sr edler
gold is not reality
- Mar 20, 2010
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From the onset of organised ice hockey in the mid 1870s and to the present day game, the sport has seen its fair share of shifts and changes. The most notable perhaps being the removal of the free-roaming rover position in the early 1910s (NHA) and the early 1920s (PCHA), thus transforming a seven-man game into a six-man game.
Other tweaks or changes include the introduction of forward passing, various offside rulings, as well as roster expansion and line changing.
One prominent tactical and stylistic feature of the late 1800s game, as well as a few years into the following century, that was later phased out of the game, was the art of lifting the puck. Lifting the puck was an exercise that fell almost exclusively on the shoulders of each team’s defence, most notably on the cover point, the more offensively inclined of the two defencemen.
Photograph from 1904’s Spalding’s Official Ice Hockey Guide showing the stick position for lifting the puck
The philosophy behind lifting was not only to quickly and safely get rid of the puck from your own end of the rink, but also to give your forwards an opportunity to regain possession of the puck higher up the ice and put pressure on the opposing team’s defence. Or as Montreal Hockey Club’s cover point Hugh Baird described it in Montreal Shamrocks player Arthur Farrell’s book Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game from 1899:
The 1898 Spalding’s Ice Hockey and Ice Polo Guide, chronicling the 1896–97 hockey season, described lifting as an expert move and used a wording, ”an indescribable wrist motion or twist” and ”a full arm and body motion”, very much similar to how one would describe a golf swing, and claimed that the skill could only be attained by thorough practice.
The lifting move was also authorised by league ruling, an example being Rule X from the December 1896 ”Laws and Championship Rules of Ice Hockey”, amended by the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC), stating that ”No player shall raise his stick above his shoulder except in lifting the puck.”[2]
Sketch of Mike Grant, cover point of the Montreal Victorias, preparing to lift the puck during the February 1899 Stanley Cup series against the Winnipeg Victorias
(The Winnipeg Tribune, February 20, 1899)
Arthur Farrell, in the first chapter of Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game, claimed that lifting had been prohibited in the very early days of organised hockey in Montreal in the mid 1870s, when the Victoria Hockey Club and McGill University teams first roamed the slippery ice surfaces, which points to the practice being popularised and deemed legal at a somewhat later stage.[1]
Lifting seemed to escape the ruling against the forward pass as it was not deemed a pass at all, but instead merely something similar to punting in gridiron football, where the punting team hope to gain ground when possession changes between the teams. Hugh Baird again:
Tactically, lifting had both its pros and cons. It could be quite an effective offensive move, and sometimes even led to direct goals if the opposing goalkeeper lost track of the airborne puck, but it could also be fatiguing for the forwards to constantly chase a flying puck down the rink. It also risked giving away possession way too easily. A lifting competition between two teams could also be quite a tiresome thing to watch from the spectators point of view, as pointed out by Montreal Victorias defenceman Mike Grant in Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game.
Two expert lifters in hockey either prior to or around the turn of the century were cover points Fred Higginbotham of the Winnipeg Victorias and Art Moore of the Ottawa Hockey Club, the latter club colloquially known as the ”Ottawa Silver Seven.”
Fred Higginbotham and Art Moore
Fred Higginbotham, for instance, used the lifting move wonderfully to both his own and the Winnipeg Victorias advantage during the February 14, 1896 Stanley Cup challenge game against the Montreal Victorias, a game the Manitobans won 2 goals to 0 at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal after having displayed a strong defensive structure in the second half of the contest, keeping the puck well away from their own net.[2] This also marked the first time a team outside the AHAC had won the Stanley Cup.
Higginbotham, who was born in the late 1860s, died in a horse riding accident in Winnipeg on September 7, 1896, and thus never came to experience the eventual waning of the lifting game. Art Moore on the other hand was born in 1880 and played with the Ottawas in the early 1900s on a star-studded team that included all of Harvey Pulford, Harry ”Rat” Westwick and ”One Eyed” Frank McGee.
In 1905, the Ottawa Hockey Club had already won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1903 and 1904 when they ran into a fast group of puck chasers from the small Ontarian town of Rat Portage, close to the Manitoba border, a team that they had already defeated once in a Stanley Cup series back in 1903 by a 10-4 (6-2, 4-2) score. It was in this best-of-three challenge series, played at Dey’s Arena in Ottawa between March 7 and 11 in 1905, that the tide eventually turned for good on lifting.
The Rat Portage Thistles with Tuff Bellefeuille on the right
The Rat Portage Thistles, later famously known as the Kenora Thistles due to the town changing its name, simply weren’t interested in playing a back-and-forth lifting game with Ottawa’s defence, so when Art Moore and point player Harvey Pulford scooped the puck their way they simply took possession of it and quickly skated it back down the other way.[3] Rat Portage had a number of excellent skaters on its team, including cover point Theophile ”Tuff” Bellefeuille, rover Silas ”Si” Griffis and left winger Tommy Phillips, and thus didn’t feel the need to play into Ottawa’s style of game.
