Nitzy's Hockey Den

On October 19, two-time Stanley Cup winner Fleming MacKell passed away at the age of 86. MacKell played thirteen seasons in the NHL and was named a First Team All-Star after the 1952/53 season in which he scored 27 goals. With 369 points in 665 games and another 63 in 80 playoff games, MacKell was an under-rated NHL star of the 1950's.  The photo above was graciously given by MacKell to my Mother only a few years ago. My recently retired Mom was then a teller at the bank that he did his business with in Ajax, Ont. She must have struck a chord with Mr. MacKell as he would make a point of visiting only her counter every time he came in. She knew him as a friendly old gentleman, and not as an old hockey player. Once she discovered he was an ex-NHLer she of course told him about her hockey obsessed son.  When she shared with me that she had an old NHL veteran as a bank client and asked me if I had ever heard of Fleming MacKell, I predictably replied yes. I shared with her...

Sidney Crosby has finally scored! In his sixth game of the 2015/16 season Crosby finally made his way onto the scoresheet with a goal and two assists. The player with the fifth highest career points per game in NHL history had gone the first five games of this season without a point. Maybe it was his off-season job as a Tim Horton's drive-thru cashier that dulled his skills, but this year has been the slowest start in Sid's career. His previous worst start to a season was 2010/11 when he gathered only 3 points in his first 5 games played. Now, it may not be entirely fair to compare Crosby to the top two players in career points per game; Gretzky and Lemieux...but it sure is fun. As one may expect, neither The Great One or Le Magnifique ever started an NHL season pointless in five games. Gretzky's worst five game start was 1996/97 when he collected a pedestrian four points in his first five games. In fact, Wayne Gretzky never ONCE went five games in a row without gett...

Cliff Simpson During the Second War, the Senior Ontario Hockey Association included several full teams of players enlisted in the Canadian Military and stationed in and around the Toronto area. One of the squads was the Toronto Army Daggers who's photos I found on the Toronto City Archives website. The Daggers finished third in 1942/43 with a record of 4-7-1 but still qualified for the OHA Senior playoffs. They played the Niagara Falls Cataracts winning in two straight games by scores of 4-1 and 9-2. The Daggers were then dumped in the Semi-finals by the RCAF Flyers by scores of 7-6 and 11-1. Cliff Simpson (above) would lead the Daggers in playoff scoring with 6 goals and 9 points in the 4 games. Simpson, 19 years old at the time would go on to play bits of two seasons with the Detroit Red Wings and in 1947/48 scored 110 points in 68 games for the AHL's Indianapolis Capitals. Buck Davies (below) had 4 points in 10 games for the Daggers this season and went on to p...

The latest addition to my Den collection is one of my new favourites. The Maple Leaf Hockey Talks set of 10 records released in 1967. There are ten albums in all that were issued in Canada at Esso gas stations with a fill-up of your gas tank. Each is approximately twelve minutes long and dedicated to an individual Maple Leaf. Interviews with the player are done discussing their background and game instruction. They feature the voices of Foster Hewitt, Ward Cornell and Jack Dennett.   The thin vinyl (read flimsy) records each have their own sleeve and the ten sleeves come in a cardboard "carrying case" pictured above. I found a clip online of the  George Armstrong  record. Seeing as I don't own a record turntable, this is for now the only way that I'll hear what's on these beauties.

Above is a fantastic photo from the City of Toronto Archives showing the Toronto RCAF Flyers celebrating a victory. They were a war-time team of mostly professional players who were enlisted in the Canadian military during World War II. The Flyers played in the Ontario Hockey Association Senior circuit for two seasons. The problem with the photo is that none of the players are identified. Thanks to the Society for International Hockey Research database, I have attempted to put names to as many of these men as possible. Using simple visual recognition of the database photos side-by-side with the above photo, I have managed to name the following fairly confidently.  First Row, Left to Right: Norm McAtee, Johnny McCreedy, Lloyd Gronsdahl, Duke Scodellaro (Goalie), Murray Henderson, Unknown, Joe Primeau Norm McAtee is certainly the first player on the bottom left, he won back-to-back Memorial Cups with the Oshawa Generals scoring the winning goal in 1939. He would p...

"No More Hockey", Says The Turk. 'Six-Teeth' Goal Did It ; this was the headline of The Maple Leaf newspaper of the Canadian Armed Forces in Britain on January 8, 1946. The article continued, "the stocky happy-go-lucky Broda appeared serious in his assessment that his bulky frame will never again be a target for flying pucks. Broda was practising at Amsterdam with a CFN all-star team when a puck fired from three or four feet out caught him flush in the mouth and dislodged six teeth. "Can ya imagine," gesticulated the portly Turk, flashing at the same time the replaced "biters" furnished by a considerate army dentist, "getting it from some joker after catching the best from the best of 'em." Broda had been a member of the Canadian Armed Forces for almost two and a half years after playing seven full seasons with Toronto. If Broda was to be trusted, his career almost came to an end before he even returned to NHL play. At this...

Mackell, Kennedy, Stewart, Lindsay, Chadwick The photo above is a beautifully re-coloured photo originally found in the Toronto Archives. It has been painstakingly re-coloured by Mark Truelove of   www.canadiancolour.ca  . This is only one of the many terrific works he has on his website, many of them sports related. The only problem with using city archive sites is usually, there are no names attached to the images describing the photo. This is where the fun begins. Firstly, the one thing this photo does have is an exact date. April 16, 1949, the day the Maple Leafs became the first team ever to win the Cup in three straight years. Toronto had finished the 1948/49 season under .500 with 57 points in 60 games, losing  five of their last six regular season games. They got hot at the right time though. In winning the Cup, they won eight of nine games including a four game sweep of the first place Red Wings in the final.  The problem with this photo is that...