Welcome everyone and thanks for joining us on
this deep dive. Yeah, really glad to be here.
Today we're doing something really fun. We are
putting on our time traveling hats and transporting
you back exactly a century. A full hundred years.
Right, to an era that is completely foundational
to modern sports. We're looking at the history
of the 1923 -24 NHL season. Which is just a wild
time in hockey history. Absolutely wild. Train
wrecks, people falling down wells, a three -league
race for the Stanley Cup. So our mission today
is simple. We're going to extract the most entertaining
and important nuggets from this specific season.
Basically giving you the shortcut. Exactly. A
shortcut to understanding the rough and tumble
early days of professional ice hockey. Completely
skipping the dry textbook reading. Which is good
because the textbooks can get a little dense.
Very dense. Now, you might think you know the
NHL, right? But to understand this season, you
really have to wipe your mind of the sprawling
32 -team corporate behemoth playing 82 games
a year that we see today. Oh, yeah. It looked
nothing like that. In the winter of 1923 and
1924, the National Hockey League consisted of
exactly four teams. Just four. Four teams playing
a 24 game regular season. You had the Ottawa
Senators, the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto
St. Patrick's and the Hamilton Tigers. It was
an incredibly intimate league. I bet. And, you
know, that naturally breeds some fierce, bruising
rivalries when you're playing the same guys over
and over. Things get heated. Exactly. But when
you look at the source material we're pulling
from today, it paints a picture of a sport that
was in the middle of a massive identity shift.
How so? Well, the 1923 -24 season is really where
we start seeing the scaffolding of the modern
professional league being erected. Okay, give
me an example. For instance, at a league meeting
in February of 1924, they officially introduced
a brand new individual award. The Hart Trophy.
Oh, wow. The MVP award. Right, which is still
given today to the player judged most valuable
to his team. So who ended up taking that inaugural
award home? That went to Frank Niebuhr of the
Ottawa Senators. A trivia night must know right
there. Definitely. But beyond just, you know,
handing out new hardware, that exact same meeting
saw the NHL formally discussing plans for expansion
into the United States. Really? That early on.
Yeah. The Canadian markets were either fully
saturated or just too small to sustain massive
growth. So you had this localized four -team
Canadian league looking over the border and dreaming
big. Laying the groundwork for the multinational
industry it is today. Precisely. In fact, the
Boston Bruins would enter the league the very
next year. So this season was truly the precipice
of the modern NHL. Okay, so we're looking at
a tiny league on the verge of massive expansion.
But looking at the action on the ice, who were
the standout players making history in that tight
24 -game environment? Well, the source material
highlights a few rookies making their mark. You
really have to start with a newcomer for the
Montreal Canadiens, who would go on to become
the NHL's very first true box office draw. Oh,
I know who this is. I'm talking about Harry Morenz.
The Stratford Street. That's the one. His debut
season was 1923 -24. He scored his very first
career goal on December 27, 1923. And the setting
for this was pretty special, right? It was. It
was the inaugural NHL game played at the brand
new Ottawa Auditorium. The Senators had just
moved there from their old rink. Which was just
called the Arena, right? Yeah, simply the Arena.
Very creative. So in this shiny new building,
Moran scores the first of what would ultimately
be a 270 goal career. OK, put that 270 goal number
into perspective for me, because modern superstars
routinely score over 500 or 600 goals in their
careers. So 270 might not sound huge to a casual
fan today. You really have to factor in the conditions
of the 1920s. Right. The equipment was just heavy,
waterlogged wool and leather. Ugh. Playing in
wet wool sounds miserable. It was. And the sticks
were flat, heavy slabs of wood with absolutely
no curve to the blade. So precision shooting
was out the window. Incredibly difficult. Plus,
the seasons were short, as we mentioned, and
the ice conditions in natural rinks were often
terrible. In that context, 270 goals is a monumental
achievement. That makes total sense. Were there
any veterans giving him a run for his money that
season? Oh, absolutely. Looking at the scoring
leaders, Sy Denany of the Ottawa Senators was
practically unstoppable. What were his numbers?
