I recently picked this up at a used book store, it's the International Ice Hockey Guide for 1980/81. It's the same size and style of the old NHL Guides of the same era, loaded with seemingly every country's league stats and every international tournament from the 1979/80 season. Of course the biggest hockey event from that season was the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics and Vladislav Tretiak is pictured on the cover battling team USA. There is loads of stats on the Olympic tourney as well as from the 1980 Expolaris Cup in Sweden won by Kladno of the Czech league, the Pondus Cup from Copenhagen, Denmark (featuring national teams of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Denmark and Bulgaria) and the Great Britain Open Challenge Cup in Dundee, Scotland (which saw the Concordia University Stingers beat the Holland B-Team, the Danish Esbjerg IK and the Great Britain national team). Obviously this is a book right up my alley.

Among the interesting stats I have found in the book so far is the fascinating case of the leading scorer in the Queensland (Australia) Amateur Ice Hockey Association. The 1979 version of this league saw four teams each play 17 games, the Mayne Tigers, the Black Hawks, Red Wings and in real Aussie fashion, the Boomerangs. The scoring leader was one Ron Brideaux who played for the 13-2-2 league leading Mayne Tigers. In 17 games Brideaux put up 55 goals and 20 assists for 75 points. This in itself may not be so extraordinary as we have seen numbers like that posted in the British pro league by multiple players often in the same season. What's strange about Brideaux's numbers is his utter dominance over the rest of the league. His 55 goals were more than the total of the league's next three goal scorers combined. Read that last sentence again.... Brideaux's 55 was followed by second place with 20, third with 17 and fourth with 16.
I have been looking at hockey stats for thirty years and have played alot of beer league hockey over the last twenty or so years, and in all my years of hockey I have never seen that kind of dominance over one's peers over an entire season at any level.
In the entire Queensland League in 1979 there were a total of 277 goals scored for an average of 8.15 per match. Out of these 277 total goals Ron Brideaux scored 55 or 19.9% of the entire league's total. In 1944/45, when Montreal's Maurice Richard notched 50 goals in the six team NHL in which there were 1003 total goals scored, he accounted for just under 5% of league scoring.
Even in the NHL's first ever season of 1917/18 when Phantom Joe Malone scored 44 goals in the four team league he was responsible for 12.8 % of league goals. As well, in 1918 Cy Denneny scored 36 and Reg Noble 30. Dominant certainly, but not quite as much so as Brideaux in Australia.
I'm not saying for one second that Ron Brideaux was one of the greats of all-time. In fact, I can find no other record of him other than the book I have. He is not listed on any of the hockey databases and this was most likely the highest level of hockey he played. Even still his dominance over the league is fascinating to me.
Brideaux is currently an assistant coach with the Brisbane Bucaneers of the Australian league.

Comments

Mark said…
Geoff Fawke and Mark McCosker, then known as Ricky the Rat started the Boomerang Ice Hockey Club and we were all aussies and at one stage had the 4 Lindsay brothers playing for us. Steve, David, Graham and Bruce
April 17, 2014 at 8:04 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Hextall and the stolen Conn Smythe Trophy

Image
Ron Hextall did not deserve the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1987....there, I said it. I recently caught game seven of the '87 finals on ESPN Classic, where the Oilers beat the Flyers 3-1. Hextall was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy to the disdain and boos of the Northlands Coliseum. Hextall was (and remains) the fourth player to win the trophy in a losing cause. Even as a teenager following these playoffs as they happened, I thought this was an injustice. Upon further inspection, I believe he only won because he was a rookie, and was the "sexy" pick as opposed to the proper pick. When looking at his numbers, it's hard to figure why he won. Hextall finished with 15 wins, 11 losses and a GAA of 2.77. Oilers, Grant Fuhr went 14 and 5 with an average of 2.46. I realize that stats cannot tell the whole story, but even if we dig further the award doesn't seem justified. His .908 Save Pct was the same as Fuhr's and tied for third behind Ken Wregget and Kelly Hrudey. Also,...
Read more

WHA Ottawa Civics, The Two Week Franchise

Image
Tom Earl, Daryl Maggs, Mark Lomenda, Gary MacGregor, Garry Swain "Please let the fans make up their own minds," Henry Feller told a press gathering. "Let them decide if they want pro hockey here. We have to average 7,000 or 8,000 in the remaining 19 home games for a break-even point." Feller was a director of the Founders Club who had interest in buying the WHA's Denver Spurs club. Ivan Mullinex, owner of the Spurs had brought his team to Ottawa in an attempt to drum up interest and save his investment. The date was January 2, 1976 and Mullinex was in debt to a Denver bank to the tune of $1 million dollars. This same day, the newly christened Civics lost their first game under the new moniker by a score of 2-1 at Cincinnati. Star of the team, Ralph Backstrom said after the game, "Our first official notice of the move hit us when we entered the Cincinnati rink and the names on the big scoreboard read: Stingers and Civics. Until that moment we were un...
Read more

Team Canada 1972, What Might have Been

Image
Guy Lafleur, if he had played in the 72 Summit Series "No way. Can you imagine what our fans would say if we allowed Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito to play for Canada in that series and either...suffered an injury that might prevent them from playing with us for a year or more?" This was the concern of Weston Adams Jr, president of the Boston Bruins as quoted on April 20, 1972. After being speculated and discussed since February 1972 at the Olympics in Sapporo Japan, the series was set to go. Early on however, controversy stirred as to who exactly would be representing Canada. Bruins GM, Milt Schmidt agreed with his boss saying, "My only interest would be to see the Russians play the Bruins for the world championship...or whatever team wins the Stanley Cup." In the Vancouver Sun a few days later, the legendary Jim Coleman responds to the American naysayers suggesting that Team Canada should be made up strictly of players from Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal ...
Read more