1956 Macleans article on hockey scouting - They Beat the Bushes for Stars

[overpass]

Interesting and informative article in Macleans from 1956 about hockey scouting at the time and going back to the 1930s.

They beat the bushes for stars | Maclean's | MARCH 31 1956

Here’s an excerpt:

“Apps did precisely that for a dozen years with the Leafs. He might have done the same thing for Boston, except for an incident that illustrates the haphazard methods of scouting in the middle Thirties. Art Ross, the Boston manager and coach, had heard of Apps’ hockey ability and wrote to the late Eddie Powers, a longtime senior hockey coach in Toronto, asking him to look up Apps at McMaster University. Powers looked all over Toronto for McMaster but couldn’t find it, one of the reasons being that McMaster had been transferred from Toronto to Hamilton in 1930. When he couldn’t uncover McMaster, much less Apps, Powers wired Ross: “Can’t find McMaster. Must have been moved.”

Mistakes like this probably induced Ross to hire a scout. Baldy Cotton was among the first to sell himself as the logical man for the job. Cotton, who was working as a salesman for a milk by-products company in Toronto at the time, recalls, “I pointed out that all the good junior clubs showed up in Toronto sooner or later and that I could be on the lookout for the Bruins.”

Ross agreed to give Cotton a trial and on Christmas Day, 1939, took him on at a hundred dollars a month for the rest of the season. When Cotton began digging up useful players, the Bruins induced him to leave his job and become a full-time scout.”

Click to read more...

 

[Canadiens1958]

Great stuff.

 

[Theokritos]

Fascinating read. Thanks a lot!

 

[mbhhofr]

Great read.

I was on the open air rink in Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba and I knew Spud Russell, the head scout for the Canadiens and Bob Davidson, the head scout for the Leafs.

 

[BadgerBruce]

Great find! Thanks for posting the link.

 

[Killion]

Great find! Thanks for posting the link.

Indeed. Too bad Frank Mahovlich's Dad didnt opt for the offer made by Rudy Pilous uh? 4 Acre Fruit Farm? Say goodbye to Timmins & life underground? Absolutely. Frank meanwhile would have very likely wound up a Blackhawk & avoided Imlach altogether, and of course if with Chicago, with Hull, Mikita et al well, just imagine given all that rope to run & gun what he'd have accomplished. That being said, not entirely certain but I seem to recall that in addition to the St. Mikes Scholarship, Room & Board, $60 a week and a $5000 signing bonus, when Frank did make the Leafs as a further inducement & bonus the Leafs bought his father a house in the Leaside area of Toronto where a number of other Leaf players resided. Quite a nice area just east of North Toronto around Bayview & Eglinton. Middle to Upper Middle Class, homes there today going for in excess of a million five plus.

 

[Canadiens1958]

Rudy Pilous underestimated the value placed on an education by immigrants.

 

[Normand Lacombe]

In searching out youngsters who can be signed for one of the pro team’s sponsored affiliates and developed in the big team’s system, scouts travel about twenty thousand miles a year each, covering Canada at least once a year and visiting U. S. cities in which hockey is played. Most of them have tipsters, or bird-dogs, scattered across the country who receive small retainers for keeping the chief informed on players in their areas. If tips produce players who make the grade eventually in pro hockey, the bird-dogs receive bonuses. Sometimes the tips aren’t heeded, and sometimes they aren’t heeded fast enough. Toronto lost Ted Lindsay to Detroit by just such a delay, and Lindsay has become one of the game’s great left wingers.

Hap Day, the Leaf coach in 1943, was eying Lindsay with the St. Michael’s juniors. So was Detroit’s Carson Cooper. Cooper followed St. Mike’s to Hamilton and St. Catharines to scout him on the road. Toronto didn’t. Cooper signed him.

Thank you, spectacular read. Ted Lindsay on the Leafs? Toronto maybe wins a few more Cups in the late 40's and 50's with Lindsay?

 

[Killion]

Rudy Pilous underestimated the value placed on an education by immigrants.

