B’s-Habs rose from the ashes of another MTL rivalry

Author’s note: This piece of research on an event that effectively made the historic Bruins-Canadiens feud possible sat dormant for years. It was being saved for said event’s centennial on Along the Boards. Naturally, ATB has since given way to Pucks and Recreation, but here we are all the same. Enjoy.

Bears and fire have repeatedly made a cultural odd couple in North America.

No character preaches the need to avert undue forest flames quite like Smokey. In Michigan, indigenous folklore attributes the lake-bound Sleeping Bear Dunes to a mother and two cubs who drowned whilst fleeing a conflagration.

And you can trace hockey’s longest-tenured ursine mascot back to a building’s blaze. The man who would proclaim and animate the identity of the Boston Bruins did so after such a setback prompted his retirement from playing.

When he did, he created the complement for what is widely considered the NHL’s most time-honored rivalry. Under different circumstances, he might have done the same thing with the same foe. But he would have done it in another capacity, city and country.

Art Ross could have been a short-term savior for the Montreal Wanderers, who hosted the bulk of his career as a defenseman. He could have found his legs as a manager and coach in his adopted hometown. Then, if nothing else, he might have catalyzed a Wanderers-Canadiens rivalry to last a decade or two.

Instead, uncontrolled circumstances forced him to find himself outside his gear and outside Montreal. The Wanderers’ rink burned down while his career was at a crossroads between the blue line and the front office. As higher-ups cut their losses, they also cut short a Hall-of-Fame career and a healthy cultural clash for the Habs.

But that enshrinement-worthy resume and that French-and-English feud for le Club de hockey Canadien would rise again.

Following the fire of Jan. 2, 1918, Ross took six years to land back on solid ice. But when he did, he effectively catalyzed the foundation of the Bruins-Canadiens rivalry. He would participate in the first three decades of that saga, which has since assumed a throne among NHL grudges.

Just call it a case of secondary succession for Ross’ legacy and Habs history.

Elementary ecology explains how naturally occurring forest fires allow for stronger ecosystems than the predecessors they raze. In the aftermath, the landscape is a lesser version of itself. But over time, if left alone or helped along, the surviving elements form a basis for an impressive recuperation.

The structure blaze that wiped out Montreal’s Westmount Arena was anything but natural. It was speculated as stemming from faulty electrical wiring. As the Montreal Gazette noted, that dangerous flaw somehow eluded a routine safety inspection mere days prior.

The Gazette headline for the same report accurately heralded, “ARENA NOT LIKELY TO RISE FROM ASHES.”

To be sure, the literal landscape around the Westmount district was permanently altered. Even so, the fire inevitably set Ross on a rebuilding odyssey for his hockey endeavors. In time, the same proved true for the NHL in general and its oldest franchise.

The search for the rebound
Ross was all but a previous incarnation of Mario Lemieux. He was a Montreal kid with a jutting on-ice talent who was later in an out of the front office. At 32 going on 33, he appeared to be rekindling his playing days amidst the NHL’s inaugural season.

But his team’s barn became unexpected kindling 11 days before Ross’ 33rd birthday.

As it pertained to the local hockey scene, the fire took rows of potential along with the rink. A test of past and present was only getting started at the time.

With 24, the Canadiens’ championship banner collection now dwarfs those of all other NHL franchises. Nonetheless, the history section of their website humbly concedes that the Wanderers were “Montreal’s first hockey dynasty.”

From a professional standpoint, that is true. As the Stanley Cup shifted from amateur to paid competitors, the Wanderers were regulars at the championship and challenge stages. They were the official champions in 1906, 1908 and 1910. In each intervening odd-numbered year, they took part in the interleague challenge.

Beginning in 1907, the crafty Ross logged nine seasons with the Wanderers over three stints. They nabbed him from the Kenora Thistles, who had just vanquished them for the Cup. When Ross switched to Montreal, so did the trophy, as the 1906 victors reclaimed the title in 1908.

The Canadiens came along the next year, setting up a cut-and-dry civic feud. Les Habitants would cater to Montreal’s French-speaking fans while the Wanderers were the pride of the Anglophone audience.

But per the Canadiens’ website, the rivalry did not manifest much on the ice. Only two Wanderers-Canadiens clashes from their days in the National Hockey Association exist on the record.

When the NHA gave way to the NHL in 1917, the groundwork appeared solid for a surge in tension. Montreal comprised half of the four-team foundation, joining the original Ottawa Senators and Toronto.

By that point, though, the Wanderers’ on-ice fortunes had shriveled. As historian Eric Zweig noted in a Ross biography, they were practically a burden to the new league. They were even the butt of jokes in the local press. Ross, who had first tried team management between Montreal stints, assumed the task of making something out of nothing.

