by Mark Collin Reid
When the Montreal Maroons captured the 1926 Stanley Cup, the victory sent shockwaves across the National Hockey League. The upstart team, founded only two seasons earlier in 1924, had spent its way to the top, earning many critics along the way.
In the April-May 2013 issue of Canada’s History magazine, award-winning Winnipeg writer Ryan Kessler recounts the rise and fall of the “Rockefeller Maroons.” To explore the early days of the NHL, Kessler also put together a series of online articles and podcast interviews, including:
Kessler’s story for Canada’s History won the Wells Foundation Award for sports writing — see below. The Eric and Jack Wells Foundation gives out the Wells Foundation award to honour “excellence in journalism.” Eric was a reporter with the Winnipeg Tribune after WWII. He worked the crime beat and eventually became editor-in-chief. John "Cactus Jack" Wells was a staple in Winnipeg radio and is a legend at CJOB.
Hockey’s High Rollers
Bankrolled by wealthy anglophone stockbrokers, the Montreal Maroons were destined to crash.
by Ryan Kessler
On April 7, 1926, privileged
members of Montreal’s
English-speaking community
wiped the sleep out
of their eyes and tried to
shake off some nasty headaches.
Feeling groggy but
triumphant, they proudly
read the headline of that day’s Montreal
Gazette: “Maroons Captured Stanley Cup
from Victoria Cougars.”
The night before, hordes of fans had
stormed the Maroons’ dressing room
to congratulate team members on their
win, creating a scene so chaotic that an entire police squad
was called in to keep order.
The reason for all the excitement was that the Montreal
Maroons had done the seemingly impossible. Launched as
a National Hockey League team in 1924, the new club went
from second-worst to best in the league in one year. How
could that happen? The answer was money — and lots of it.
At the time, Montreal had two professional teams, representing
the city’s cultural divide. French Canadians, who
typically didn’t wield much economic power, cheered on the
Montreal Canadiens, while Montreal’s well-heeled anglophones
backed the Maroons. While the former seemed
never to have a problem keeping a team, the latter found it
a struggle.
An earlier anglophone-backed club, the Montreal Wanderers,
had formed in 1903 and played in several leagues
before joining the NHL in 1917. The Wanderers, owned by
members of Montreal’s anglophone business community,
existed for only part of the NHL’s inaugural season before
being disbanded following a messy dispute between team
ownership and the league. Anglophone Montrealers were
left without their own professional team.
“There was a kind of a void,” William Brown, author of
The Montreal Maroons: The Forgotten Stanley Cup Champions,
said in an interview.
Wanderers founder James Strachan stepped in to fill the
void by creating the Montreal Professional Hockey Club
— which quickly came to be called “the Maroons” in reference
to the distinctive colour of the team’s jersey. Backed
by anglophone movers and shakers in Canada’s thriving
1920s stock exchange, the team was soon approved by the
NHL. Next came a new arena. After only 159 days of construction,
the Montreal Forum towered above Saint Catherine
Street West.
On the surface, this seemed like bad news for Canadiens
coach and owner Léo Dandurand. The Habs were
suddenly competing in their own market with a brand new
team playing at a world-class facility. The Canadiens were
stuck with the Mount Royal Arena, a natural ice complex
where rink flooding was done without machines. But,
according to Brown, the Canadiens’ coach and owner was
actually quite pleased.
“He publicly talked about how the Maroons would have
to compensate him for encroaching on his market, but he
was quite happy behind the scenes because he knew that
one day he’d be able to break his lease with that rickety
natural ice arena and move into the Forum,” said Brown.
Dandurand’s wish was fulfilled when the Canadiens started
playing at the new arena in 1926.
The Maroons’ owners stocked the lineup with future
Hall of Famers such as Harry “Punch” Broadbent, Reg
Noble, and goalie Clint Benedict. They were paid well, earning the Maroons a new nickname, “the
stockbrokers of the NHL.”
“The Maroons had this sort of attitude,”
said Brown. “They had lots of money, and
the players were very well paid. The owners
and their backers waved cash under
their noses. There were bonuses if you
scored a lot of goals. There were bonuses
if you won the Stanley Cup.”
Even fans chipped in with bonuses. In
one case, a fan gave a star forward a thousand
dollars for scoring a game-winning
goal.
Yet, initially, all this wealth did not ensure
victory. The Maroons finished the 1924–25
season poorly, with nine wins, nineteen
losses, and two ties. In their matchups with
the Canadiens, the Maroons were trounced
on almost every occasion. The Habs shut
them out in three games, tied one, and
ended the regular season with a 3–1 triumph
over the “Rockefeller” Maroons.
Tension was always in the air when the two teams met.
“There was a bit of a class thing because the Maroons
attracted more well-heeled fans, which were largely Englishspeaking.”
Brown said. “But even members of the Frenchspeaking
economic elite would sometimes cheer for the
Maroons.”