Perhaps so uh? Loved Rudy, real "Hockey Nomad" or "Hockey Hustler" of the Coach, GM, Executive & Owner variety at all levels, Gypsy, moving around a TONNE throughout his lengthy 40+ year career in the game. Founded the now legendary St.Catharines TeePee's in the 40's, finishing up his career in the early through mid 80's in the same place he started Coaching the St.Catharines Saints, Leafs AHL team at the time as most are aware. Old school so wouldnt have placed much importance on education for a young hockey player. As you well know C58, most guys dropped out by Grade 10 or 11 if not earlier once you'd hit Junior. It was almost an "either or" (school or hockey) type situation for so many. Toronto with St.Mikes quite unique. Rudy wouldnt have even thought that way I shouldnt think. Brain like a computer with 68 tabs open all the time..... very popular on the Rubber Chicken Circuit. Wonderful Story Teller, Raconteur. Funny guy.

Pilous also an avid harness & thoroughbred racing aficionado serving in an executive capacity at Fort Erie Racetrack (if memory serves correctly) which ultimately cost him his job as Head Coach with Chicago following their Cup win in 61. He'd apparently split, left the team during the 63 Playoffs to attend an event at Fort Erie Racetrack leaving an Assistant or Trainer in charge to run some Practices in preparation for the game & series ahead, Blackhawks lost, ownership firing him for "abandoning his station at a critical moment". Really too bad as look at what he'd accomplished between 57/63.... Chicago a total mess before his arrival. Replaced by Billy Reay who had an extremely long tenure (63/76) despite being unable to close the deal & with some serious talent at his disposal. Rudy meanwhile did move on of course, Coached the OHA's old Hamilton Red Wings & Scouted for Detroit, briefly Coached the newly minted Seals in California & so on & so forth. All over the map. Up & down, almost every league you can think of & he was active in them in some capacity or another.

 

[pappyline]

Indeed. Too bad Frank Mahovlich's Dad didnt opt for the offer made by Rudy Pilous uh? 4 Acre Fruit Farm? Say goodbye to Timmins & life underground? Absolutely. Frank meanwhile would have very likely wound up a Blackhawk & avoided Imlach altogether, and of course if with Chicago, with Hull, Mikita et al well, just imagine given all that rope to run & gun what he'd have accomplished. That being said, not entirely certain but I seem to recall that in addition to the St. Mikes Scholarship, Room & Board, $60 a week and a $5000 signing bonus, when Frank did make the Leafs as a further inducement & bonus the Leafs bought his father a house in the Leaside area of Toronto where a number of other Leaf players resided. Quite a nice area just east of North Toronto around Bayview & Eglinton. Middle to Upper Middle Class, homes there today going for in excess of a million five plus.

Didn't know about the Pilous offer to the Mahovlich family.

Interesting that you mention Leaside. I was up in Canada a week or so ago and went to Leaside arena to watch my grand daughter play a game. They had a Hall of Fame posted. Frank wasn't there but Peter was. It said the family moved there when Peter was 10 which would jive with Frank joining St. Mikes. Some other interesting names up there including Jack & Terry Caffery who I remember.

 

[Killion]

Didn't know about the Pilous offer to the Mahovlich family.

Interesting that you mention Leaside. I was up in Canada a week or so ago and went to Leaside arena to watch my grand daughter play a game. They had a Hall of Fame posted. Frank wasn't there but Peter was. It said the family moved there when Peter was 10 which would jive with Frank joining St. Mikes. Some other interesting names up there including Jack & Terry Caffery who I remember.

Oh yeah. Used to play the odd THL game at the beautiful old barn of an arena. Very monolithic, deco'ish or was back in the 60's. Leaside has a rather interesting hockey history, home to George Armstrong, Carl Brewer & so on. There was a team called the East York Lyndhursts (Car Dealership, Lyndhurst Motors), Senior B that represented Canada at the 1954 World Championships in Stockholm. East York & Leaside pretty much one & the same.....

more here; www.leasidelife.com/the-stars-who-played-with-george-sayliss/

 

[tony d]

Thanks for posting this. Always good to find out about things like this.

 

[overpass]

Here's another Macleans article from a year later, 1957. Charlie Conacher presents his opinion that hockey development in Canada has taken a turn for the worse, and the increasing regimentation of minor hockey is Pejorative Sluring skill development.