In a 24 -game season, Denany played 21 games
and scored 22 goals. Wow. He averaged more than
a goal a game, finishing with 24 points to lead
the entire league. More than a goal a game is
impressive in literally any era of hockey. Completely.
but the source material also puts a massive spotlight
on the goaltenders. I saw the name Georges Vizina
in the notes. How dominant were the goalies under
these 1920s conditions? They were the undisputed
anchors of their teams. For Montreal, Georges
Bozina played all 24 games, logged over 1 ,400
minutes, recorded three shutouts, and had a goals
against average of 1 .97. Under two goals a game.
That's incredible. And pushing him every single
night was Ottawa's goaltender, Clint Benedict,
who finished right behind him with a 1 .99 goals
against average. So it was just a dead heat.
The margin between the two best teams in the
league was razor thin, largely due to those two
men. And you have to remember how restrictive
the goal... goaltending rules were back then.
Restrictive hats. Well, it was only a few years
prior that the league even allowed goaltenders
to drop to the ice to make a save without taking
a penalty. Wait, they used to get a penalty for
falling down? Yes. The stand -up style of goaltending
was still very much the norm in 1924. It required
incredible reflex saves rather than just, you
know, blocking the bottom of the net with massive
pads like they do today. That sounds physically
exhausting. Very. And speaking of the physical
toll, the 1920s NHL... had a reputation for being
notoriously rough. But the notes mention the
league was actually trying to clean up its image
this season. Okay, let's unpack this. What did
that discipline system look like? It was very
much a work in progress. The previous season,
Montreal actually had to suspend their own players
for violence. Which is saying something. Right.
Which made the NHL realize they needed a centralized
discipline system. So heading into the 1923 -24
season, they redefined match fouls. And those
are penalties resulting in immediate ejection
and a hefty fine. They also added a presidential
review process for possible further punishment.
The executives wanted to project a refined professional
entertainment product. Did the players actually
buy into that or is it just lip service from
the executives? The players were still playing
a gritty, localized brand of hockey. And the
clash between those two mentalities is perfectly
illustrated by a situation involving Montreal's
Sprague Claycorn. Oh, boy. What did he do? Mid
-season, the NHL held a special meeting to consider
suspending Cleghorn based on claims from the
Ottawa Senators. Ottawa alleged that Cleghorn
was deliberately trying to injure opponents,
specifically accusing him of spearing their star,
Sydenny. For those who might not know the vintage
terminology, what exactly is spearing? Spearing
is when a player uses the blade of their stick
in a stabbing motion towards an opponent. Yikes.
That is incredibly dangerous. It really is. So
the league executives review the charges against
Cleghorn, and they ultimately reject them. They
let him off. They let him off. Cleghorn is cleared
to keep playing. So the league holds a special
meeting to clear him of a violent stabbing act.
How did he respond to getting let off the hook?
Well, he immediately went out in a game against
Ottawa. Charged a player named Lionel Hitchman
directly into the boards. A penalty known as
boarding, where you violently hit a defenseless
player into the wall and earned himself a one
-game suspension. You literally cannot script
that. It's unbelievable. They clear him for a
stabbing motion, and he immediately gets suspended
for boarding someone. It really highlights how
difficult it was to tame the sport back then.
It was the Wild West. Now, moving away from the
heavy hitters, I want to talk about the bottom
of the standings. In a four -team league, someone
has to lose. How did the Hamilton Tigers fare
this year? You really have to feel for the fans
in Hamilton during this era. It was rough. Parody
was exceptionally difficult to achieve. The talent
pool was highly concentrated. And once a team
like Ottawa or Montreal established a winning
culture, it was incredibly hard to break that
duopoly. But Hamilton was trying, right? They
were trying to compete. They went out and acquired
some real talent. adding Billy Birch and bringing
in the Green brothers, Shorty and Redvers. Did
those additions move the needle for them at all?
They had a few flashes of brilliance. On December
28th, Hamilton traveled to Ottawa and took the
game into overtime. Okay, dramatic. Just over
12 minutes into the extra period, Shorty Green
scored the game winner, marking Hamilton's first
ever road victory over the Ottawa Senators. That
must have felt like a massive turning point for
the franchise. It felt like one, but the magic
simply didn't last. Despite the new additions
and that thrilling overtime win, the Tigers ended
up finishing the 24 -game season with a record
of nine wins and 15 losses. Ouch. Yeah. That
put them dead last in the standings for the fifth
season in a row. A rebuilding phase that seems
to last forever is a timeless sports tradition,
I guess. Some things never change. Speaking of
timeless traditions, winter weather in Canada
is completely unforgiving. There's a note in
the source material about a train delay near
Hawkesbury, Ontario, involving the Ottawa Senators.