Instead Ottawa quickly had to adapt to Rat Portage’s style of play to survive the series.
Rat Portage won the first game 9 goals to 3 in spectacular fashion, but despite losing the two following games 2-4 and 4-5, and thus nearly missing out on the Stanley Cup, the Thistles still left a strong mark on the sport. Two years later, in January 1907, they eventually laid their hands on the coveted cup after having defeated the Montreal Wanderers (4-2, 8-6) at the Montreal Arena.
The key changes on the 1905 Thistles from their earliest challenge series for the Stanley Cup, in March 1903 against the Ottawa Hockey Club (2-6, 2-4), were new goalkeeper Eddie Giroux and new cover point Tuff Bellefeuille, with Bellefeuille enabling them to play a more attacking speed game from the back end. Bellefeuille came from a speed skating family, with his brother Gib being one of the more well known speed skaters in Canada in the early 1900s.
Si Griffis in 1940, in an interview with Ralph Adams of the Montreal Daily Star, not only claimed that the Rat Portage team that lost the Stanley Cup challenge series to Ottawa in 1905 was the best team that he could recollect, but also that their particular style of play helped paving the way for the six-man game:
Newly retired OHA president John Ross Robertson, known as a staunch defender of the amateur game, also took a stance against lifting in November 1905, and the November 15, 1905 issue of the Ottawa Citizen claimed that lifting was ”now considered poor hockey except in very close quarters.”[5]
And so the lifting game was effectively gone from the sport, and this without any rule makers even having to step in to intervene or direct the course. Instead a new puck-rushing crop of defencemen stepped in and took over the reigns, including such famous players as Hod Stuart, Art Ross, Jack Laviolette, and Frank and Lester Patrick.
Sources:
[1] Farrell, Arthur. Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game (1899)
[2] Spalding’s Athletic Library Ice Hockey and Ice Polo Guide (1898)
[3] The Toronto Star, Dec. 24, 1906
[4] The Montreal Daily Star, Oct. 16, 1940
[5] The Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 15, 1905
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
Other tweaks or changes include the introduction of forward passing, various offside rulings, as well as roster expansion and line changing.
One prominent tactical and stylistic feature of the late 1800s game, as well as a few years into the following century, that was later phased out of the game, was the art of lifting the puck. Lifting the puck was an exercise that fell almost exclusively on the shoulders of each team’s defence, most notably on the cover point, the more offensively inclined of the two defencemen.
Photograph from 1904’s Spalding’s Official Ice Hockey Guide showing the stick position for lifting the puck
The philosophy behind lifting was not only to quickly and safely get rid of the puck from your own end of the rink, but also to give your forwards an opportunity to regain possession of the puck higher up the ice and put pressure on the opposing team’s defence. Or as Montreal Hockey Club’s cover point Hugh Baird described it in Montreal Shamrocks player Arthur Farrell’s book Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game from 1899:
”In lifting the puck, attention should be given to direct it so that it shall not be sent to an opponent, but to the side or to an opening, in order to enable the forwards to follow it up and block the return.”[1]
The 1898 Spalding’s Ice Hockey and Ice Polo Guide, chronicling the 1896–97 hockey season, described lifting as an expert move and used a wording, ”an indescribable wrist motion or twist” and ”a full arm and body motion”, very much similar to how one would describe a golf swing, and claimed that the skill could only be attained by thorough practice.
The lifting move was also authorised by league ruling, an example being Rule X from the December 1896 ”Laws and Championship Rules of Ice Hockey”, amended by the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC), stating that ”No player shall raise his stick above his shoulder except in lifting the puck.”[2]
Sketch of Mike Grant, cover point of the Montreal Victorias, preparing to lift the puck during the February 1899 Stanley Cup series against the Winnipeg Victorias
(The Winnipeg Tribune, February 20, 1899)
Arthur Farrell, in the first chapter of Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game, claimed that lifting had been prohibited in the very early days of organised hockey in Montreal in the mid 1870s, when the Victoria Hockey Club and McGill University teams first roamed the slippery ice surfaces, which points to the practice being popularised and deemed legal at a somewhat later stage.[1]
Lifting seemed to escape the ruling against the forward pass as it was not deemed a pass at all, but instead merely something similar to punting in gridiron football, where the punting team hope to gain ground when possession changes between the teams. Hugh Baird again:
”A cover-point, in lifting the puck, should be guided by the positions of his players. If they are around his opponents’ defence, he should quickly lift the puck in their direction, in order to keep the play in that territory. In this case he should lift, and not dribble or slide the puck, because a lift is more difficult for his adversaries to secure. If his forwards are around his own defence and he is forced clear, he should shoot the puck in such a direction that will cause his opponents the most trouble to recover it, thus enabling his forwards to follow up with a chance of securing the return.”[1]
Tactically, lifting had both its pros and cons. It could be quite an effective offensive move, and sometimes even led to direct goals if the opposing goalkeeper lost track of the airborne puck, but it could also be fatiguing for the forwards to constantly chase a flying puck down the rink. It also risked giving away possession way too easily. A lifting competition between two teams could also be quite a tiresome thing to watch from the spectators point of view, as pointed out by Montreal Victorias defenceman Mike Grant in Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game.
