SIHR Blog Coast to Coast Frenzy – A Look at Trading in Early Era Hockey

[sr edler]

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]

“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]

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:

“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​

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)

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[Theokritos]

Very interesting topic. Having just started to read the article, I was going to ask whether the players who were traded had any say in what was happening, but you soon answered that question: they had the option of refusing to report. Are you aware of any trade where the player himself was asked for consent by his club or even initiated the move?

And I guess there were no formal, contractual relations between the NHA/NHL and the PCHL, right? So deals between them and trades from one league to the other were made on an ad hoc-base.

 

[sr edler]

Are you aware of any trade where the player himself was asked for consent by his club or even initiated the move?

From what I've read briefly in papers regarding the multi-player deal mentioned in the article between the Pittsburgh Bankers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, it seems to have been initiated by Edgar Dey wanting out (from the Pirates). Exactly why he wanted out though, I didn't catch up on.

And I guess there were no formal, contractual relations between the NHA/NHL and the PCHL, right? So deals between them and trades from one league to the other were made on an ad hoc-base.

I think it was a bit of both. I think the two leagues had agreements over initial quotas, but I'm not exactly sure how those quotas looked. And beyond that a lot of extra stuff going on.

 

[Sanf]

Great read!

Have always enjoyed reading about the trades and trading speculation of the time. Especially when it often regarded goalies like LeSueur, Benedict, Hebert... Like you mention. I do remember one big one from 1914 when Lester Patrick was trying to trade Lalonde to Vezina. Haven´t seen that LeSueur quote before. Nice one. I need to check my notes in weekend if I have something raise up.

I do remember some trades asked to be made by the player himself. Skinner Poulin wanted to Canadiens from west and asked for trade, but can´t remember how that played out without my notes.

First rumour was very early from the Pro hockey. I believe it was 1903 when there was rumours that Keystones may trade Riley Hern to Bankers for Frank Richardson (goalie too) and additional player. IIRC Keystones were out of championship battle at that point.

 

[sr edler]

@Sanf

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there were deals being made at a very early stage, even though in 1903 I guess the game hadn't yet become officially professional? But yeah, there were a lot of rumors flying around back and forth, about trades and signings, et cetera.

If you find anything later in the week, even if it's just early rumors, feel free to add them to the thread.

 

[Theokritos]

From what I've read briefly in papers regarding the multi-player deal mentioned in the article between the Pittsburgh Bankers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, it seems to have been initiated by Edgar Dey wanting out (from the Pirates). Exactly why he wanted out though, I didn't catch up on.

One would suspect some players that were in high demand could have taken advantage of the leverage the two-league situation provided in order to get more money or better contract terms. Though it's another question whether this would come through in the sources.

 

[sr edler]

One would suspect some players that were in high demand could have taken advantage of the leverage the two-league situation provided in order to get more money or better contract terms. Though it's another question whether this would come through in the sources.

Right, and I think sometimes the situations could also vary and depend a bit on other circumstances, such as if the player in question ran a steady business in a particular hometown, or if they were potentially involved in other sports, et cetera.

Regarding Newsy Lalonde, for instance, he was first lured over to Vancouver (in 1909) to play lacrosse, not hockey, by west coast sports magnate Con Jones, a few years prior to the Patricks launching the PCHA. I also think he (Lalonde) made a little more money in general playing lacrosse than he did hockey. He played 9 seasons (not consecutive but spread out) of lacrosse in Vancouver, but only one season of hockey. In Montreal he played lacrosse for the Nationals.

But in Vancouver newspapers at the time Lalonde was sometimes referred to as the "John D. Rockefeller of professional sports" because apparently he made so much money playing lacrosse (and occasional hockey) there. But you could play both sports but in different cities during the same year because of the seasonal change.

Lalonde Financial Genius – Money Comes Easy to Newsy - Newspapers.com

But if one wants to speculate, perhaps if Lalonde didn't have the lacrosse income he would have played more seasons in the PCHA because of the money?

 

[sr edler]

Great read!

Have always enjoyed reading about the trades and trading speculation of the time. Especially when it often regarded goalies like LeSueur, Benedict, Hebert... Like you mention. I do remember one big one from 1914 when Lester Patrick was trying to trade Lalonde to Vezina. Haven´t seen that LeSueur quote before. Nice one. I need to check my notes in weekend if I have something raise up.

I do remember some trades asked to be made by the player himself. Skinner Poulin wanted to Canadiens from west and asked for trade, but can´t remember how that played out without my notes.

First rumour was very early from the Pro hockey. I believe it was 1903 when there was rumours that Keystones may trade Riley Hern to Bankers for Frank Richardson (goalie too) and additional player. IIRC Keystones were out of championship battle at that point.

Here's the Hern for Richardson trade rumor (Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 17, 1903)

Trade rumor - Newspapers.com

On Poulin I found various reports that he was residing in Calgary prior to the 1915–16 season, working with harvesting alongside Bobby Rowe (also in Saskatchewan), but then eventually decided to go back east.

