Talk:National Hockey Association

Only Ontario?
Why does it say the teams were only in Ontario? Montreal and Quebec City are both in Quebec? Danny
 * Corrected :)

Dates
I don't know anything about the NHA, but on first read there seems to be something wrong, because the league is listed as starting in January 1910, but five or six of the teams are listed as being in the league starting in 1909. At first glance, it appears that: because it doesn't seem to make total sense currently. - Cafemusique 10:22, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * the league actually started in 1909,
 * those teams didn't start until 1910, or
 * something else has happened which should probably be explained somewhere in the entry,
 * After researching, I'm going to change the league to starting in 1909, based on http://www.oilersheritage.com/history/early_leagues_NHA.html - Cafemusique 10:27, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Canadiens history
I've gotten split info about the Canadiens and Haileybury. If you check http://www.ottawavalleyonline.com/sites/tomking_01/nhasearch.html the 1909 Canadiens and 1910 Canadiens seem alot alike. Why would it say the 1909 Canadiens went Toronto, and the 1909 Haileybury team turned into the 1910 Canadiens?


 * Because not everyone who puts up a website is a hockey historian, let alone research the available sources, and most people erroneously assume that the "Les Canadiens" of 1909 are the Montreal Canadiens of today. Charles Coleman documented the deal many years ago.  Ravenswing 05:07, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I asked this question to Liam Maguire, one of the foremost NHL trivia experts in the world. He replied to me with this info, from Michel Vigneault, a hockey historian.

Hi Lorne,

Thanks for your email. No, Haileybury were not the forerunner to the Montreal Canadiens. I’ve cut and pasted an excerpt from an email a number of years back between Michel Vigneault and myself. He’s one of the top French hockey historians I’ve ever met. This should give you some of the information you are looking for. All the best, Liam Maguire

The 1906-07 season would be the best yet for French hockey. With le National virtually defunct, le Montagnard acquired most of the best francophone players and lost only two games during the season. Their championship, and the chance to play for the Stanley Cup against the Montréal Wanderers, came into question, however, when the agenda at two of the Federal league meetings was dominated by protests to take away two Montagnard wins. With only two games remaining in the season, the team withdrew from league. For the next two seasons, no French teams played organized senior hockey, but the Laval team was finally accepted in the University League in 1908 after a few games against McGill in 1906 and 1907.

As Canadian senior hockey was becoming professional, a number of francophone players began coming back from the United States. Jack Laviolette and Dider Pitre would join the Montréal Shamrocks for the 1907-08 season and also played together in a major event the following year: an exhibition game of the best francophone players against the current Stanley Cup holders, the Montréal Wanderers. The game was scheduled at the Jubilee Rink in east end Montréal for March 10, 1909. That morning the French lineup was still not known, but that evening the roster was made up of Laviolette and Pitre, Edouard "Newsy" Lalonde, Emile Coutu, Joseph Dostaler, Robitaille and Alphonse Jette. All were well-known in Montréal except for Robitaille, who played for Pittsburgh in the International (Pro) Hockey League. To the surprise of a good many present, the francophone players emerged on the ice in the jerseys of le National.

The Wanderers won the game 9-8 but the exhibition game helped le National in its bid to return to league play in 1909-10. The sport's top league had just become the Canadian Hockey Association, but the situation in this league was anything but straightforward. At the meeting that saw le National reinstated, the Wanderers themselves were thrown out because their new owner wanted to play all his games at the Jubilee Rink (which he also owned), while the other CHA teams insisted on staying in the west end at the Westmount Arena. A team from Renfrew wanted to join the CHA this year but was also denied. Hence the Wanderers and Renfrew got together in a room next to the CHA meeting at Montreal's Windsor Hotel and formed a new league, the National Hockey Association. It is here that French Canada's truly unique hockey history begins to take the shape we still recognize today.

Renfrew was represented by the wealthy and strong-willed J. Ambrose O'Brien, whose family also owned a league in northern Ontario. O'Brien would deliver Cobalt and Haileybury as well as Renfrew to the NHA, but to bring out some crowds to the Jubilee Rink, the Wanderers proposed a new French team, to be called les Canadiens, and suggested Laviolette organize it. He would have the use of the O'Briens plentiful funds to build his new team, and as O'Brien and the Wanderers went to battle with CHA club owners over contracts, thus did the competition between le National and les Canadiens for the best French players. By December of 1909, both teams were claiming that they had signed many of the same ones. In fact, though, only one player had signed with both teams - and he had done so all in one day.

When Jack Laviolette telegraphed his good friend and erstwhile teammate Didier Pitre at his home in Sault Ste. Marie, he told him to join him in Ottawa to sign with the team he was putting together. Hearing of this, some le National administrators took a train to North Bay, Ontario, where they met Pitre first. Arriving in Ottawa later, Pitre said that he had signed already but Laviolette told him to sign his Canadiens contract anyway. Les Canadiens were to play their first game at home on January 5, 1910. Le National got an injunction against Pitre stating he was not to play or face prison. By the time the dispute went to court in February of that year, le National was no longer a team. The war between the NHA and the CHA had ended with an amalgamation on January 15, 1910.