Two expert lifters in hockey either prior to or around the turn of the century were cover points Fred Higginbotham of the Winnipeg Victorias and Art Moore of the Ottawa Hockey Club, the latter club colloquially known as the ”Ottawa Silver Seven.”
Fred Higginbotham and Art Moore
Fred Higginbotham, for instance, used the lifting move wonderfully to both his own and the Winnipeg Victorias advantage during the February 14, 1896 Stanley Cup challenge game against the Montreal Victorias, a game the Manitobans won 2 goals to 0 at the Victoria Skating Rink in Montreal after having displayed a strong defensive structure in the second half of the contest, keeping the puck well away from their own net.[2] This also marked the first time a team outside the AHAC had won the Stanley Cup.
Higginbotham, who was born in the late 1860s, died in a horse riding accident in Winnipeg on September 7, 1896, and thus never came to experience the eventual waning of the lifting game. Art Moore on the other hand was born in 1880 and played with the Ottawas in the early 1900s on a star-studded team that included all of Harvey Pulford, Harry ”Rat” Westwick and ”One Eyed” Frank McGee.
In 1905, the Ottawa Hockey Club had already won back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1903 and 1904 when they ran into a fast group of puck chasers from the small Ontarian town of Rat Portage, close to the Manitoba border, a team that they had already defeated once in a Stanley Cup series back in 1903 by a 10-4 (6-2, 4-2) score. It was in this best-of-three challenge series, played at Dey’s Arena in Ottawa between March 7 and 11 in 1905, that the tide eventually turned for good on lifting.
The Rat Portage Thistles with Tuff Bellefeuille on the right
The Rat Portage Thistles, later famously known as the Kenora Thistles due to the town changing its name, simply weren’t interested in playing a back-and-forth lifting game with Ottawa’s defence, so when Art Moore and point player Harvey Pulford scooped the puck their way they simply took possession of it and quickly skated it back down the other way.[3] Rat Portage had a number of excellent skaters on its team, including cover point Theophile ”Tuff” Bellefeuille, rover Silas ”Si” Griffis and left winger Tommy Phillips, and thus didn’t feel the need to play into Ottawa’s style of game.
Instead Ottawa quickly had to adapt to Rat Portage’s style of play to survive the series.
Rat Portage won the first game 9 goals to 3 in spectacular fashion, but despite losing the two following games 2-4 and 4-5, and thus nearly missing out on the Stanley Cup, the Thistles still left a strong mark on the sport. Two years later, in January 1907, they eventually laid their hands on the coveted cup after having defeated the Montreal Wanderers (4-2, 8-6) at the Montreal Arena.
The key changes on the 1905 Thistles from their earliest challenge series for the Stanley Cup, in March 1903 against the Ottawa Hockey Club (2-6, 2-4), were new goalkeeper Eddie Giroux and new cover point Tuff Bellefeuille, with Bellefeuille enabling them to play a more attacking speed game from the back end. Bellefeuille came from a speed skating family, with his brother Gib being one of the more well known speed skaters in Canada in the early 1900s.
Si Griffis in 1940, in an interview with Ralph Adams of the Montreal Daily Star, not only claimed that the Rat Portage team that lost the Stanley Cup challenge series to Ottawa in 1905 was the best team that he could recollect, but also that their particular style of play helped paving the way for the six-man game:
”Back in [the] days of 1903, defencemen had sticks with blades as wide as the goalkeeper’s. The Thistles trimmed theirs down considerably, abandoning the old tactics of the defence shovelling the puck into the air with a great sweep of the stick and permitting the balance of the team to scramble madly into the other end. The smaller stick for defencemen gained rapidly in popularity. With seven men carrying the puck, the ice surface was too crowded and this helped pave the way for the six-man game.”[4]
– Si Griffis in The Montreal Daily Star, October 16, 1940
The Toronto Star from December 24, 1906
– Si Griffis in The Montreal Daily Star, October 16, 1940
The Toronto Star from December 24, 1906
Newly retired OHA president John Ross Robertson, known as a staunch defender of the amateur game, also took a stance against lifting in November 1905, and the November 15, 1905 issue of the Ottawa Citizen claimed that lifting was ”now considered poor hockey except in very close quarters.”[5]
And so the lifting game was effectively gone from the sport, and this without any rule makers even having to step in to intervene or direct the course. Instead a new puck-rushing crop of defencemen stepped in and took over the reigns, including such famous players as Hod Stuart, Art Ross, Jack Laviolette, and Frank and Lester Patrick.
Sources:
[1] Farrell, Arthur. Hockey: Canada’s Royal Winter Game (1899)
[2] Spalding’s Athletic Library Ice Hockey and Ice Polo Guide (1898)
[3] The Toronto Star, Dec. 24, 1906
[4] The Montreal Daily Star, Oct. 16, 1940
[5] The Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 15, 1905
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
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