When Frank Boucher tried to "fix" hockey

[The Macho King]

I found a mention of Frank Boucher advocating for eliminating the red line in 1951. Along with Art Ross, one of the original hockey innovators.

Montreal Gazette, April 13, 1951
The Montreal Gazette - Google News Archive Search

Art Ross is the man who suggests that the red line be removed from centre ice and that a team be allowed to pass a puck right up to the other team’s blue line. He also wants to make it compulsory that the puck be carried over the blue line and not shot in, which he thinks would eliminate the ganging in the end zones. Frank Boucher may be the only hockey executive who endorses the idea.

“It’s the ganging in the end zones that makes the game deteriorate into shinny,” he said. “Anything that will eliminate it is an improvement.”

But Frank Selke, Jack Adams and Conn Smythe are all for maintaining the status quo.

“There isn’t anything with the present rules of hockey as long as they are enforced,” says Frank Selke.

I found mention of him wanting to eliminate the red line in 1949.

"Frank Boucher...does not approve or applaud the rules of this era which have turned hockey into a combination of shinny and wrestling with no holds barred. Mons. Boucher has also declared that the red line, which he says he invented as a wartime measure, has outlived its welcome and should be scrapped."

Additionally some thoughts from that same article on goaltender interference:

"I would increase the goal crease by a foot out front and six inches to each side of the goal. There also should be a penalty for anyone who moves into the crease and interferes with the goalkeeper before the puck enters said crease. Gaolkeepers have little enough chance without allowing players to park on their toes."

 

[namttebih]

So would the proposed removal of "tenacious forechecking" a desire to remove dump and chase?

 

[overpass]

I think Win, Tie, or Wrangle went into some detail on this. From memory I think they said Weldy Young was known for his backhand lifts that could almost hit the rafters. Possibly exaggerated of course.

My sense is that lifting was less of an offensive move than your dump and chase from the offensive blue line or red line. Used to get the puck out of trouble, or like a punt in football to trade possession for territory.

There’s a mention of lifts in this article.

Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge ... (by Tim Falconer)

The second half started with the points and cover points trading long lifts. But it quickly became clear the Klondikers lacked the necessary conditioning and were now too tired to compete with the champions.

Since conditioning is brought up, it occurs to me that in a time when players played the full game, they wouldn’t have the wind to repeatedly execute a modern style dump and chase. Which is why lifting usually led to a change in possession.

I have my copy of Win, Tie, or Wrangle by my desk. The strategy of lifting is mentioned in their description of the early Ottawa defencemen, particularly Weldy Young. It looks like Young lifted the puck to test the goalie with a bouncing puck.

"Between 1893 and 1903, when the Ottawas rose from also-rans to champions, three defensive players stood out at the positions of point and cover point: Harvey "the Slugger" Pulford, Weldy "Chalk" Young, and William Duval. These were not glamorous positions; they did not afford much opportunity for creativity. The point and cover point defended against oncoming rushes, bowled over opponents at any opportunity, and retrieved the puck. Occasionally one or the other would take off on a solo dash, but mostly those defenders were content to find a forward to pass the puck to, always laterally of course, since forward passes were not allowed. Other than through tough physical play, the best way for a defensive player to gain notice was by perfecting the art of lifting. Crowds loved it when a defender would flick his stick under the puck and hoist it high in the air and down the ice, both teams in pursuit. Occasionally the disk would disappear in the rafters and not return. Sometimes it would break a globe.

Chalk and the Bytown Slugger were quite the defensive pair. From 1894 to 1898 they were the dominant combination in the game, feared because of Chalk's spectacular rushes and the Slugger's punishing body checks. Chalk played cover point, the Slugger was at point.

Chalk lived at the fire station where his father was the chief superintendent. He worked as an engraver in the watchmaking and jewellers business he operated with brothers George and Robert. George had been a member of the original Ottawa Hockey Club. Chalk was best known for hockey, but he was also a good football player as a fullback with the Ottawa Football Club, where he was captain in 1895. His football teammates included Pulford, Chittick, Alf Smith, and Frank McGee. Chalk broke in with the Ottawas as a nineteen-year-old in 1890, and immediately became active on the organizational side. He was a member of the club's executive committee for four years, was team captain in 1893 and 1894, and was a vice-president of the AHAC from 1893 to 1897. Chalk was also a referee, and one so trusted for impartiality that he was chosen to officiate the MAAA-Victoria match in March 1894 to decide which team would play his own Ottawa for the league championship. He also had the distinction of refereeing the December 1896 Stanley Cup match in Winnipeg between the local Victorias and the Victorias of Montreal.

