As yet another team tries to end Canada’s 26-game losing streak (the combined number of consecutive Stanley Cup Final games lost by Canadian NHL teams since the last Canadian championship in 1993) in the Stanley Cup, this year’s prime candidate is the Montreal Canadiens, who used to be everybody’s favourite every spring.
That makes it appropriate to note that the man who saved Canada’s greatest franchise—and hockey’s greatest team (24 Stanley Cups)—was ironically a gift from the Toronto Maple Leafs, who haven’t won much of anything for six decades.
Dick Irvin.
Not the Dick Irvin known as one of hockey’s greatest broadcasters—ever. If it were that Dick Irvin I’d say the man who “is,” because he turned 94 last month. The original, the broadcaster’s dad, was a Hall of Fame coach. How he wound up saving the Canadiens makes an interesting story.
Eighty-six years ago next Monday, Toronto lost Game 6—and the Stanley Cup — to the New York Rangers at Maple Leaf Gardens. After the game, Irvin walked across the street and caught the night train to Montreal, because Leafs owner Major Conn Smythe had asked him to work there.
Irvin the son, maybe the only one old enough to know, remembers hearing of Smythe’s request: “I want you to go to Montreal and take over the Canadiens. We can’t lose Montreal.”
Lose Montreal?
The crown jewel of hockey for sale? A member of the Original Six, or if you go back to the beginning, the Original Four (1917-18) or before that when teams played two periods and had seven-player rosters. In the first 11 seasons since joining the National Hockey League, they won one Stanley Cup. In the next 11, two. It was a terrible team. Enduring the Depression, and nearing the end of 1939-40, the Canadiens ownership had had enough. The team won five of its last 30 games, the denouement of its worst season in the NHL
With Irvin behind the bench, the Canadiens finished sixth (seven teams), and lost in the first round of playoffs. His second season, an identical performance story, and the third a semifinal loss after finishing fourth. The fourth year, they won the Stanley Cup with what, statistically (winning percentage .830), remains the best season the Canadiens have ever had, 82 years later and counting.
Was a dynasty born?
Along the way, Maurice Richard said he’d never have been the player he became without Coach Irvin. Toe Blake, one of four coaches with more Stanley Cups than Irvin, said he’d never have been the coach he was without Irvin. Dick Jr. says he believes his father is the only man to coach 26 consecutive NHL seasons.
Dick Jr. was only in Conn Smythe’s presence one time. It was at his father’s funeral, where Smythe had arranged to have the casket carried by six Leafs from the only Toronto team the Leafs won with Irvin, 25 years earlier. That day, he heard the distinguishable voice of Major Smythe.
“Dick! Your father saved hockey in Montreal — and don’t you forget it.”
Today, Dick Jr. modestly disagrees.
“My father didn’t save hockey in Montreal,” he says. “Conn Smythe did.”
If the Canadiens (and Canadians) realize the dreams of nationalistic hockey fans this year, they should remember this: The Leafs played a part in it, a long time ago.
