Pacific Coast Hockey Association
Sport | Ice hockey |
---|---|
Founded | 1911 |
First season | 1912 |
Ceased | 1924 |
Countries | Canada United States |
Last champion(s) | Vancouver Maroons |
Most titles | Vancouver Millionaires/Maroons |
The Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) was a professional ice hockey league in western Canada and the western United States, which operated from 1911 to 1924 when it then merged with the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL). The PCHA was considered to be a major league of ice hockey and was important in the development of the sport of professional ice hockey through its innovations.
The league was started by the Patrick family, professional hockey players from Montreal, building new arenas in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. After a few years of play, the league was accepted by the Stanley Cup trustees as being of a high enough standard that teams from its league were accepted for Stanley Cup challenges. Starting in 1915, the league entered into an agreement where the Stanley Cup was to be contested between the National Hockey Association and the PCHA after the regular seasons were finished. The league struggled to make money, and various teams moved into different cities in an attempt to be successful financially. Eventually, the league, to survive, merged with the WCHL in 1924.
History
After playing for the
Once it became clear that the arenas would be built in time, the Patricks raided the National Hockey Association (NHA) for players, although with only three teams and no substitutes, the entire league only had 23 players under contract (including two reserves in case of injury). All players were paid by the league, unlike the NHA with its competing teams. The PCHA distributed players amongst the teams. Newsy Lalonde of the Canadiens would be the most notable player to move west, to play for Vancouver. The league was formally organized on December 7, 1911 to be run by Frank and Lester, who would also play for and manage the Vancouver and Victoria teams.[2] The Victoria arena would open to the public on Christmas Day 1911, and the first game of the PCHA was played on January 3, 1912, only a year after the Patricks decided to form the new league.[3] The first league championship for the Patterson Cup trophy was won by the New Westminster Royals.
The league did not challenge for the
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For the 1912–13 season the PCHA continued to raid the east for players. Besides Taylor,
During the 1913–14 season, the PCHA and the NHA started to act together, coming to agreements to recognize each other's player suspensions and contracts, and instituting a controlled "draft" process to facilitate the transfer of players. In a further agreement, the champions of each league would face each other for the Stanley Cup. After the 1914 season, league champion Victoria came east to play the first "World Series of hockey" challenge series with the Toronto Blueshirts for the Stanley Cup. After the series, the Stanley Cup trustees came to agreement with the NHA and PCHA and the challenge era of the Stanley Cup came to an end. Yearly playoffs between the leagues would become the new manner of deciding the Stanley Cup champion. In the 1914–15 season, Vancouver defeated the Ottawa Senators in a best-of-five series to become the PCHA's first Stanley Cup champions.
The league expanded into the United States in 1914 (
Relations with the NHA turned sour in 1915, with the Patricks accusing the league of reneging on their agreements. In retaliation, the PCHA again went on a raid for NHA players, particularly ones with the Toronto Blueshirts. Five players from Toronto became the core of the new Seattle team.
In 1918, the PCHA introduced playoffs for the first time. Until that year, the team with the best record over the season had been declared the champion and challenged for the Stanley Cup. With the creation of playoffs, it was the winner in the post-season who would be league champion.
In 1921, the Western Canada Hockey League, another western major league of hockey, was formed, and the Stanley Cup playoffs were modified to include teams from the WCHL. The following two years, which would turn out to be the last two years of the PCHA, the league played interleague games with the WCHL. In the last year of the PCHA, all three remaining teams finished with losing records.
In 1924, the Seattle Metropolitans folded, and the two remaining teams in Vancouver and Victoria joined the WCHL (renamed the Western Hockey League), putting an end to the PCHA. The Victoria Cougars would win the Stanley Cup in 1925, but this win would be the last by a non-NHL team, and the last by a team from the west coast until the Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007.
The merged league did not last long, as the WHL was unable to match the NHL's American expansion and its player salaries, which led the Patrick brothers to sell players or, in the case of the
Innovations
The league introduced numerous innovations to the sport of ice hockey:
- blue lines and goal creases
- forward passing
- penalty shots
- playoffs
- removed rule that goalies must stay on their feet
The PCHA also developed a farm system for players, and were the first Canadian league to expand into the United States.[5]
The PCHA is also credited with introducing
Women's ice hockey
As early as January 1916, Frank and Lester Patrick talked of the formation of a women's league to complement the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.[8] The proposal included teams from Vancouver, Victoria, Portland and Seattle. The league never formed.
In February 1921, Frank Patrick announced a women's international championship series that would be played in conjunction with the Pacific Coast Hockey Association.[9] The three teams that competed were the Vancouver Amazons, Victoria Kewpies, and Seattle Vamps.
On February 21, 1921, the Seattle Vamps competed against the Vancouver Amazons in Vancouver, and were vanquished by a 5–0 score. Two days later, the Vamps played against a team from the University of British Columbia and won the game. Jerry Reed scored three goals (a hat trick) in the game for the Vamps. In both games, the Vancouver media referred to the Seattle team as the Seattle Sweeties.[10] The Amazons would travel to Seattle and defeat them again. On March 2, 1921, the Vamps were defeated by the Kewpies 1–0 in Seattle. In the rematch on March 12, the Vamps travelled to Victoria. The result was a 1–1 tie, and Jerry Reed scored the goal for Seattle. The goaltender for the Vamps was Mildren Terran.[10] After the 1921 season, the Vamps and the Kewpies ceased operations.
