The Toronto Maple Leafs are back atop the Atlantic Division after a dominant 4–1 victory over the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks. The Leafs are definitely looking sharp as of late, and while it would be foolish to peg them as true Cup contenders at this early stage, they have certainly looked like a team on a mission. They also got captain Auston Matthews back in the lineup on Saturday after the centre missed nearly a month with an upper-body injury.
Speaking of Leafs Cup contention, the team has won the Stanley Cup 13 times in the franchise’s storied history. I dove into the last Cup they won 47 years ago in a recent article, but today, I will be diving into the team that won not just the first Cup in Toronto Maple Leafs history, but in NHL history. The 1917–18 Toronto Hockey Club.
The formation of the team and the NHL
The predecessor to the NHL, the National Hockey Association (NHA), was having a rough time in 1917. For one, the league had players serving overseas in World War One. Secondly, the league had just five teams at that point, which eventually went down to four after league disputes with the Toronto Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone.
Due to these issues and as a way to eliminate Livingstone from the League, the NHA suspended operations in November of 1917 and the NHL was born with four inaugural teams: the Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Montreal Wanderers and, of course, the Toronto Hockey Club which, in the absence of former owner Livingstone, had been acquired by the Toronto Arena Company. They also happened to manage the Arena Gardens, the clubs home rink. With that, the NHL era of Toronto hockey and the eventual biggest market in the sport was born.
Meet the inaugural squad
The 1917–18 Toronto team had a strong mix of young guys and veterans. One of the slightly older members was first-year captain Ken Randall. Randall was by no means the top dog on the team, but the 29-year-old winger did bring solid leadership and a half-decent 12 goals and 14 points through 21 games. Higher up on the scoring chart and lower in the age department, though, was fellow winger Reg Noble who had averaged just under a point per game in his previous two years in the NHA. During the NHL’s inaugural season, the 21-year-old took those numbers to new heights with Toronto, finishing the regular season with 29 goals and 39 points in just 24 games—good enough for the third-highest point total in the league.
Just behind Noble in the league point totals was 24-year-old Corb Denneny, who put up an impressive 20 goals and 30 points through 21 games.
On the defensive end, there was one man who stood above the rest, and that was Harry Cameron. The 27-year-old defenceman was excellent with 17 goals and 27 points in 27 games and was the league leader in goals, assists and points amongst all defencemen. Then in net, the team had 29-year-old Hap Holmes who had played his previous two seasons in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. While his numbers weren’t quite as good as his previous season with the Seattle Metropolitans, Holmes put up a solid-for-the-time 4.73 GAA—good enough for second in the league.
Toronto’s road to the Cup
At the time, the four-team NHL determined their finals matchup based on the top teams from the first and second half of the season. In the first half, Toronto played well but finished with the second-best record of 8–6–0, four points back of the first-half leaders, the Montreal Canadiens. The league also shrank to three teams during the first half of the season after the Montreal Wanderers home arena was burned down in a fire.
In the second half of the season, Toronto turned up the heat and managed to snag the top spot in the league standings with a record of 5–3–0, qualifying them for the post-season. In the final matchup, they took on the leaders from the first half of the season, the Canadiens, in a two-game aggregate series.
Toronto won the first game with a dominant 7–3 victory that saw 23-year-old winger Harry Meeking put up a hat trick in the contest. The second game did not go Toronto’s way as the Canadiens picked up a 4–3 win, but since Toronto had the higher amount of goals scored, they won the series.
Toronto then went on to play the PCHA champion Vancouver Millionaires in a best-of-five series in the Stanley Cup final, with all games being held at Toronto’s home arena. Toronto took the first game with notable performances by Noble and winger Alf Skinner, who each contributed two goals and an assist. Game 2 went to Vancouver but then Toronto took a stranglehold in Game 3 with a 6–3 victory. Vancouver evened the series in Game 4, forcing a decisive Game 5 to decide who would take home the Cup.
The final game ended up being the lowest-scoring of the series, and all the goals actually came in the third period. But, with the game tied at one apiece with 9:30 left, Denneny fired home the game-winning goal, and once time expired, the Toronto Hockey Club had won the first-ever NHL title and first-ever NHL-involved Stanley Cup.
The win turned what was supposed to be a temporary team in the league after the Livingstone controversy, into a champion that would plant the seed for the biggest franchise the NHL has seen. The team would go on to become the Toronto Arenas, named after the Toronto Arena Company, and then the Toronto St. Patricks who would win the Cup in 1922 with multiple names from the 1917–18 team on their roster including Cameron, Denneny, Randall and Noble.
While the 1917–18 Toronto Hockey Club has often been forgotten over the years, you have to give them their flowers for the legacy they started. Without them picking up the NHL’s first championship we may not have had the long lineage of Maple Leafs hockey we see before us today.