The Lalonde for Vezina was a proposed player/player swap while Lalonde was on the west coast?

 

[Sanf]

Yep that is the Hern rumour. Though I believe there was talk of additional player too. Frank Richardson was Stanley Cup winner with Victorias, but really was not as highly regarded as Hern.

Here is the rumour from Lalonde to Vezina.

October 15, 1914 The Winnipeg Tribune
Lester Patrick announces that a deal is on between the Pacific Coast Hockey league and Canadiens, of the N. IH. A., whereby "Newsy" Lalonde may be traded for Vezina. Lalonde is the property of the coast league, but he is in business in Montreal and wants to remain there. Manager Kennedy, of the Canadiens, has offered to give any man on his team in exchange for Lalonde, with the exception of Laviolette and Pltre, and the coast league officials have picked on Vezina, a goal tend of class second to none in the N.H.A.

And here is the one about Poulin. He stayed that season in west though. I did not have anything more in my notes and currently don´t have newspapers account.

April 6, 1914 The Ottawa Citizen
Skinner Poulln, of the victorias, is another who does not wish to go back to the Coast. He would like to play with the Canadiens again and has asked the Patricks to sell or trade him to George Kennedy, of the Canadiens, who is anxious to get the former Smith Falls boy back again. It is said that the Canadiens are willing to trade Donald Smith for Poulin

 

[sr edler]

@Sanf Yeah, Vancouver picked up Lehman (New Westminster) instead for that season (1914–15), along with Mickey MacKay (Boundary League) and also Barney Stanley (from Edmonton), and went on to win the Cup, which just goes to show you don't always have to chase the biggest fish in the pond.

 

[Theokritos]

A source quoted in the article mentions "fake trades" or "advertising trades". What was that about?

 

[sr edler]

A source quoted in the article mentions "fake trades" or "advertising trades". What was that about?

Yeah, I don't know how common that really was, or for what purpose really, but it seems to have been announced trades that fell through right at the start of the season, for one reason or another.

One thing I guess such a trade could potentially do (an actual fake/advertising trade) is take two players off the market, so to speak, so other teams back off from them, but I think more likely it was just trades that fell through because of other reasons: such as players either didn't want to move (for whatever reasons), or because they couldn't come to financial terms with their new team. But it's hard to know exactly unless it's actually spelled out more in detail.

 

[Theokritos]

Yeah, I don't know how common that really was, or for what purpose really, but it seems to have been announced trades that fell through right at the start of the season, for one reason or another.

One thing I guess such a trade could potentially do (an actual fake/advertising trade) is take two players off the market, so to speak, so other teams back off from them, but I think more likely it was just trades that fell through because of other reasons: such as players either didn't want to move (for whatever reasons), or because they couldn't come to financial terms with their new team. But it's hard to know exactly unless it's actually spelled out more in detail.

It's just curious they would call trades that fell through "fake trades" or "advertising trades". The phrasing does indeed seem to suggest there was some actual purpose behind it.

 

[Sanf]

Term advertising trades is new to me, but I have often wondered if some of those trade rumours which may have even been started by league moguls (for example that Vezina trade rumour from Patrick) themselves were more to create interest and talk. Not much have changed. People seemed to love rumours and gossip about trades and new player contracts. Newspapers had a lot of them. Could it be it deliberate way to keep the leagues in news and create interest?

edit. Well the word does not actually fit well to it because it implies that actual trade happened.

 

[Theokritos]

Term advertising trades is new to me, but I have often wondered if some of those trade rumours which may have even been started by league moguls (for example that Vezina trade rumour from Patrick) themselves were more to create interest and talk. Not much have changed. People seemed to love rumours and gossip about trades and new player contracts. Newspapers had a lot of them. Could it be it deliberate way to keep the leagues in news and create interest?

edit. Well the word does not actually fit well to it because it implies that actual trade happened.

Well, I think the word does fit pretty well to this interpretation. If you asked me what a "fake trade" or "advertising trade" could be, then that's the guess I would come up with. Both terms imply that there was a purpose rather than an unfortunate turn of events (e.g. the trade falling through). And the term "advertising" does suggest the purpose was to create public interest and attention.

What's it all about with the Vezina trade rumour?

 

[sr edler]

It's just curious they would call trades that fell through "fake trades" or "advertising trades". The phrasing does indeed seem to suggest there was some actual purpose behind it.

Here's another clip from another paper, the Ottawa Journal (Nov. 14, 1916), talking about the case of Duke Keats (and also Eddie Oatman), whether he would play the 1916–17 NHA season on either the Toronto Blueshirts (which he later did) or the 228th Battalion team (he was a sergeant on that military unit).

The first sentence goes "If it isn't that the hockey moguls are playing the Keats and Oatman cases up for advertising purposes, there may be considerable contention over the players before the season opens."

So there seems to have been some kind of notion (or suspicion?) among some papers (or journalists) that some of the hockey moguls running the show sometimes did things for "advertising purposes."

Clipping from The Ottawa Journal - Newspapers.com