Seasons of play
Season | Teams | Champion |
---|---|---|
1912 | New Westminster Royals, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Senators | New Westminster Royals |
1912–13 | New Westminster Royals, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Senators | Victoria Senators |
1913–14 | New Westminster Royals, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Aristocrats | Victoria Aristocrats |
1914–15 | Portland Rosebuds, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Aristocrats | Vancouver Millionaires † |
1915–16 | Portland Rosebuds, Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Aristocrats | Portland Rosebuds ‡ |
1916–17 | Portland Rosebuds, Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Millionaires, Spokane Canaries | Seattle Metropolitans † |
1917–18 | Portland Rosebuds, Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Millionaires | Vancouver Millionaires (two-game playoff against Seattle) ‡ |
1919 | Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Aristocrats | Seattle Metropolitans (two-game playoff against Vancouver) |
1919–20 | Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Aristocrats | Seattle Metropolitans (two-game playoff against Vancouver) ‡ |
1920–21 | Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Aristocrats | Vancouver Millionaires (two-game playoff against Seattle) ‡ |
1921–22 | Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Millionaires, Victoria Aristocrats | Vancouver Millionaires (two-game playoff against Seattle) ‡ |
1922–23 | Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Maroons, Victoria Cougars
|
Vancouver Maroons (two-game playoff against Victoria) |
1923–24 | Seattle Metropolitans, Vancouver Maroons, Victoria Cougars | Vancouver Maroons (two-game playoff against Seattle) |
† | Stanley Cup champion |
‡ | Stanley Cup runner-up |
All-Star teams and other awards
- 1913–14 – Dubbie Kerr, Victoria, forward.
- 1914–15 – Hugh Lehman, Vancouver, goal; Moose Johnson, Portland, and Lester Patrick, Victoria on defence; Cyclone Taylor, Vancouver, rover; and Mickey MacKay, Vancouver, Eddie Oatman, Portland, and Frank Nighbor, Vancouver, forward.
- 1916–17 – Frank Foyston, Seattle - most valuable player
- 1917–18 – Cyclone Taylor, Vancouver - most valuable player
Career leading scorers
GP = Games Played, G = Goals, A = Assists, Pts = Points
Player | GP | G | A | Pts |
---|---|---|---|---|
Mickey MacKay | 245 | 200 | 90 | 290 |
Cyclone Taylor | 137 | 158 | 104 | 262 |
Tommy Dunderdale | 239 | 193 | 60 | 253 |
Frank Foyston | 239 | 186 | 61 | 247 |
Smokey Harris | 251 | 155 | 89 | 244 |
Bernie Morris | 163 | 154 | 76 | 230 |
Eddie Oatman | 191 | 123 | 75 | 198 |
Frank Fredrickson | 161 | 131 | 61 | 192 |
Lloyd Cook | 222 | 107 | 57 | 164 |
Jack Walker | 225 | 85 | 65 | 150 |
Source: Bowlsby 2012, p. 378[11]
See also
References
- ^ Whitehead 1980, pp. 103–105
- ^ Whitehead 1980, p. 106
- ^ Whitehead 1980, p. 107
- ^ Whitehead 1980, pp. 115–117
- ^ Boileau & Wolf 2002, p. 51
- ^ Whitehead 1980, p. 127
- ^ Bowlsby 2012, p. 20
- ^ Norton 2009, p. 120.
- ^ Norton 2009, p. 115.
- ^ a b Norton 2009, p. 119.
- ^ Bowlsby 2012, p. 378
References
- Boileau, Ron; Wolf, Philip (2002), "The Pacific Coast Hockey Association: Innovative Pioneer League Took Top Hockey West", in Diamond, Dan (ed.), Total Hockey: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League (Second ed.), New York: Total Sports Publishing, pp. 51–54, ISBN 1-892129-85-X
- Bowlsby, Craig H. (2012), Empire of Ice: The Rise and Fall of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, 1911–1926, Vancouver: Knights of Winter, ISBN 978-0-9691705-6-3
- Coleman, Charles L. (1964), The Trail of the Stanley Cup, Volume 1: 1893–1926 inc., Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing, OCLC 957132
- Cosentino, Frank (1990), The Renfrew Millionaires: The Valley Boys of Winter 1910, Burnstown, Ontario: General Store Publishing House, ISBN 0-919431-35-6
- Holzman, Morey; Nieforth, Joseph (2002), Deceptions and Doublecross: How the NHL Conquered Hockey, Toronto: Dundurn Press, ISBN 1-55002-413-2
- McKinley, Michael (2000), Putting a Roof on Winter: Hockey's Rise from Sport to Spectacle, Vancouver: Greystone Books, ISBN 1-55054-798-4
- Norton, Wayne (2009), Women on Ice: The Early Years of Women's Hockey in Western Canada, Ronsdale Press, ISBN 978-1-55380-073-6
- Ross, J. Andrew (2015), Joining the Clubs: The Business of the National Hockey League to 1945, Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, ISBN 978-0-8156-3383-9
- Whitehead, Eric (1977), Cyclone Taylor: A Hockey Legend, Toronto: Doubleday Canada, ISBN 0-385-13063-5
- Whitehead, Eric (1980), The Patricks: Hockey's Royal Family, New York City: Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-15662-6
- Wong, John (2018), "The Patricks's Hockey Empire: Cultural Entrepreneurship and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, 1911–1924", The International Journal of the History of Sport, 35 (7–8): 673–693,
- Wong, John Chi-Kit (2012), "Boomtown Hockey: The Vancouver Millionaires", in Wong, John Chi-Kit (ed.), Coast to Coast: Hockey in Canada to the Second World War, Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, pp. 223–257, ISBN 978-0-8020-9532-9
- Wong, John Chi-Kit (2005), Lords of the Rinks: The Emergence of the National Hockey League 1875–1936, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ISBN 0-8020-8520-2
External links
- Internet Hockey Database - standings and statistics