Welcome in, everyone. It is great to have you
here with us today. It really is. Thanks for
joining us. If you are sitting there right now,
whether you're prepping for a big meeting, catching
up on some history, or you're just incredibly
curious and looking for a compelling story to
sink your teeth into. You're in the perfect place.
Exactly. We are so glad you are joining us. Today's
deep dive is something really special. We are
exploring a single Wikipedia article, but our
mission today is to look far beyond the basic
statistics. Right, way beyond the numbers. We
are unpacking the 1936 to 1937 NHL season. Setting
the proper context for you is crucial before
we jump into the events of this specific year.
Because, you know, when people casually think
about 1930s hockey, it is very easy to just picture
a collection of dry statistics. Black and white
photos. Yeah, black and white photos, dusty record
books. But that completely misses the reality
of what the historical record actually reveals
about this era. This isn't just a rundown of
goals and assists. We are talking about a professional
sports league fighting for its absolute survival
under the crushing weight. of the Great Depression.
It was desperate. It really was. This single
48 game season is packed with bizarre ownership
drama, a devastating sports tragedy, eccentric
front office experiments and the birth of a major
sports tradition that fans still celebrate today.
It is a remarkable case study. Analyzing this
specific season is so fascinating because it
perfectly encapsulates the extreme fragility
of professional sports in the 1930s alongside
an incredible resilience. Right. Every single
front office decision, every significant injury,
and every puck drop carried massive existential
stakes for the people involved. Okay, let's untack
this. Right. Because to really understand those
stakes, we need to examine the financial chokehold
the Great Depression had on the league at this
point in history. It was severe. So we're starting
in the fall of 1936. The NHL had actually begun
this decade with 10 teams. But by the time we
reach this 20th season, they are down to just
eight. Two franchises had already folded. Yep.
And right out of the gate, it looked like a third
team, the New York Americans, was about to collapse
entirely. Losing a third franchise would have
been a catastrophic signal to the market. The
league executives were looking at a shrinking
geographic footprint and dwindling gate receipts.
They were panicking. Oh, absolutely. Letting
the New York Americans cease operations because
of massive debt and ownership instability simply
wasn't a viable option for the broader health
of the sport. So the NHL takes a step that seems
honestly completely unprecedented. Instead of
letting the Americans go bankrupt, the league
steps in and assumes direct control of the franchise
for the 1936 -37 season. The league itself is
running the team. Yes. The league is suddenly
running a team that is supposed to be competing
against the rest of the league. But the team's
owner, Bill Dwyer, refuses to walk away quietly.
Of course he does. He actually sues the league
to stop the takeover. And that lawsuit leads
to a highly unusual legal and corporate compromise.
How so? Well, Dwyer technically retained his
title as the owner of the franchise, but the
NHL operated the team on a day to day basis.
They managed the finances, handled the operations
and used the generated revenues to systematically
pay off Dwyer's mounting debts. Wow. It was essentially
a sports franchise placed into receivership.
It is a staggering piece of financial gymnastics.
The league. essentially acted as a collection
agency while also trying to ice a competitive
hockey team. Which is incredibly hard to balance.
And that financial pain was not isolated to New
York. The ripple effects of the Depression were
severely impacting Canada, too. Take the Montreal
Maroons, for example. Right, another struggling
franchise. They were so short on operational
cash that they were forced into selling their
star player and team captain, Hooli Smith, to
the Boston Bruins. They traded away the core
leadership of their roster simply to generate
enough capital to keep the lights on. What's
fascinating here is the psychological shift this
represents for professional sports management.
In the earlier days of the NHL, the business
model was very much a Wild West environment.
Teams popped up, teams folded, and it was every
owner for himself. But this aggressive intervention
with the New York Americans shows a profound
shift toward a collective self -preservation
mindset. They needed each other. Exactly. The
league's front office realized that losing a
third team could trigger a catastrophic domino
effect. If the Americans fall, perhaps the Maroons
fall next due to their own cash flow issues,
and suddenly you don't have enough stable organizations
to justify a professional league. The whole house
of cards comes down. Yes. They had to save d***.
wire from his own financial ruin to save the
structure of the NHL. The league was essentially
holding itself together with legal settlements
and emergency cash infusions. Yeah. But the chaos
wasn't confined to the boardrooms. Not at all.
