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Page 21, April 4, 1979 - North Shore News

Life and deat

Before the opening game, a Seattle paper billed

cs

by Jim Kearney

it as a life or death series. It was. One player died. For the first --, and so far, only time since it was

put up for competition in 1892, the Stanley Cup

did not have'a winner. The 1919 series was called

off, after the fifth -epidemic.

This spring is the 60th anniversary of the only ever uncompleted final. Indeed, it was abandoned exactly 60

~- years ago last Sunday, April 1, with Seattle Metropolitans and Montreal Canadiens all even at two wins apiece and a tie. And half the players of both teams in the hospital.

Four days later one of them, Montreal defenceman Joe Hall, was to die.

The winter of 1918-19 was “the time of the world-wide Spanish influenza epidemic. ‘Around the world the death toll was estimated at anywhere from 20 million to 50 million. In Canada, it killed upwards of 30,000 people, nearly 1,000 of them in Vancouver.

Major league hockey, started up in the Pacific

game, on‘account of a ‘flu

Northwest seven years previously by Lester and Frank -Patrick and their father, Joe, was staggering along. The Pacific Coast League was down to three teams — Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle — but had many fine players, almost all of them acquired from raids on eastern-based National Hockey League and its predecessor, the National Hockey Association.

Surprisingly, the NHA agreed to an annual ecast- west playoff, starting in the

spring of 1914. It continued

until 1926, when the PCL teams sold all their players to brand new NHL franchises in. Chicago, Detroit and New York.

Seattle set what remains as the record for instant

series

success by an ¢ on team in hockey. The

.. Metropolitans joined the

league in 1915 and in the spring of 1917 went to the Stanley Cup final and there beat the mighty Canadiens.

FIRST EVER

In becoming the first American city ever to hold the cup they made a bit of hockey history. But it was nothing compared with the history they and the Canadiens were to write when they’ met again two years later.

They opened their un- finished series on March 19 in front of one of the most eerie backdrops imaginable. Everyone in the packed arena was wearing a gauze mask in an effort to ward off

‘flu. germs. The Seattle

police had been instructed to arrest anyone not wearing a mask and the city health

‘department was

warning people not to attend the games.

But attend they did, and, when the series was called, seven players were in the

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‘teams carried only eight or

hospital. In-an era when

nine men and players went the entire 60 minutes, - it, became impossible to, continue.

Yet neither team wanted to call it off. Seattle manager and coach, Pete Muldoon, announced:

“We might have to use the stick boy and ticket- taker— but we'll ice a team. That’s

how much the Stanley Cup |

means to us.”

It meant a good deal less to the city health depart- ment, which persuaded the hockey officials to calt the whole thing off.

Led by ‘Edouard (Newsy) Lalond, Canadiens had come west with one of their great early. day teams. Georges Vezina was in goal. Hall and Bert Corbeau played defence. Louis Berlinquette and Didier Pitre flanked centreman Lalonde. Jack McDonald, Odie Cleghorn and Billy Couture were the subs.

Harry (Happy) Holmes played goal for the Mets. Roy Rickey and Bobby Rowe were on defence. Jack Walker centred wingers

“Frank Foyston and Cully

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Wilson. Ran McDonald and Muzz Murray were subs. Seattle’s leading scorer, Bernie Morris, didn’t play. He was hit by the ‘flu before the series started.

In the first three games there wree few portents of disaster. Among the players, just a few sniffles and coughs. With Seattle leading the series, two games to one, the fourth game was a scoreless tie — the longest scoreless game in the record book. —

After 100 minutes of extra play, the game was called. Several of the players could no longer stand, let alone skate. Two had'to be carried off the ice. Holmes lost. 12 pounds and developed a high fever, as did Hall.

But both played the next

game. It, too, went into overtime, with Montreal netting the winner 16

minutes later to tie the series. Just before the goal was scored, Seattle’s Wilson was hanging, totally helpless, over the boards.

As he was carried to the ing room, Muldoon looked at his bench. No one

was there. The replacements ©

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were sick and in the dressing room, too. So the Mets played a man short and the first time Canadiens got the hick, they went down the ice and scored. -

That night Wilson, Cleghorn, Hall, Murray, Rickey, McDonald and Muldoon himself went to the hospital. Even with half the players on each team in bed, the rest of the guys wanted to play. But the health department talked them out of it. °

The series was declared a tie and the cup was not awarded. That was on April 1, 1919. On April 5, Hall

died in the hospital, his

mother at his bedside. A few days later PCL president Frank Patrick of Vancouver was to Say: |

-“There never has been, and never will be, another such dramatic. and tragic series.”

But less than.a year later it was almost totally forgotten in the publicity that poured out of the other big sports shock of 1919 — the throwing of ai world series _ still remembered as the Black

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