1934 Gyro Cup

Here's something really cool. A reader recently contacted me after finding an article I wrote a few years ago about a 1934 Toronto Maple Leafs tour of Western Canada. (found here) The Leafs and Detroit Red Wings travelled by train across Canada, playing exhibition matches in Winnipeg on April 14 & 16 and in Trail B.C. on April 18. They then arrived in Vancouver to play a three-game series for something called the Gyro Cup. 
The Gyro Club was, and still is a social club throughout North America and it was the Vancouver chapter that hosted the series at Vancouver's Denman Arena. The teams would end up actually splitting the series, each winning a game and tying the third. Every participant in the series was given a Gyro Cup like the one above.
The reader (who apparently has quite an extensive collection of hockey memorabilia) acquired this Gyro Cup that was originally presented to Hall of Fame broadcaster Foster Hewitt. A detailed view shows the inscriptions on the cup. 
Using newspapers from April 1934, I managed to compile the player statistics from the entire six game tour (bottom). Even without Joe Primeau, Toronto's Kid Line was racking up the points in the free-flowing, high-scoring exhibition games. I believe the Gyro Club put on more than one of these tours to Vancouver over a few years as evidenced by the pic below from Vancouver Archives of a 1936 Leafs/Blackhawks visit to Stanley Park. However, this is the only actual Gyro Cup I have ever seen. Pretty cool.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Hextall and the stolen Conn Smythe Trophy

WHA Ottawa Civics, The Two Week Franchise

Team Canada 1972, What Might have Been