What is the context there? It is arguably the
most bizarre story of the entire era. I love
it already. Nearing the end of the regular season,
the Ottawa Senators were scheduled to travel
by train to Montreal to play the Canadiens. Near
Hawkesbury, the train got caught in a massive
snowstorm. Okay, so they're stuck. The tracks
were totally blocked and the team was snowbound,
trapped on the train all night long. Being stuck
on a freezing train right before a professional
hockey game sounds miserable. How did the players
handle it? Well, they started getting hungry.
And this is where it turns into a slapstick comedy.
Oh, no. Ottawa's top scorer, Cy Denany, decided
to step off the train into the pitch black snowstorm
to go scrounging for food. In a blizzard. In
a blizzard. And as he was wandering around in
the snowdrifts, he fell down a hidden well. Wait,
what? He literally fell down a well. The leading
goal scorer in the National Hockey League vanished
down a well in the middle of a blizzard. Did
he survive the fall intact? Miraculously, the
historical record notes he was completely uninjured.
Thank goodness. But you can imagine the sheer
panic of having to fish your star forward out
of a subterranean hole in the ground. I can't
even picture it. Because of the entire ordeal,
the game had to be postponed. They finally got
the train moving, arrived in Montreal, and had
to play the game the very next night. How did
the exhausted Ottawa Senators perform after spending
the night stranded in a snowdrift? Montreal's
goalie, Georges Vizina, showed absolute zero
mercy and shut them out 3 -0. Of course he did.
It's a story that sharply contrasts with the
meticulously scheduled travel of modern athletes.
Today, you have chartered flights, personal chefs,
and sleep scientists. Right. In 1924, you had
the top scorer foraging for food in a blizzard.
falling into a well, and then having to lace
up his skates to face a Hall of Fame goaltender.
It is a stunning visual. Just incredible. Now,
as we move past the regular season, I want to
dive into the playoffs. Because here's where
it gets really interesting. The playoff structure
in 1924 was radically different. Montreal ends
up beating Ottawa to win the NHL championship.
Does that mean they just get handed the Stanley
Cup? Not at all. Winning the NHL meant you won
the O 'Brien Cup. which was the league's internal
championship trophy. The Stanley Cup was a challenge
cup for the best team in North America. In the
1923 -24 season, the NHL did not have a monopoly
on it. They had to fight two entirely different
professional leagues for the ultimate prize.
Wow. Who are the other leagues challenging for
the Cup? You had the Pacific Coast Hockey Association,
or PCHA, which was represented by the Vancouver
Maroons. And you had the Western Canada Hockey
League, the WCHL, represented by the Calgary
Tigers. How does a three -league playoff even
function? It led to a fascinating power struggle
in the executive boardrooms. Montreal's owner,
Leo Danderand, looked at the Trav's statistics
and the physical toll of playing two different
teams. Yeah. He made a proposal. He wanted Vancouver
and Calgary to face off against each other first
so that Montreal would only have to play the
winner for the Stanley Cup. That seems like a
very convenient proposal for Montreal. Did the
Western Leagues agree to that? The president
of the PCHA, Frank Patrick, flat out refused.
Good for him. You have to look at the economics
of the three -league war. The Western leagues
were fighting for financial survival against
the NHL's growing power in the East. Patrick
wanted to guarantee his team a showcase series
against the NHL champion to maximize gate receipts
and prestige. He wasn't about to give Montreal
a free pass. Exactly. As a result, Dan Duran's
request was denied and the Canadians were forced
to run a gauntlet. They had to face both Western
champions in succession. So first up is the Vancouver
Maroons. The notes say Montreal swept them 2
-0 in a best -of -three series. But there's a
really fascinating detail here about the rules
they played under. It says Game 1 was played
under Eastern rules and Game 2 was played under
Western rules. What does that actually mean for
the players on the ice? It meant completely rewiring
their muscle memory overnight. Because these
leagues operated entirely independently, they
had fundamentally different rulebooks. Like what?
