tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
Through the NYT, we can see the disastrous effect that WWI had on the development of hockey in the USA.
Context: New York City was the urban center of American hockey in the nineteen-teens. There were some amateur leagues in places like Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh, but none of them were as developed or as competitive as those in NYC. As detailed below, prior to WWI the New York leagues had risen from their modest origins to become reasonably competitive with Canadian amateur squads, and had hosted elite talent like the Cleghorn brothers and Hobey Baker from time to time.
The first call for Canadian volunteers occurred in the fall of 1914. That date will be significant when you get to the final article.
The first article in this series is especially valuable in terms of estimating the developmental stages of American hockey in the early 20th C., up to the time of publication.
The US entered the war in April 1917. Its Selective Service Act and Canada's Military Service Act, both establishing non-voluntary conscription, were passed later that year.
I'm not certain whether the "revival" of school-aged hockey mentioned below indicates that it had been canceled the previous season. But clearly the elite amateur competition had mostly perished by this time. Nevertheless, the author of this article seems rather optimistic about the upcoming season.
It's hard to patch together exactly which teams were active during the height of the war, but generally speaking college hockey was reduced to an exhibition-type schedule of just a few games per season for those that didn't go totally dormant. Certainly it was no longer the training ground for elite talent described above.
A bit more detail on the loss of talent from NYC teams, in an article published only a week later. The quoted speaker is Cornelius Fellowes, president of the International Skating Union of America. His organization was working with CAHA to form a new alliance to re-introduce cross-border competition.
Ideally I would like to name names... to figure out exactly who left the amateur hockey circuit never to return. Peabody, who died gruesomely on the front, is the only one mentioned by name in the articles above. It's apparent that the Wanderers team was decimated, so I did some basic searching on their roster as listed in 1914. Unfortunately the Times beat reporter seems not to have bothered learning the first names of Wanderer players other than Turk Smith, making it extremely difficult to discern who exactly the players are by their last names. It would appear that John Joseph (JJ) Kinsella, died on the front. Their goaltender, Ivan "Mike" Mitchell, went pro in the PCHA the following season and won a Stanley Cup with Toronto in 1922. Beyond that I'm at an impasse without doing a lot of work on it.
Context: New York City was the urban center of American hockey in the nineteen-teens. There were some amateur leagues in places like Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh, but none of them were as developed or as competitive as those in NYC. As detailed below, prior to WWI the New York leagues had risen from their modest origins to become reasonably competitive with Canadian amateur squads, and had hosted elite talent like the Cleghorn brothers and Hobey Baker from time to time.
The first call for Canadian volunteers occurred in the fall of 1914. That date will be significant when you get to the final article.
The first article in this series is especially valuable in terms of estimating the developmental stages of American hockey in the early 20th C., up to the time of publication.
New York Times 12/19/1915 said:
The US entered the war in April 1917. Its Selective Service Act and Canada's Military Service Act, both establishing non-voluntary conscription, were passed later that year.
I'm not certain whether the "revival" of school-aged hockey mentioned below indicates that it had been canceled the previous season. But clearly the elite amateur competition had mostly perished by this time. Nevertheless, the author of this article seems rather optimistic about the upcoming season.
New York Times 12/30/1917[/quote said:
It's hard to patch together exactly which teams were active during the height of the war, but generally speaking college hockey was reduced to an exhibition-type schedule of just a few games per season for those that didn't go totally dormant. Certainly it was no longer the training ground for elite talent described above.
New York Times 10/12/1919 said:
A bit more detail on the loss of talent from NYC teams, in an article published only a week later. The quoted speaker is Cornelius Fellowes, president of the International Skating Union of America. His organization was working with CAHA to form a new alliance to re-introduce cross-border competition.
New York Times 10/19/1919 said:
Ideally I would like to name names... to figure out exactly who left the amateur hockey circuit never to return. Peabody, who died gruesomely on the front, is the only one mentioned by name in the articles above. It's apparent that the Wanderers team was decimated, so I did some basic searching on their roster as listed in 1914. Unfortunately the Times beat reporter seems not to have bothered learning the first names of Wanderer players other than Turk Smith, making it extremely difficult to discern who exactly the players are by their last names. It would appear that John Joseph (JJ) Kinsella, died on the front. Their goaltender, Ivan "Mike" Mitchell, went pro in the PCHA the following season and won a Stanley Cup with Toronto in 1922. Beyond that I'm at an impasse without doing a lot of work on it.
Don´t if that was mixup in newspaper. 
)