The actual players on the ice were dealing with
some of the most brutal health challenges imaginable.
We go from institutional sickness to literal
sickness. Those New York Americans we just discussed.
The ones the league bailed out. Right. Despite
all the front office drama and the league takeover.
They actually started the season performing incredibly
well, sitting in first place. It was a remarkable,
if brief, surge of momentum. Very brief. Because
then a severe wave of influenza swept through
their locker room. In an era where teams traveled
together by train in cramped quarters across
the Northeast and Canada, communicable diseases
could devastate a roster in days. And it did.
The flu completely derailed their season, sending
the team into a massive free fall. They ultimately
finished dead last in the Canadian division.
And that influenza outbreak had a domino effect
across the league. We mentioned earlier that
the Montreal Maroons had to sell their captain,
Huey Smith, to Boston. Right, to pay the bills.
To fill that massive void, the Maroons brought
in a player named Carl Voss. The hope was that
Voss could provide some much -needed leadership
in production. But Voss also contracts the flu
and is completely sidelined. That creates a massive
roster gap for a team that was already struggling
financially. But it leads to one of the more
surprising individual performances of the season.
With Voss out, a player named Bob Gracie is forced
to step up. He really took advantage of the opportunity.
He suddenly catches fire, scoring consistently,
and almost single -handedly carries the cash
-strapped, flu -ridden Maroons to first place
in their division. They just barely get edged
out by the Canadians at the end. It demonstrates
how razor thin the margins of success were during
this era. A single outbreak of the flu or one
player stepping up to fill a gap could completely
alter the power dynamics of the entire standings.
Beyond the flu, the sheer volume of brutal career
-altering injuries this season is difficult to
comprehend. It really is. Roy Waters, a standout
player for the New York Americans, suffered a
hernia. Today, athletes undergo a routine surgical
procedure for a hernia and are back in a few
weeks. In 1936, that was a career -ending injury.
Just done. Done. The Americans tried to replace
him in goal with Alfie Moore and Lauren Shabbat,
but they simply weren't able to match his production,
which further cemented that last -place finish.
And the physical toll extended to the biggest
stars in the game. Eddie Shore, the legendary
Boston Bruins defenseman, suffered a broken vertebra,
instantly ending his season. Broken vertebra.
Unbelievable. Charlie Conacher of the Toronto
Maple Leafs repeatedly injured his wrist throughout
the year. The historical accounts indicate he
missed massive chunks of the season and was fundamentally
never the same player afterwards. Yeah, that
wrist just never healed right. We also saw players
like Silvio Mantha and Lionel Conacher forced
into permanent retirement due to a cascade of
cumulative injuries. It paints a very bleak picture
of the physical reality these athletes faced.
We often look at professional athletes today,
surrounded by entire departments of sports science,
orthopedics and rehabilitation specialists, and
forget the brutal origins of the sport. Completely
different world. Looking at this specific season
highlights the sheer physical violence of the
era. These men were engaging in high -speed collisions
with essentially zero medical safety nets. A
severe wrist injury or a complex hernia didn't
just mean a trip to the injured reserve list.
It meant your livelihood was entirely gone. That
harsh reality brings us to the most emotional
and heavy part of this deep dive. Here's where
it gets really interesting, but also deeply heartbreaking.
We need to look closely at the Montreal Canadiens
and a player named Howie Morens. A true icon
of the game. The Canadiens had hit rock bottom
the previous year. To turn things around, they
went out and bought Babe Siebert to anchor their
defense. But the move that truly revitalized
the franchise was bringing back their beloved
star, Howie Morenz, whom they repurchased from
the New York Rangers. Bringing an aging star
back is always a calculated risk. The Canadians
were essentially risking their capital on the
hope that Morenz could recapture his former glory
and energize the fan base. And initially, that
gamble pays off perfectly. The Canadians surged
from last place all the way to first in the Canadian
division. Morenz is the offensive engine of that
turnaround. He was playing great. How did his
return play out on the ice leading up to the
tragedy? By January 1937, Morenz was hitting
his absolute stride. He was playing with the
same dynamic energy that had made him a legend.