Under Eastern rules, forward passing was completely
illegal. Wait, illegal? Like you couldn't pass
the puck forward at all? Not at all. You had
to carry the puck on your stick or pass it backwards,
similar to rugby. It made the game heavily focused
on individual stick handling rushes. That changes
the entire sport. And how did Western rules differ
from that? The Western Leagues allowed forward
passing in the neutral zone. It completely changed
the speed and geometry of the sport, allowing
for stretch passes and highly coordinated team
positioning. That's a huge advantage for the
West. It was. Historically, the Western Leagues
had also used seven players on the ice, including
a position called the rover, though by 1924,
they were mostly adapting to six players to compete
with the NHL. But the forward passing role was
a massive tactical shift. How do you even prepare
for a championship game where the fundamental
mechanics of moving the puck change depending
on the day of the week? It required incredible
adaptability. Players had to suppress their instincts.
A Montreal player conditioned to rush the puck
end -to -end suddenly had to watch for passing
lanes in the neutral zone only to revert back
to individual rushes two days later. It sounds
like a nightmare. But Montreal manages to survive
that rule -switching ordeal against Vancouver.
So their reward is that they immediately have
to play the Calgary Tigers of the WCHL in the
Stanley Cup Finals. Yeah. How did that series
play out? Once again, Montreal proved too dominant.
They swept Calgary 2 -0. Another sweep. Yeah.
And this series is where Howie Morenz truly cemented
his superstar status. In Game 1, which Montreal
won in a massive 6 -1 blowout, Morenz scored
a hat trick. Did Calgary mount any sort of pushback
in Game 2? They did, both physically and environmentally.
The game was originally supposed to be played
in Montreal at the Mount Royal Arena. Okay, home
ice advantage. Usually, yes. However, spring
was arriving and the natural ice in the arena
was turning into slush. Oh, wow. They couldn't
play on it, so they had to pack up the Stanley
Cup final and move the game down the road to
the newly built Ottawa Auditorium just to find
suitable ice. Moving a championship game to a
rival city because the ice is melting is unimaginable
today. How did Morens and the Canadians handle
the disruption? They didn't miss a beat. They
won that second game 3 -0. Morens scored another
goal in that game, and he did it while dealing
with immense physical punishment. Calgary's Cully
Wilson heavily body -checked him during the series,
resulting in a chipped collarbone for Morens.
And he kept playing? He kept playing. Yet he
still finished the playoffs as the leading scorer,
with seven goals and three assists in just six
games. What a warrior. Truly. By winning that
final game on March 25th, the Canadians earned
their second Stanley Cup championship and notably
their first since 1916, back before the NHL even
existed. So what does this all mean for you listening
to this today? Why do we care about a 24 -game
season from a century ago? It's a great question.
Because knowing about the 1923 -24 season gives
you a profound appreciation for the roots of
the game. It shows you the exact moment the sport
began to transform. It was a chaotic, multi -league
turf war where teams moved arenas because of
slushy ice, players got suspended for revenge
hits, and the league's top scorer fell down a
well looking for a snack. It really paints a
picture. It does. But it was also the birth of
the Hart Trophy. It was the debut of superstars
like Howie Morens, and it was the moment the
NHL started looking at expanding into the United
States. It's a stark reminder that the streamlined,
highly polished sports industry we consume today
started out incredibly rough around the edges,
built by sheer willpower, grit, and a few lucky
bounces on natural ice. It's a phenomenal foundation
to build on, and it leaves us with an alternate
reality to mull over. Oh, I like alternate realities.
The source material notes that this 1923 -24
season was actually the very last time three
leagues competed for the Stanley Cup. Really?
The very last time? Yeah, the financial strain
was just too much. Immediately after this season,
Frank Patrick's PCHA folded, and two of its teams
joined the WCHL. But what if the West Coast had
managed to sustain its own rival major league?
That's a wild thought. Right. If the NHL hadn't
eventually monopolized the Stanley Cup and absorbed
the competition, how different would the geography,
the rules, and the entire culture of modern North
American hockey be today? We might be looking
at a completely fractured, regionalized sport
with different rule books depending on which
side of the Rockies you play on. An alternate
reality with an East Coast Cup and a West Coast
Cup playing by entirely different rules is definitely
something to think about the next time you tune
in to a game. Thank you so much for joining us
on this deep dive into the wild world of 1920s
hockey. We hope you enjoyed the journey as much
as we did. Keep asking questions, keep looking
into the history behind the headlines, and above
all, keep staying curious. We'll catch you next
time.