Before the NHA-CHA coalition, there had been two professional hockey leagues with 10 teams in total - five of them in Montreal. After the merger, there was only the seven-team National Hockey Association. Three of its teams - the Wanderers, Shamrocks and Canadiens - were in Montreal. Le National was offered the Canadiens franchise if they would satisfy three conditions: play their home games at the Jubilee Rink; pay the salaries of all players on the Canadiens; and pay all debts incurred by the Canadiens. The Nationals were unwilling to take on the extra expense these conditions entailed and closed up shop, leaving the Canadiens as the only French-Canadian professional hockey team. The expanded Canadiens roster now included players from le National, but the squad had little success on the ice, winning only two of 12 games. The team might have faired better had Newsy Lalonde, the league's top scorer, not been loaned to Renfrew in an unsuccessful attempt to help that club win the championship. Because Ambrose O'Brien owned the Canadiens, Renfrew and two other NHA clubs, such personnel moves were not unheard of.

Since assuming ownership of the Canadiens, O'Brien had maintained that he wanted the club turned over to a French entrepreneur as soon as it was practical. However, in the summer of 1910, le Club Athlétique Canadien took O'Brien to court over the use of the name. In an out-of-court settlement, the club acquired the team and would own it until 1921 when the team was sold following the death of club manager George Kennedy. (Kennedy was born Georges Kendall, and while that name often appears in association with the hockey team, he went by Kennedy in English-speaking circles.)

The Montréal Canadiens won their first Stanley Cup in 1916, and while this was the initial victory for the French-Canadian team, it was not the first triumph for French-Canadian players. When the Winnipeg Victorias defeated the Montréal Shamrocks in 1901, Antoine "Tony" Gingras, born in St. Boniface, Manitoba, had become the first French Canadian to play for a Stanley Cup champion. Henri Menard had been the second when he was in goal for the Montréal Wanderers in 1906.

Can you tell me which book Coleman wrote it in? Thanks


 * Vigneault is certainly a respected fellow SIHR member and historian, but this sounds like a general article that's been excerpted. In any event, Coleman asserted that the Club Antique-Canadien (not "Athlétique Canadien") was awarded the newly-dormant Haileybury franchise in the first volume of Trail of the Stanley Cup, where you can find it if you have a copy available, though from work I can't get you a page ref.  If anyone has access to the pertinent Montreal newspapers in 1910 -- and possibly the Boston Public Library has microfilm copies -- perhaps there can be independent verification.  Is there an actual reference for that passage attributed to Vigneault?  Ravenswing 20:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

-- The library here in Calgary has the Coleman book. I'm going to check it this afternoon. What I don't get is how the 1909-1910 Canadiens roster and the 1910-1911 Canadiens rosters are so much alike, if they aren't the same franchise. I would think that the 1909-1910 Haileyburg and 1909-1910 Canadiens would have more similar rosters if that was the case.

Also http://www.washingtoncaps.com/history/EarlyLeagues2.asp Two teams hoping to join the CHA were rejected – the Ottawa Valley town of Renfrew and Montreal Wanderers. Ambrose O’Brien, representing Renfrew at the league meetings in Montreal, resented the snub and said as much. But Jimmy Gardner, who played for and spoke for the Wanderers, was livid. He approached O’Brien and suggested they form a new league to include the Wanderers, a Renfrew team and two clubs from mining towns in Northern Ontario – Haileybury and Cobalt. To add interest, they would form a team of French-speaking players from Montreal and call the club Les Canadiens. At the time, neither man had an inkling that the league they were scrambling to put together – the National Hockey Association – would someday be supplanted by the greatest of all hockey leagues. Nor could they know that in boldly forming Les Canadiens, they were spawning a team that would set more records and win more Stanley Cups than any other in hockey history... ...In 1911, Renfrew, along with Cobalt and Haileybury, dropped out of major league hockey. The NHA recruited other clubs to replace them (two Toronto teams were admitted, then excluded for the season because their new arena was not ready for play)....

NHA Logo?
I wasn't around for the NHA in 1909, but I really doubt its logo was the same as the old NHL shield with "NHA" instead. Does anyone have a newspaper clipping or a book showing this logo used? Until then, this creation really does not belong on this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.109.52.80 (talk) 13:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The sportslogo.net people claim it is the logo of the organization. The NHL basically kept everything from the NHA days, so I would not be surprised if they just modified the A to the L. Alaney2k (talk) 13:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would be very interested to see sportslogo.net's evidence for this. The NHL didn't, in fact, keep meticulous records from the NHA (witness how much Charles Coleman had to reconstruct from newspapers) and I've never before seen or heard any reference to a NHA logo.    Ravenswing  14:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely not well-documented. I was at the Hockey Hall of Fame on Saturday, and the O'Brien Cup is displayed with a photo of Renfrew Millionaires and a share book of the NHA Limited (open to Percy Quinn's shares) in community/pre-NHL leagues. That is all I saw of the NHA period on display. I don't know if the HHOF is much interested in the period because there is a real divide between how much the NHL dominates the HHOF and everything else. The NHL trophies are on display in the main room, and all the other trophies in separate small exhibits on the lower floor. I'll post the question of the NHA logo to the SIHR mailing list. Alaney2k (talk) 15:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)