"How I’d make hockey a better game” | Maclean's | APRIL 27, 1957

I hope the point I’m making here is not that what’s wrong with modern hockey is that it wouldn’t be right for the Conachers. No, I’m thinking of all the other Lionels and Roys and Charlies across the country who never get to the big league because of the kind of game hockey has become, and because the six NHL teams have so completely organized its recruiting right down to the last pink-cheeked twelve-year-old that they’re strangling it.

In 1942 I told Frankie Selke, now the managing director of the Montreal Canadiens and then the assistant manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, that if the pro teams didn’t keep their noses out of amateur hockey they’d ruin it. Well, they’ve ruined it, and I only mention the date of the Selke conversation so that I won't be accused of secondguessing.
In the fifteen years since then, I’ve frequently been accused of biting the hand that fed me. But on the other hand, who’s better equipped to take an objective viewpoint of the game than somebody who owes it so much? Anyway, it’s not hockey that I’ve complained about; it’s what the game’s administrators have been doing to it.

Their rule changes have eliminated most of the colorful players, reduced the need for stickhandlers and pattern passing, curtailed the number of clear-cut goals, and introduced a breed of player who needs small artistic qualities if he has a strong pair of legs and an ability to clutch an opposing player by the sweater, arms or head and jam him against the boards. The game’s greatest evil is the rule that permits players to shoot the puck from the centre red line to any point in the other team’s area and then chase after it.

Shooting from centre eliminates clean body checking by defensemen who must turn and rush for the loose puck. It relieves the forward lines of the need to work the puck toward the other team’s goal by passing or stickhandling—it’s simpler just to shoot it in-—and creates the endless scrambles in the goal area. In the days when the emphasis was on immediate control of the puck and swift precise pattern plays, hockey was a better and easier game to look at.

People who argue for the modern game keep telling me that this style does produce colorful and accomplished players, and they point to Jean Beliveau, Rocket Richard and possibly Doug Harvey of the Canadiens, and to Gordie Howe, Ted I.indsay and Red Kelly of Detroit. The trouble is, they always point to this same half dozen players. They never add a seventh. The reason, of course, is that there is no seventh. Once you've named half a dozen you’ve named them all.

...

I don’t even go along with the reasoning that says the modern game developed Howe and Richard and Bcliveau. I think those fellows emerged in spite of the modern game, and would have been great stars in any era. Is it an endorsement of the kind of hockey that was played during World War II to point out that Rocket Richard was a product of it?

To my mind, the reason colorful players have disappeared to be replaced by a faceless scurrying band is that the amateur associations have permitted the professionals to bulldoze them into accepting NHL methods as their methods. Young players are regimented into a standardized mold where they play NHL rules and follow NHL theories of attack and defense. Kids rarely play shinny any more, weaving in and out with a puck, learning to stickhandle and skate in a helter-skelter incubator that hatches their natural ability. They’re so completely organized and regimented that they don’t get a chance to develop any individual characteristics. But you can’t regiment talent. How could you develop an artist, say, if you took him when he was twelve and for the next eight years told him how to put every daub of paint, every stroke of his brush, on the canvas? If they want kids to develop their skills the amateurs ought to throw out all those fancy red lines and circles they’ve got on the rinks these days, toss a puck onto the ice and let the players learn the rudiments of passing the puck, stickhandling and skating.

 

[Sprague Cleghorn]

Sounds exactly what people complain about now. How so little has changed

 

[Theokritos]

Their rule changes have eliminated most of the colorful players, reduced the need for stickhandlers and pattern passing, curtailed the number of clear-cut goals, and introduced a breed of player who needs small artistic qualities if he has a strong pair of legs and an ability to clutch an opposing player by the sweater, arms or head and jam him against the boards. The game’s greatest evil is the rule that permits players to shoot the puck from the centre red line to any point in the other team’s area and then chase after it.

Shooting from centre eliminates clean body checking by defensemen who must turn and rush for the loose puck. It relieves the forward lines of the need to work the puck toward the other team’s goal by passing or stickhandling—it’s simpler just to shoot it in-—and creates the endless scrambles in the goal area. In the days when the emphasis was on immediate control of the puck and swift precise pattern plays, hockey was a better and easier game to look at.

So what we have here is a fundamental critique of dump-and-chase hockey dating from 1957.

And here I sit in 2919 and wonder: What if Conacher is right? Would hockey be better if sending the puck over the offensive blue line resulted in an offside call?