At the NHL’s outset, fate dwindled the Wanderers’ lot in talent and support. One month before the fire, they lost a pair of leaned-on brothers in Sprague and Odie Cleghorn. The former sustained a season-ending leg injury, the latter was pressed into Canada’s World War I effort.

As such, Ross stepped in as a player-coach, if only to implant a badly needed body. Although, he was hardly an empty uniform. Ross was swift on his skates, deft with his stick and cerebral to boot. As a hint to his toughness, he ran away with the team’s penalty-minute lead, racking up 12 in three appearances.

But he alone could only do so much to manage, let alone heal a low-quantity, low-quality roster. The Wanderers’ only NHL-era crack at the Canadiens — the two-time defending NHA champions — illustrated that reality. On Dec. 21, 1917, the preferred team of Montreal’s English sector bowed to its down-the-hall superior, 11-2.

To precede injury with insult, three nights earlier, Westmount drew an audience south of 700 to what would be the Wanderers’ only NHL victory. After all of that, a home-and-home sweep by Ottawa dropped them to 1-3-0. In the midst of those back-to-back losses, Ross himself sustained a back injury.

But it was just one month and four games. Plenty of time to turn around. A new month and a new year were approaching, and a clean slate along with them.

Wanderers, Tigers and Bruins
Perhaps the events of Jan. 2, 1918, hastened a host of inevitabilities. The Wanderers’ sluggish start, though a slim sample size, reflected and exacerbated a monetary mess.

By contrast, while they had also lost their digs, the Habs had not a hitch following the fire. Borrowing equipment from other teams, they moved back to Jubilee Rink, where both Montreal pro teams had resided for one season circa 1910.

With that, the nascent NHL finished its first season with three member clubs. Subsequent attempts to reboot the Wanderers in time for the start of the 1918-19 campaign fell through. In their stead, an old NHA brand resurfaced in the form of the Quebec Bulldogs. They began play as the Athletics in 1919-20.

By that point, Ross had completed his conversion from player to referee. His next partisan endeavor in the league would be as the first coach of the Hamilton Tigers. He went 6-18-0, and was done after one campaign in 1922-23.

Translation: Five years after his previous team folded, the 38-year-old Ross had still not hit his stride behind the bench. Although, maybe if fate granted the Wanderers more time to become an NHL staple, he would have had a smoother transition to his new roles.

Ross or no Ross, fire or no fire, it is also worth noting how the Habs’ relationship with both the Wanderers’ and Tigers’ old cities have evolved. Since Ross’ passing, they have tabbed Montreal and Hamilton as farm rather than foe bases. They made the Montreal Voyageurs their AHL club from 1969 to 1971. The Hamilton Bulldogs played the same role from 2002 to 2015.

But even in Ross’ day, it did not take long for the sources of more fertile ice to get their chance. Amidst his Hamilton stint, Montreal failed at multiple efforts to become a two-team city again. When it finally clicked, the NHL had erstwhile managed to hop over the American border. The dual developments were those of the Montreal Maroons and an as-yet-unnamed Boston franchise.

In a world of poetic bilingual justice for Quebec’s Metropolis, Ross would have reemerged with his old city’s new brand. Instead, he ventured southward and assumed the task of christening Charles F. Adams’ franchise.

With or without the Wanderers, the NHL was bound to spill into the U.S. soon. The Hub of New England was a natural epicenter for that step, given the region’s fondness for grassroots and collegiate hockey.

A change of scenery, and a change of country, benefitted Ross as much as it would the Habs and their craving for a lasting cultural clash.

Granted, the Maroons assuaged Montreal’s English population by ending that community’s six-year NHL absence. They were also more competitive than the NHL-era Wanderers, winning two Cups (including one in their sophomore season of 1925-26).

But the intramural rivalry at the Montreal Forum would be over by 1938. The Great Depression rendered the city a one-team entity, and the Canadiens were again the clear-cut superior.

Moreover, the elements for a rivalry between Boston and the bleu, blanc et rouge outclassed anything the Wanderers or Maroons invited. Boston is the largest city in New England, Montreal the largest in what was once New France. The Canadiens were the last pro hockey franchise to predate the NHL still standing in their country. Boston was the league’s first tenant to represent the southern neighbor.

And with Ross’ help, the Beantown squad would take extra strides in its identity contrasts with the Habs. Those strides began with the fabled nickname origin.

As the story commonly goes, Adams wanted to cross-promote his club with his grocery chain. Selecting brown as the predominant color, he insisted on an animal mascot synonymous with that hue. As additional prerequisites, the symbol must be “untamed” and evoke “size, strength, agility, ferocity and cunning.”

