News from training camp centered around Lionel Conacher. He was supposed to have reported on October 25 with the other Pirates. He came to camp on November 5. Conacher said he had been on a hunting trip and had received his report-to-camp notice only on the previous day. This clearly didn’t fly with Cleghorn. The Pittsburgh Press reported it was certain Cleghorn gave Conacher “a severe reprimand” when he arrived. Conacher was also fined $200.
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Cleghorn demanded that the Pirates’ play improve, or more serious action would follow. The Pittsburgh Press said Cleghorn knew the Pirates had been too careless and had not taken their work seriously. In their next two games, however, the Pirates remained flat. A 5-2 loss to the Canadiens and a 2-2 tie with the Maroons followed on Duquesne Garden ice. During a one-week layoff after the Maroons game, the Pirates sent team captain Conacher packing in a very one-sided trade.
On December 16, Conacher was dealt to the New York Americans. All that the Pirates received for their highly talented (if disgruntled) captain was $2,000 plus 32-year-old defenseman Charlie Langlois, whose NHL career did not last past 1928. In contrast, the 25-year-old Conacher would star in the NHL through 1937 and make the first or second NHL all star teams three times. The Boston Globe said that Conacher was unhappy in Pittsburgh because he was not chosen to manage the team. The job instead went to Odie Cleghorn, who, the Globe said, made matters worse by trying unsuccessfully for a year to trade Conacher to the Boston Bruins for his brother Sprague. (Interestingly, when Cleghorn left the Pirates in 1929 in a bitter split with the new management of ex-boxer Benny Leonard, he would claim to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Conacher had been traded against his wishes.) Whichever story was closer to the truth, when Conacher came to training camp late, it was perhaps the final nail in the coffin. It was a swap that would haunt the Pirates. Conacher had starred for Pittsburgh since he came to the city to play for the Yellow Jackets in 1923. From all indications, he was not a good fit with Odie Cleghorn. But if he had to be traded, the Pirates should have received far more than Langlois in return. Hockey writers have justifiably called this exchange one of the worst in NHL history. Conacher had elevated the Yellow Jackets to championship status with his presence and that of the players he recruited for the team. The Pirates who followed in the Jackets’ wake were of playoff caliber as a result. The trade of Conacher for Langlois in retrospect was a significant part of a chain of events that sent the Pirates on a downward spiral. It had to be insulting to Conacher and a keenly felt loss to the players who stayed behind.