On-ice fights were routine, involving players, referees,
and even goal judges. While that was going on, violence
would often spill over into the crowd.
Fortunately for the Maroons’ owners, losing games did
not translate into losing money. The Forum sold out night
after night. With all that cash rolling in, the Maroons went
on a spending spree. For the second season, the owners
signed future team captain Dunc Munro to a $7,500 contract,
making Munro one of the highest-paid players in the
league.
Strachan, the founder, had a sharp eye for new talent.
After watching Albert “Babe” Siebert play for a Niagara Falls
amateur team, Strachan immediately signed the twenty-one-year-
old forward to a pro contract.
trachan’s next target was a powerful centreman playing in the United States, Nels
hockey hall of fame Stewart. He was about six-foot-one and two hundred pounds
when scouts found him in Cleveland. Strachan outbid the
Toronto St. Pats, who were also pursuing Stewart, to sign
the player who would come to be known as “Old Poison” —
either because of his deadly accurate shot or because of his
habit of spitting tobacco juice into the faces of his opponents.
Stewart and Siebert made up two thirds of what would
become the Maroons’ top line for the next season. Ultimately,
these off-season acquisitions won the Cup for the Maroons,
said Phil Pritchard, vice-president and curator of the Hockey
Hall of Fame.
“At that time, it was unheard of to get that many players
from different teams,” Pritchard said. “They were ahead of
their time, according to some.”
With the addition of new talent, the Montreal Maroons
vaulted into second place in the 1925–26 regular season.
Moreover, they won where it mattered — in Montreal,
against the Canadiens, in five out of six games played.
“That year the Maroons brought their level of play up to
the Canadiens. And that’s what made it such a good rivalry,”
Brown said.
The Maroons went on to defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates
and the first-place Ottawa Senators in the playoffs before facing
the Victoria Cougars of the Western Hockey League.
(At the time, the Stanley Cup was awarded to the winner of
a showdown between the two leagues, essentially an East versus-
West meeting.)
The Maroons won the Cup handily, three games to one
in a best-of-five series. The victory marked “the end of the
WHL,” according to Brown, because it demonstrated that
a team fuelled by money would outmatch the semi-professionals
of the WHL. The latter league folded soon after the
Cougars’ defeat, although the WHL name has twice since
been resurrected for different leagues.
Over the next few years, after winning the Stanley Cup,
the Maroons continued to battle hard against the Canadiens.
What the Maroons still missed was a knockout, rough-and-tumble
enforcer. That’s when Reginald “Hooley” Smith
entered the scene. He was a member of the Ottawa Senators,
but Strachan offered the Senators $22,500 in cash and
first-line forward Broadbent in a trade to bring Smith to the
team in October 1927.
Smith was cocky, crass, and very concerned about making
money. He was the perfect fit.
“He was a tough, talented player who took the hit, dug
things out of the corner, and he never went into the corner
without his elbows up,” Brown said.
Between 1928 and 1930, Stewart, Siebert, and Smith comprised
the “S line.” They were tough, fast, and cost a lot of
money. How much they made is hard to determine, considering
the under-the-table incentives the players were given.
Smith is said to have made about eight thousand dollars in his
first few Maroons seasons, plus bonuses — a small fortune for
a hockey player of that time.
The Maroons went on to have many successful seasons
and continued to generate healthy profits — until the Great
Depression hit. Ticket sales plummeted. All of a sudden the
NHL’s “stockbrokers” were pleading poverty.
“They had to economize,” Brown said. “The team just
didn’t have the money it used to. They had to start selling off
players like Stewart, Siebert, and Smith.” Even without a star-studded lineup, the Maroons won
the 1935 Stanley Cup. However, it would prove to be their
last hurrah.
Both the Canadiens and the Maroons were running out
of money. There was no longer economic room for two
teams in Montreal. Rumours ran rampant, including that
the Maroons and the Canadiens were making backroom
deals and planned eventually to join forces. Since 1935, the
Canadiens and Maroons had shared the same owner, the
Montreal Arena Company — a fact that did not help to
quash gossip.
Meanwhile, things had changed on the population front.
The French-speaking middle class had grown dramatically
since the Maroons joined the league, and by the 1937–38 season
the Canadiens had the city’s majority support.
The Maroons owners conceded. The final Montreal
Maroons game took place March 17, 1938. They faced off
against their archrivals, the Canadiens, and, in a final denoument,
lost 6–3. Efforts to transfer the team to St. Louis, and
later to Philadelphia, failed.
The team disbanded. The Canadiens claimed some of
the Maroons; others signed with the remaining NHL teams.
By the 1938–39 season, the Montreal Maroons franchise had
disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
Never again would Montreal have two separate NHL
hockey teams to serve two language communities. Meanwhile,
the Canadiens would go on to become legends of
Canadian hockey.