Ross took those conditions to his secretary. They programmed the prerequisites into the pre-computer-age machine called a brain. The bear emerged as a perfect match, though the synonym “bruin” had a better ring. Appropriately enough, the term has mixed roots in Middle Dutch and Old and Middle English words for a brown bear.

Record-wise, the Boston Bruins’ first impression matched that of the Ross-era Hamilton Tigers. But despite another 6-18-0 finish to that 1924-25 campaign, Ross was retained as coach and general manager.

One key measuring pole hinted at his evolution in the field. Whereas the Wanderers brooked the aforementioned 11-2 shellacking in their first NHL bout with the Canadiens, the Bruins turned heads when the Habs visited Boston.

On Dec. 8, 1924, the scrappy ambassadors to New England deleted 1-0 and 2-1 deficits, then briefly led, 3-2, before losing a 4-3 squeaker to the defending champions. As late as 2012, the Gazette was still reminiscing on that night and all it portended.

The paper’s own account at the time supposed it was “the fastest exhibition of hockey ever seen by Boston fans.” It added that the locals had witnessed “the best exhibition of the Canadian game on record here.”

Assuming the merits of that assessment, average New Englanders were seeing nothing most Montrealers did not already appreciate. In fact, Adams’ trips to La Metropole had inspired his pursuit of an NHL vehicle. And now he had left its engineering to a hockey mind who did much of his brain-picking there.

Building big and bad
With his mulligan, Ross went on to flaunt more team-building savvy and raise Boston from its humble beginnings. He began poaching West Coast League teams in much the same fashion the Wanderers seized his services from Kenora.

Such acquisitions as blueliner Eddie Shore would come as close as humanly possible to reflecting the qualities Adams wanted in the team emblem. More crucially, the sinewy, sandpaper style Shore and company brought was crucial to curbing the Canadiens’ flair.

By the Bruins’ fifth year, they had their first playoff meeting with Montreal, and would sweep the best-of-five semifinal. They clinched the series at the Forum, one block away from Westmount’s old site. Building on that, they dethroned the defending champion New York Rangers for their first Stanley Cup.

Ross’ role in the front office fluctuated between coach-GM and simply GM over the next quarter-century. Either way, he was directly involved in seven more Boston-Montreal playoff tilts. The Habs retorted immediately in 1930 and 1931, and would win four more rounds on Ross’ watch. The lone exception was a 1943 semifinal series.

Ross retired altogether in 1954, right after Maurice Richard and company had vanquished his team for a third consecutive postseason. But while the 93-year-old Bruins-Canadiens saga has been largely Montreal’s to savor, both franchises’ defining characteristics have rarely wavered.

Since Ross’ retirement and death in 1964, his co-foundation has inspired different generations of the Big, Bad Bruins. Those clubs have had to solve the Flying Frenchmen or equivalent phenomena.

Boston’s blue-collar buffs have variously lauded the physicality of Terry O’Reilly, Cam Neely and Milan Lucic. Montreal rooters have delighted in Guy Lafleur, Mats Naslund and Saku Koivu drawing and capitalizing on power plays.

Habs fans have booed Boston captain Zdeno Chara, both for being the Bruins captain and for injuring flashy Montreal forward Max Pacioretty. They have protested when their new head coach lacked fluency in French.

The Bell Centre masses have booed the “Star-Spangled Banner” on many occasions, but particularly when the B’s visit for the playoffs. Their TD Garden counterparts have percolated “U-S-A!” chants when hosting the Habs.

The Montreal Gazette called the first Bruins-Canadiens game “the fastest exhibition of hockey ever seen by Boston fans.” It added that the locals had witnessed “the best exhibition of the Canadian game on record here.”

Could something similar have sprung if Ross remained a Montrealer into the 1920s and beyond? At some points, and in spurts, most likely.

But would the Bruins have been the Bruins — in name and in practice — without Ross as their founding ice-level patriarch? Would New England and New France, brawn and beauty, grit and grace, force and finesse have forged an unmatched 34 playoff encounters?

Most likely not. Had Westmount and the Wanderers lived, Ross likely would have stayed in a playing redux, a management apprenticeship or both. He might have been able to put the latter on hold and keep manning the blue line.

Then he may never have dabbled in officiating. He may never have transferred to Hamilton or anywhere else.

And even if the Wanderers did not last long beyond 1918, the window between their demise and the Maroons’ inception would have been shorter. In those events, Ross would have more likely been available for Montreal’s new Anglophone franchise.

And then Boston would have had a different team with a different lineage. Meanwhile, Ross’ rivalry with the Habs might have stayed intramural instead of going international.