Trading players from one team to another in hockey, and getting players back in return, has a history almost as long the professional game itself.
It’s still quite a tricky task to track down the first hockey trade in history, but what’s clear is that deals between teams exchanging players, very similar to those we see today, went down already a few years into the professional game.
In 1907–08, over the course of the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League season, a deal went down between the Pittsburgh Bankers and the Pittsburgh Pirates that can be defined as the first mid-season multi-player “blockbuster” trade in professional hockey:
On January 27, 1908 the Pittsburgh Pirates sent goalkeeper Jim MacKay and forwards Edgar Dey and Dunc Taylor to the Pittsburgh Bankers in return for goalkeeper Joe Donnelly and forward Bert Bennett.[1] A player named Gordon McGuire also changed teams from the Bankers to the Pirates during the season, although he wasn’t mentioned as being included in the deal, but was acquired by the Pirates in a separate purchase a few days later.[2]
It wasn’t the first trade of the 1907–08 WPHL season, as in December 1907 the Bankers had already made a trade with the Pittsburgh Lyceum, switching Dutch Koch for Harry Burgoyne, and then trading back for Koch roughly two weeks later in early January 1908.[3][4] But it was probably the biggest trade made up until that point in the professional game.
The Pittsburgh Press reported on December 28, the day after the trade had gone down, that the reasoning behind the trade from the perspective of the Pittsburgh Pirates was that “all was not harmonious on the team, even if it was leading the league,” suggesting a lopsidedness to the deal in favor of the Pittsburgh Bankers.
And at the end of the 1907–08 WPHL season the Pittsburgh Bankers had also claimed league championship honors, with the Pittsburgh Pirates finishing third in the standing.
Jim MacKay, Edgar Dey and Dunc Taylor for Joe Donnelly and Bert Bennett
The biggest trading dynamics in professional hockey during the 1910s, especially regarding the Canadian market, would stand between the East and the West. Or more precisely, between the National Hockey Association (NHA) and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). When brothers Lester and Frank Patrick launched the PCHA in British Columbia for the 1911–12 season as a serious competing force to the NHA on the Canadian east coast, they also created an entirely new and broadened playing field for player transactions, where independent arbitrators sometimes had to be brought in to solve the disputes.
Professional hockey, since being in effect from around the middle point of the previous decade, had already been ingrained in a somewhat chaotic or turbulent atmosphere, with players sometimes signing with multiple teams and jumping contracts to competing leagues, and with players often holding out, et cetera.
But the NHA and the PCHA competing with each other over the most coveted players in the pro circuit left a situation sometimes resembling a westbound exodus, with players bleeding from one coast to the other.
Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 19, 1911
Prior to the 1913–14 season the Ottawa Senators and the Montreal Wanderers of the NHA, and the Vancouver Millionaires of the PCHA, became involved in a trading carousel regarding forwards Carl Kendall and Skene Ronan. Vancouver manager Frank Patrick first traded Kendall to Ottawa for Ronan, but Ronan didn’t want to leave his civil Ottawa life behind and subsequently refused to report, and was banned from playing during the 1913–14 season as a result. But the situation soon took a new turn when Frank Patrick instead sold Kendall to the Montreal Wanderers. Sammy Lichtenhein, the manager of the Wanderers, then refused to either sell or trade Kendall to Ottawa, who had hoped to land him, which instead freed up Ronan to rejoin the Senators.[5]
A similar case of players refusing to report to a new team prior to the 1913–14 season, as did Skene Ronan, happened when the Ottawa Senators sold Fred Lake, Clint Benedict and Joe Dennison to the Toronto Ontarios. The three players either couldn’t come to financial terms with Toronto manager Jimmy Murphy, or they didn’t want to leave Ottawa in the first place.[5]
Fred Lake finally joined the Ontarios, but Joe Dennison was out of hockey in 1913–14 whereas Clint Benedict eventually stayed in Ottawa where he shared goalkeeping duties during the 1913–14 season with team manager Percy LeSueur.
The Ottawa Citizen on December 4, 1913 reported that the majority of the people on the Ottawa Senators were astonished at the announcement that Montreal Canadiens manager George Kennedy had traded his star player Jack Laviolette to the Quebec Bulldogs in exchange for Goldie Prodger. This due to the fact that Laviolette was not only considered a more valuable player than Prodger, but also a stronger drawing card. The newspaper speculated about it being a fake trade: “one of those advertising trades whereby they will trade back again before the season begins.” Such had apparently been the case with Didier Pitre the previous winter.[7]
The announced Laviolette-for-Prodger trade never materialized, and the next year, prior to the 1914–15 season, Quebec instead traded Prodger to the Canadiens for cash. In 1916 Prodger was a member of the first Stanley Cup winning Montreal Canadiens squad, as a teammate of Laviolette.
Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Dec. 2, 1912
Goalkeeper Percy LeSueur, who had acted as a playing manager for the Ottawa Senators over the course of the 1913–14 season, and among other moves had sent away Fred Lake to the Toronto Ontarios, found himself at the other end of the trading stick prior to the 1914–15 season, when rumors went high about himself being dealt to the Portland Rosebuds in the PCHA. But LeSueur claimed that he would rather quit hockey altogether than play for Portland:
Percy LeSueur
The general trading temperature around the two major pro leagues hit new highs around the 1914–15 season with the entrance into the National Hockey Association by one Eddie Livingstone, owner and manager of the Toronto Ontarios/Shamrocks franchise. Livingstone not only acquired Percy LeSueur from the Senators for the 1914–15 NHA campaign, but also Skene Ronan, with Fred Lake and Sammy Hebert going the other way.
Eddie Livingstone rather quickly earned himself a reputation as somewhat of a loose cannon regarding the whole managing and trading business, and it was his handling of the Toronto Blueshirts franchise (which he had just bought from Major Frank Robinson) that saw most of the key players on the team – Hap Holmes, Eddie Carpenter, Jack Walker, Frank Foyston and Cully Wilson – leave for the new Seattle Metropolitans franchise in the PCHA prior to the 1915–16 season.
And it was also Livingstone’s overall shenanigans that later on sped up the folding process of the NHA after the 1916–17 season, and the subsequent creation of the National Hockey League for the 1917–18 season.
The Ottawa Citizen in their November 24, 1916 issue, amused by all of Livingstone’s trading endeavors and proposed deals, put forward a short list of mock trades facetiously attributed to the Toronto manager, including in-and-out of hockey Toronto back-up goalie Claude Wilson for Clint Benedict, Howard McNamara for Eddie Gerard, and Toronto Blueshirts centre forward Corbett Denneny for the whole Ottawa Senators franchise.[9]
With Eddie Livingstone finally isolated and out of the picture, with the creation of the NHL in 1917–18, the trading temperature around the major pro leagues cooled down a bit to more reasonable levels.
And not long thereafter when the PCHA and the WCHL folded, in 1924 and 1926 respectively, all of the biggest pro teams would eventually play in one and the same league, the NHL, with the same rules and regulations to relate to, which put an end to the most infectious trade wars from the previous decade.
Sources:
[1] Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 28, 1908
[2] Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 1, 1908
[3] Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 21, 1907
[4] Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 8, 1908
[5] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 24, 1913
[6] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 21, 1913
[7] Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 4, 1913
[8] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 5, 1914
[9] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 24 1916
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
It’s still quite a tricky task to track down the first hockey trade in history, but what’s clear is that deals between teams exchanging players, very similar to those we see today, went down already a few years into the professional game.
In 1907–08, over the course of the Western Pennsylvania Hockey League season, a deal went down between the Pittsburgh Bankers and the Pittsburgh Pirates that can be defined as the first mid-season multi-player “blockbuster” trade in professional hockey:
On January 27, 1908 the Pittsburgh Pirates sent goalkeeper Jim MacKay and forwards Edgar Dey and Dunc Taylor to the Pittsburgh Bankers in return for goalkeeper Joe Donnelly and forward Bert Bennett.[1] A player named Gordon McGuire also changed teams from the Bankers to the Pirates during the season, although he wasn’t mentioned as being included in the deal, but was acquired by the Pirates in a separate purchase a few days later.[2]
It wasn’t the first trade of the 1907–08 WPHL season, as in December 1907 the Bankers had already made a trade with the Pittsburgh Lyceum, switching Dutch Koch for Harry Burgoyne, and then trading back for Koch roughly two weeks later in early January 1908.[3][4] But it was probably the biggest trade made up until that point in the professional game.
The Pittsburgh Press reported on December 28, the day after the trade had gone down, that the reasoning behind the trade from the perspective of the Pittsburgh Pirates was that “all was not harmonious on the team, even if it was leading the league,” suggesting a lopsidedness to the deal in favor of the Pittsburgh Bankers.
And at the end of the 1907–08 WPHL season the Pittsburgh Bankers had also claimed league championship honors, with the Pittsburgh Pirates finishing third in the standing.
Jim MacKay, Edgar Dey and Dunc Taylor for Joe Donnelly and Bert Bennett
Professional hockey, since being in effect from around the middle point of the previous decade, had already been ingrained in a somewhat chaotic or turbulent atmosphere, with players sometimes signing with multiple teams and jumping contracts to competing leagues, and with players often holding out, et cetera.
But the NHA and the PCHA competing with each other over the most coveted players in the pro circuit left a situation sometimes resembling a westbound exodus, with players bleeding from one coast to the other.
Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 19, 1911
“If they don’t give me enough money I will stay out of the game. But there is no chance of me leaving Ottawa. I can’t do it this season.”[6]
– Skene Ronan on his contract negotiations with the Ottawa Senators prior to the
1913–14 season and the prospect of a possible transfer to Vancouver
Carl Kendall and Skene Ronan
Vancouver, for the 1913–14 season, instead got hold of star forward Didier Pitre from the Montreal Canadiens, in exchange for the rights to his teammate Newsy Lalonde, as announced by Canadiens manager George Kennedy during the annual meeting of the National Hockey Association on November 23, 1913 at King Edward Hotel in Toronto.[5]– Skene Ronan on his contract negotiations with the Ottawa Senators prior to the
1913–14 season and the prospect of a possible transfer to Vancouver
Carl Kendall and Skene Ronan
A similar case of players refusing to report to a new team prior to the 1913–14 season, as did Skene Ronan, happened when the Ottawa Senators sold Fred Lake, Clint Benedict and Joe Dennison to the Toronto Ontarios. The three players either couldn’t come to financial terms with Toronto manager Jimmy Murphy, or they didn’t want to leave Ottawa in the first place.[5]
Fred Lake finally joined the Ontarios, but Joe Dennison was out of hockey in 1913–14 whereas Clint Benedict eventually stayed in Ottawa where he shared goalkeeping duties during the 1913–14 season with team manager Percy LeSueur.
The Ottawa Citizen on December 4, 1913 reported that the majority of the people on the Ottawa Senators were astonished at the announcement that Montreal Canadiens manager George Kennedy had traded his star player Jack Laviolette to the Quebec Bulldogs in exchange for Goldie Prodger. This due to the fact that Laviolette was not only considered a more valuable player than Prodger, but also a stronger drawing card. The newspaper speculated about it being a fake trade: “one of those advertising trades whereby they will trade back again before the season begins.” Such had apparently been the case with Didier Pitre the previous winter.[7]
The announced Laviolette-for-Prodger trade never materialized, and the next year, prior to the 1914–15 season, Quebec instead traded Prodger to the Canadiens for cash. In 1916 Prodger was a member of the first Stanley Cup winning Montreal Canadiens squad, as a teammate of Laviolette.
Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Dec. 2, 1912
“The Ottawas will only put themselves to a lot of unnecessary trouble if they endeavor to make a deal with the Patricks. I will not play in Portland. I might have considered an offer from Vancouver or Victoria but Portland is out of the question altogether. Why the Patricks have taken away the only good players that Portland should have had from New Westminster, [Ken] Mallen and [Hugh] Lehman. Now they are after Ran McDonald. It is evident that there is someone in charge at Portland who knows nothing about hockey. I have a position in Ottawa and don’t intend to give it up. There is absolutely no chance of me playing at the Coast this year. It would not pay me to shift at this juncture. I might have done so a year ago.”[8]
– Percy LeSueur on the prospect of him being dealt to the Portland Rosebuds
With new manager Frank Shaughnessy pulling the trading strings in Ottawa, 32-year old Percy LeSueur would instead land on the Toronto Ontarios/Shamrocks franchise for the 1914–15 season, whereas the younger Clint Benedict, who LeSueur unsuccessfully had tried to move to the same Toronto Ontarios franchise the previous year, instead took over as full time goalie for the Ottawa Senators.– Percy LeSueur on the prospect of him being dealt to the Portland Rosebuds
Percy LeSueur
The general trading temperature around the two major pro leagues hit new highs around the 1914–15 season with the entrance into the National Hockey Association by one Eddie Livingstone, owner and manager of the Toronto Ontarios/Shamrocks franchise. Livingstone not only acquired Percy LeSueur from the Senators for the 1914–15 NHA campaign, but also Skene Ronan, with Fred Lake and Sammy Hebert going the other way.
Eddie Livingstone rather quickly earned himself a reputation as somewhat of a loose cannon regarding the whole managing and trading business, and it was his handling of the Toronto Blueshirts franchise (which he had just bought from Major Frank Robinson) that saw most of the key players on the team – Hap Holmes, Eddie Carpenter, Jack Walker, Frank Foyston and Cully Wilson – leave for the new Seattle Metropolitans franchise in the PCHA prior to the 1915–16 season.
And it was also Livingstone’s overall shenanigans that later on sped up the folding process of the NHA after the 1916–17 season, and the subsequent creation of the National Hockey League for the 1917–18 season.
The Ottawa Citizen in their November 24, 1916 issue, amused by all of Livingstone’s trading endeavors and proposed deals, put forward a short list of mock trades facetiously attributed to the Toronto manager, including in-and-out of hockey Toronto back-up goalie Claude Wilson for Clint Benedict, Howard McNamara for Eddie Gerard, and Toronto Blueshirts centre forward Corbett Denneny for the whole Ottawa Senators franchise.[9]
And not long thereafter when the PCHA and the WCHL folded, in 1924 and 1926 respectively, all of the biggest pro teams would eventually play in one and the same league, the NHL, with the same rules and regulations to relate to, which put an end to the most infectious trade wars from the previous decade.
Sources:
[1] Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 28, 1908
[2] Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 1, 1908
[3] Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 21, 1907
[4] Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 8, 1908
[5] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 24, 1913
[6] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 21, 1913
[7] Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 4, 1913
[8] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 5, 1914
[9] Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 24 1916
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