But during a game against the Chicago Blackhawks,
he was on one of his signature hurtling rushes
down the ice. He was checked heavily by Chicago's
Earl Seibert. As Morenz went down, his left skate
became caught in the dasher of the end boards,
resulting in a severely fractured leg. For anyone
visualizing that moment, what exactly is the
dasher in this context? The dasher is the ledge
or the top railing of the boards that surround
the ice rink. Getting a skate caught there while
moving at high speed puts immense unnatural torque
on the bones of the leg. The fracture was devastating.
So he is rushed to the hospital and the physical
pain is immense. But the mental toll seems to
have been just as severe. He actually suffers
a nervous breakdown in his hospital bed. The
anxiety must have been overwhelming. He is completely
consumed by the agonizing worry over whether
he will ever be able to play hockey again, knowing
what we just discussed about career -ending injuries.
But it seems like he is at least going to survive
the fracture. What changes in March? The medical
protocols of the time were tragically limited
when it came to vascular health and post -operative
care. On March 8th, doctors took routine x -rays
of his healing leg and discovered blood clots.
They scheduled an operation for the following
day to address the issue. But he never makes
it to that operation. On March 9th, Morens eats
a light supper in his hospital bed and tells
his nurse he wants to rest. As he is falling
asleep, the nurse notices his pallor suddenly
change. A blood clot had traveled and stopped
his heart. Despite desperate attempts to revive
him, Howie Morenz died right there in the hospital.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, the
impact of Morenz's death on the culture of the
sport cannot be overstated. The visceral reaction
of the hockey world was unlike anything seen
before. Historical accounts describe thousands
of fans filing past his beer, the stand on which
his casket was placed in open public mourning,
many of them in tears. It was a monumental loss.
It wasn't just the loss of a star player. It
underscored the profound mortal risks these men
faced for the public's entertainment. It completely
shattered the illusion of the invincible athlete.
It is incredibly sobering to think that a player
could be at the absolute pinnacle of their career
in January and completely gone by March, all
stemming from a routine hockey play on the ice.
Yeah, a play that happens in almost every single
game. The emotional whiplash of studying this
season is intense because alongside these profound
tragedies, you also have moments of utter eccentricity.
That brings us to a very bizarre organizational
experiment down in Chicago. It is quite a pivot
in tone, but it is incredibly revealing about
the business and marketing side of the league
during the Depression. The Chicago Blackhawks
are nearing the end of their season. They only
have five games left. Their owner, Frederick
McLaughlin, is a massive partisan of American
-born hockey players. Keeping in mind that hockey
was, and largely still is, dominated by Canadian
talent, McLaughlin decides he's going to field
an entirely American -born lineup. It was essentially
a marketing stunt fueled by nationalism. McLaughlin
wanted to manufacture a localized American identity
for his team to sell tickets. He puts together
this highly unusual lineup. He starts with his
incumbent goalie, Mike Karikas. Then he signs
Ernest Klingbeil and Paul Schaefer to play defense.
Up front, he constructs a forward line of Milt
Brink, centering Al Swomey and Bunla Prairie.
A lot of new faces all at once. It was the first
time in major senior hockey that an all -American
homestead was fielded. How did this grand experiment
actually fare against NHL competition? It was
a dismal failure competitively. The team went
1 -3 with that specific lineup. The talent pool
of American -born players simply wasn't deep
enough at that time to justify an entire lineup
capable of competing against the established
Canadian veterans of the NHL. So it flopped on
the ice. It did. However, while the experiment
failed on the ice, it reflects the deep growing
pains and the regional identity crises of a league
trying to aggressively market itself across two
entirely different nations. Speaking of making
history with specific players, there were a couple
of other notable milestones this season. Over
in New York, a goalie named Hal Winkler. makes
his NHL debut for the Rangers on November 16,
1936. A great debut story. He plays against the
Montreal Maroons and shuts them out 1 -0. He
becomes the very first goaltender in the history
of the league to throw a shutout in his NHL debut.
