1953 Vancouver Old Timers Game Program

I picked up this fantastic old program at an antique shop in New Wesminster, BC recently. The cover pictures all-time Toronto Maple Leaf goaltending great, Turk Broda. The program is from a hockey old-timers benefit game held at the Vancouver, PNE Forum arena, a game that featured many stars of yesteryear. The game was presented by the British Columbia Benevolent Hockey Association and was meant to raise funds for ex-players in need. 

Featuring the likes of Broda, Babe Pratt, Lorne Carr, Sweeney Schriner, Jack Adams, Tiny Tompson, coached by Frank Fredrickson and Lester Patrick and officiated by Cyclone Taylor and Duke Keats, the game promised to be a star-studded affair.

The Victoria Daily Colonist of March 5, 1953 detailed the match as follows.

"Yesterday's hockey greats sparkled with some old-time brilliance in Vancouver Forum Tuesday to provide a tomorrow for a fellow player stricken with polio.

More than 6,000 fans shoe-horned into the rink at $1 each watch the third annual old-timers' benefit game."

The Forum on the Pacific National Exhibiton grounds still stands to this day. I explored it a few years ago here.

The old-timers came back from retirement to aid Gordon Petrie, who played here 10 years ago. He entered an iron lung last summer after being stricken with polio in Houston, Tex.

Petrie had played with Victoria Navy in the Vancouver Island Senior League in 1942/43. A native of Winnipeg, he would play five seasons in the USHL mainly with Dallas Texans.

The score probably doesn't matter too much, but the 'Blues' with Tiny Thompson in the net and led by the Colville brothers, won out 7-3 over the 'Whites'.

Mac and Neil each scored once for the Blue, while Lulu Lemon, Tip O'Neill, Frank Jerwa, Johnny Sheppard and Clint Smith got the others. Paul Runge, who led the American Hockey League in scoring in 1933/34, scored twice for the losers and Schriner got the other.

The Colville's were mainstays for the New York Rangers from the mid 1930's to the late 1940's, helping the Blueshirts to the 1940 Stanley Cup.

Making the difference between the star-studded lineups was Thompson, the four-time Vezina Trophy winner and now the chief scout for the Chicago Black Hawks, made some smart saves. The line of Schriner, Carr and Leroy Goldsworthy made Thompson hop at times, particularly in the third period, when he turned aside 13 shots to six handled successfully by Broda.

Thompson led the Bruins to the Stanley Cup in his rookie season 1928/29 and retired in 1940 with a career goals against average of 2.07 (5th best in NHL history).

The Turk, possibly a good deal heavier than during his "fabulous fat man" squabbles with Conn Smythe of Toronto, found the reflexes a little slow. Most surprising was the way the old-timers kept their "passing-eye" through the years. When an attack went astray, it was because the legs couldn't keep up with memory, the last man on a pass-play finding himself a stride or two behind the puck.

Turk Broda had played 31 games with the Maple Leafs as recently as two years prior to this Old-Timers game. Apparently he had not kept himself in game shape.

Amby Moran, a 58-year-old old-timer, took a regular turn on defence for the Whites with Chuck Millman. In a ceremony before the game, Mrs. Si Griffis was presented with a scroll on behalf of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, in memory of her husband who died shortly before his election to the hall this year."

Amby Moran was old enough at the time of this game to have played along the likes of Howie Morenz, Aurel Joliat and George Hainsworth in 1926/27.

Below is a photo from the magazine of the directors of the BC Benevolent Hockey Association, including Cyclone Taylor and Clint Smith.