As a cover point, Chalk loved to take chances rushing the puck. His charges up ice were described as "ambitious", "splendid", and "beautiful" runs that usually resulted in a shot on goal or a sharp pass. Occasionally on these adventures he would lose control of the puck and not get back in time to defend. That's when Pulford, the Slugger, would come to his assistance by riding the attacker off to the side, punctuating his action with a shoulder to the chest. Chalk was also an excellent lifter who had a talent for lobbing a shot so that it would bounce a couple of feet in front of the goalkeeper and bounce crazily. For someone known as an even-handed referee, he could get into trouble as a player. He was not above taking a vicious slash at an opponent's ankle or going into the stands after a heckler."

 

[tarheelhockey]

So would the proposed removal of "tenacious forechecking" a desire to remove dump and chase?

It would seem so. Boucher wanted a game based on successful offensive rushes, not turnovers.

The underlying concept of dump-and-chase had been in development for a long time, but I believe the term "dump and chase" first gained popularity during the early 1960s, right around the same time Boucher's criticisms were published.

 

[DJ Man]

Nice research there. Some of that I wouldn't want to see enacted (slap shots, obviously, the tripping stuff, and no checking three feet from the boards could get messy), but a lot of that was very forward thinking. I do think that the no icing unless down two men idea is interesting. I don't know how well I think it would work, but it would be pretty interesting to see how it would play out in some sort of experiment.

The WHA still called icing even when a team was shorthanded, and I do recall that the penalty-killers would accept an icing and a faceoff just to break the offensive momentum. Maybe there's some historical evidence as to how their rule worked out.

 

[overpass]

In late 1964, in the wake of the USSR's first gold medal, Boucher made a prescient observation: the Russians were still playing and perfecting a style of hockey they had learned from Canadians prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain... prior to the introduction of the red line. A style heavily focused on puck possession, crisply coordinated neutral zone passes, smooth entries across the blue line, and methodically working the puck toward the net. The Canadians were looking to turn dump-ins and chaotic forechecks into goalmouth scrambles and ugly goals. In Boucher's view, the Canadians needed to re-learn how to pass as well as the Russians, or they would be in for a hard battle for world supremacy.

You know who else was a proponent of passing, possession-based hockey and was against dump and chase hockey? Eddie Shore. Like Boucher, Shore was sidelined by the hockey establishment.

Tim Burke wrote in his Montreal Gazette column of March 19, 1985, after Shore's death:

When Bill White, the superb Chicago defensive defenceman, was with Team Canada in the epic Canada-U.S.S.R. series in '72, I asked him what magic the Soviets had used when they blew our heroes out 7-3 in Game 1 here. White, who played five years in Springfield, smiled and said "No magic. They just pulled all the old Eddie Shore stuff on us."

Bep Guidolin, the youngest player in NHL history (16) who played for Shore at the end of his career, said that if anyone dumped the puck in "he was benched immediately...Like the Russians, you held on to the puck until you found an opening. And like the Russians, you never stood still."

Bill White said that the best experience a young player could have was "two or three years...then it was time to leave."

White, who works with his old defence mate Pat (Whitey) Stapleton in Fundamentals in Action (a program of how to perform in game situations) laughed and said:

"Most of it is the stuff Eddie showed us."

 

[overpass]

Here's an article from 1958 contrasting the Russian style of play to NHL clutch and grab hockey, and comparing Russian hockey to old-time NHL hockey. And another mention of Eddie Shore being for skilled hockey.

The Province, Feb 1, 1958, Alf Cottrell

It seems strange now, the way some of us were for years banging away at the moguls for sticking to the clutch and grab style of hockey, and getting nowhere. From the cold reception we got you would think we were asking for the moon wrapped up in a red bandanna.

I recall Eddie Shore making himself unpopular in 1953 by asking that these features be eliminated. Not that being unpopular was anything new to him, for he was never a man you could break to saddle. Said Shore, as Hockey News then quoted him: "Name your favorite star. Then consider the factors that suddenly halt his eye-appealing displays. He gains possession of the puck. Because of superior speed, or innate skill, he starts a dash down the ice.

"Then, before he can make noticeable headway a lesser, often a tawdry performer either holds or hooks him, and the glittering effort is ruined."

Shore was laughed out of court by a bunch of eastern scribes who always wrote as if the National Hockey League was paying half their salaries.

At last came the winter of hockey's discontent. A bunch of tourists from Russia came over to play hockey and suddenly, when they started playing hockey, they ceased to look like tourists from Russia. They played hockey as it was played before hooking, holding and interference became things to be winked at. And the fans liked this almost forgotten game.