How the Irish championed hockey in the national capital

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As Ottawans watch the Senators battle toward a playoff spot, take a moment on St. Patrick’s day to learn about the impact the Irish have had on hockey in this city. Irish sports historian Samuel Kingston provides an overview of those deep connections:

From Montréal, organized hockey spread west, including to Ottawa. Ottawa teams were perhaps the strongest in Canada for the first three decades of the 1900s, creating two dynasties with the Irish playing a central role. A key player in the first dynasty was Frank McGee. He was from a prominent political family: his uncle was Irish-born Thomas D’Arcy McGee, a father of Confederation. Frank was an avid sports player. He excelled at hockey and was a much sought-after player, becoming a key member of the Ottawa hockey club that would go down in history as the Ottawa Silver Seven. Ottawa retained the Stanley Cup from 1903 to 1906.

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In 1904, the Ottawa team demolished a Dawson City team that had travelled from the Yukon. That team had been organized by Joseph Boyle of Irish ancestry. During the Great War, his heroic actions saw him become a national hero in Romania. A member of the Dawson team had questioned McGee’s ability after the first game in which he only scored once. McGee scored 14 goals in the second match, still a Stanley Cup record and unlikely to be broken. In 1905, Winnipeg challenged for the cup. Their star player was William Breen, whose parents had settled in Winnipeg from the north of Ireland. Breen was an all-around sports star in the city but was no match for the aggression of the Ottawa team, which was often criticized for its overly physical approach to playing.

McGee was a small man but could mix flair with the physical side of the game. He lost an eye playing in a game, which eventually led to him retiring from hockey in 1906 at just 23. He was perhaps influenced by both family and work. His brother Jim had been killed in a horse riding accident in 1904 and the family feared that Frank would suffer another serious injury, while the Department of Indian Affairs, where he worked, was not keen to allow him travel to play hockey. His last season saw Ottawa defeat Queen’s University from Kingston. A key member of that team was Marty Walsh who would later join Ottawa and in 1911, Walsh scored 10 goals in one Stanley Cup game.

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McGee saw active service during the Great War, having tricked the doctor to gain entry. He was killed in action in September 1916. His body was never recovered. Sadly for the family, Frank’s death came a year after his brother Charles was also killed in the Great War. Such was Frank McGee’s hockey legacy that he was one of the original nine inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The 1920s saw the emergence of the first NHL dynasty, the Super Six. The team now known as the Ottawa Senators won four titles between 1920 and 1927. These teams featured many Irish surnames: goaltender Alec Connell, the Denneny brothers Cy and Corb, Hec Kilrea, and Frank Finnigan who years later helped the campaign to bring back the Senators in the early 1990s.

The star player in the mid-1920s was Francis “King” Clancy. He was not a big man but a larger than life character on and off the ice. He got his nickname from his father, the Irish born Tom Clancy, who was a top rugby footballer in Ottawa in the early 1900s. When the Senators faced financial difficulties in the Great Depression, Clancy was sold to the Toronto Maple Leafs for a large sum. Clancy became a hockey legend.

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That large sum wasn’t enough to save the Senators, who eventually moved to St.Louis to become the Eagles in 1934. At the time of the move, the team owner was Frank Ahearn. His father Thomas was a local captain of Industry and his successes in the emerging electricity market made him a prominent Ottawa citizen. He also drove the first horseless carriage in Ottawa in 1899. Thomas was thrown out of school at 16 for misbehaviour and his success is remarkable coming from a poor background with his parents having left Ireland and having settled in the LeBreton Flats area.

The man behind the Senators’ success in the 1920s was Tommy Gorman. His background was lacrosse and he was part of the gold medal-winning Canadian Olympic team in 1908. He was skilled at identifying hockey talent and played an important role in building the Senators team that won the Stanley Cup in 1920, 1921, and 1923. Training those teams was Frank Dolan, with Gorman as manager and secretary. The Senators’ success gave them the confidence to build the Ottawa Auditorium, a state of the art, 7,500-capacity arena with artificial ice. Opened in 1923, it would in the years to come add to the financial issues for the team.

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Although Gorman shared the Irish roots of Ahearn, the men did not get along and when he sold his share of the team to Ahearn, Gorman moved to the New York Americans, the first NHL team in the Big Apple. He would later coach the Blackhawks to their first Stanley Cup in 1934 and the following year coached the Montréal Maroons to their last Stanley Cup. He later managed the Canadiens to Cup wins, becoming the only person to manage four different NHL teams to cup success. Gorman was involved in many other sports: he was a leading promoter of wrestling in Montréal and Ottawa; he brought professional baseball to Ottawa in the form of the Ottawa Giants; he was involved with horseracing and part-owned Connaught Park racetrack near Ottawa; and he owned a new version of the Ottawa Senators who played in the Quebec Senior Hockey League and had success in the Allan Cup.

At a local level, in the Ottawa city senior league, the Irish community was well represented by various hockey teams. The Ottawa Emmets were one of the earlier teams, while Ottawa St. Brigids saw league success in 1919; St Patricks College Irish in 1923; and Ottawa Shamrocks in the late 1920s. Both Brigids and Shamrocks operated junior teams as well. St. Patrick’s also operated at the university level until its merger with Carleton University, with the associated St. Patrick’s High School still playing in interscholastic competitions. From the early 1930s to 1954 the school also had a team in the Ottawa City Junior League and it enjoyed much success in local competitions. In 1946, the school faced a unique scenario. Having won the schools league and won the City Junior League, the two St. Patrick’s teams faced each other in the district playoffs. The school team defaulted to the City team after sharing two playoff games.

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It is clear that the Irish have made an invaluable contribution to hockey in Ottawa. Without them, who knows what hockey in Ottawa would have looked like? Think about that while you’re hoisting one today and cheering on the Sens.

Samuel Kingston is a sports historian from Clonakilty, West Cork. His ebook, the Irish World of Sport, is available to purchase here. For more information on the Irish World of Sport, please visit the Instagram page or Facebook page.

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