That is a phenomenal individual achievement,
especially given the offensive talent in the
league at the time. And on an institutional level,
we see the birth of a major tradition. The lead
president, Frank Calder, had been naming a top
rookie for a few years prior to this. But this
season, he decides to formalize the honor. He
actually goes out and purchases a physical trophy
to be awarded to the rookie of the year. Making
it official. Exactly. The Calder Trophy is officially
established, and the very first player to have
his name attached to this new physical award
is Toronto Maple Leafs center Scylla Apps. Establishing
physical trophies like the Calder is a great
indicator of a league attempting to solidify
its history and legitimize its brand. It provides
a tangible legacy. All of these threads, the
financial bailouts, the flu outbreaks, the tragic
loss of Morens, the All -American marketing experiments,
they all culminate in the playoffs. The ultimate
testing ground. The playoff structure this year
was complex. The top three teams in each division
qualified. But the league decided to innovate
the bracket, taking what was called the lower
repechage portion and changing the format. For
those unfamiliar with the terminology, a repechage
is essentially a second chance bracket or a lower
tier advancement path. It is a concept often
used in tournaments to allow teams a different
route to the finals. So in this lower repechage
bracket, the league replaced all the two game
total goals series with best of three series.
Why was moving away from total goals such a significant
shift? Total Goals aggregation is a very quirky
and unbalanced format. In a two -game Total Goals
series, if a team has one terrible period and
loses the first game 5 -0, the entire series
is effectively over. The second game becomes
a formality. Because climbing out of a five -goal
hole is almost impossible. Exactly. By shifting
to a best of three format, the league rewarded
teams for winning discrete games. It resets the
momentum and changes late game strategy, making
the postseason much more dynamic and arguably
much fairer. Navigating this newly formatted
postseason gauntlet were... The Detroit Red Wings.
They were an absolute juggernaut this year, finishing
first in the American division. A really stacked
team. They were anchored by Normie Smith in goal,
who ended up winning the Vazina Trophy for allowing
the fewest goals in the league. They featured
a rock -solid defense led by Ebi Goodfellow.
And up front, they had Marty Berry, who took
home the Lady Bing Trophy for sportsmanship and
excellence. They were a model of organizational
consistency in a deeply inconsistent and chaotic
year. They rode that consistency all the way
to the Stanley Cup finals, where they face off
against the New York Rangers. The Red Wings ultimately
defeated the Rangers three games to two in a
hard -fought series to claim the championship.
But even as Detroit took the ultimate prize,
there's incredible individual brilliance shining
through the chaos on other rosters. The individual
awards often tell a separate story from the championship
team. Consider Sweeney Schreiner of the New York
Americans. That was the team the league had to
bail out financially, the team that got decimated
by the flu and finished dead last in their division.
Despite playing on that disastrous roster, Schreiner
led the entire NHL in scoring with 46 points.
Remarkable focus from him. And over Montreal,
Babe Siebert, the player the Canadians bought
to fix their defense, ends up winning the Hart
Trophy as the league's most valuable player.
Yeah. So what does this all mean? When you synthesize
all these disparate events, Detroit's Stanley
Cup victory becomes a profound testament to the
power of stability. In a season that was entirely
defined by external chaos, financial ruin, threatening
owners, freak illnesses, wiping out entire rosters,
and the unpredictable, shattering tragedy of
Howie Morin's Detroit managed to hold the line.
They were the eye of the storm. They just kept
winning. Right. It proves that when the environment
around you is collapsing, organizational calm
and steady execution are the ultimate competitive
advantages. The eye of the storm is the perfect
way to frame their season. For you listening,
as we wrap up today's deep dive, I hope you can
clearly see why we wanted to explore this specific
historical record. We took a single 48 -game
season from 1936 to 1937, and we found the absolute
extremes of the human experience packed inside
it. We really did. You have the birth of lasting
traditions like the Calder Trophy. You have the
quirky ambition of the All -American lineup.
But you also have the devastating fatal tragedy
of a beloved legend, all unfolding while the
crushing weight of the Great Depression threatened
to tear the entire institution down. This raises
an important question, something I think is really
worth mulling over after hearing all of this.
Today, we live in a modern era where professional
sports leagues generate billions of dollars in
revenue. Every aspect of player safety, contract
law, medical rehabilitation, and franchise stability
is intensely micromanaged by armies of lawyers
and doctors. But looking back at 1936, you have
to wonder how much of that modern corporate armor
was ultimately forged by the sheer existential
desperation and the physical vulnerabilities
of the 1930s. The massive secure leagues we see
today were born directly from the brutal survival
tactics of seasons exactly like this one. The
modern safety net only exists because there used
to be absolutely no net at all. Thank you so
much for joining us and exploring this wild chapter
of history. We really appreciate you spending
your time with us today. Until next time, keep
asking questions and stay curious.