Hawks weren’t going to make the playoffs, but on March 23 something magical happened, one of the greatest feats ever accomplished by an NHL player. On that day the
Hawks and the New York Rangers played their last game of the regular season (both were out of the playoffs) at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. By the end of the second period, in what was a pointless match attended by fewer than 4,000 fans, the Rangers had a commanding 6–2 lead over the hapless Hawks. In the third period, though, at 6:09, Chicago right winger Bill Mosienko scored. A few seconds later he put a second puck into the net behind Rangers goalie Lorne Anderson. Then, at the 6:30 mark, Mosienko scored a third time. The Chicago sniper had scored a hat trick in 21 seconds, a record that has stood for more than a half-century. Only the Montreal Canadiens’ Jean Béliveau, who scored three power-play goals in 44 seconds in 1955, has come close to breaking this record. As for that seemingly nothing game in March 1952, the Hawks eventually won it 7–6.
Winnipeg-born Mosienko, who had been a pretty good but not exceptional forward with Max and Doug Bentley on the Pony Line in the 1940s, played another couple of seasons and retired in 1954–55 with a record that may well be his for many more decades to come.
Quickies
Did you know …
that Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president still in office to attend an NHL game? On May 25, 1998, Clinton showed up at the second game of the Eastern Conference finals between the Washington Capitals and the Buffalo Sabres at the American capital’s MCI Center. The president took in the game from Capitals owner Abe Poulin’s personal suite and said at the time that he was impressed with the game’s speed and intensity.
How did the Detroit Red Wings and the New York Rangers get their names?
In 1932 James Norris purchased the Detroit Falcons hockey team and renamed them the Red Wings. Norris had played for a Montreal team named the Winged Wheelers, which inspired the name and the winged wheel logo on the NHL’s motor city franchise. After Madison Square Garden president “Tex” Rickard bought the New York team in 1926, people began calling them after their owner — Tex’s Rangers.
When did the NHL’s first expansion occur?
Everyone associates NHL expansion, at least the first one, with 1967–68 when the league added six new U.S. teams (Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, Minnesota North Stars, Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Oakland Seals, now defunct). However, the league had contracted and expanded a number of times before the days of the fabled but misnamed Original Six (Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Detroit Red Wings, Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, and Boston Bruins). At the NHL’s inception in 1917 there were only four clubs — Toronto Arenas (later Maple Leafs), Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators (the originals), and Montreal Wanderers. The last were gone within a couple of weeks when their arena burned down. The Quebec Bulldogs (later the Hamilton Tigers, and still later part of the New York Americans) came onboard in 1919. However, the first actual expansion occurred in 1924–25 when the Montreal Maroons and the Boston Bruins signed up. The next season the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Americans, both now long expired, started playing. Then, in 1926–27, things really began cooking when the Chicago Black Hawks, New York Rangers, and Detroit Cougars (now the Red Wings) joined the party, bringing league membership to a height of 10 clubs. It wouldn’t be that numerous again until 1967–68. Today the NHL has 30 teams (24 in the United States, six in Canada).
What NHL goalie nearly bled to death on the ice?
On March 22, 1989, in a game between the Buffalo Sabres and the St. Louis Blues, the latter’s Steve Tuttle crashed into a Sabres defenceman and went hurtling through the air at Clint Malarchuk, Buffalo’s goaltender. Tuttle’s skate blade pierced Malarchuk’s neck, severing his jugular vein. The goalie would have likely died on the spot if not for trainer Jim Pizzutelli, who stanched the gusher of blood until doctors could operate. Malarchuk ended up with 300 stitches to close a six-inch wound, but he returned to the Sabres’ net 11 days later.
When was the first NHL game played outdoors?
Outdoor NHL games have been a big hit with the fans, the media, and the players lately. The first regular-season match held outdoors was dubbed the Heritage Classic and took place on November 22, 2003, in Edmonton, Alberta. It pitted the Edmonton Oilers against the Montreal Canadiens and was staged in Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium. More than 57,000 spectators braved a bone-chilling -18 degrees Celsius temperature to watch the Habs edge the Oilers 4–3. Less than five years later, on January 1, 2008, a second regular-season NHL match, called the AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic, was played in Orchard Park, New York, between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins. An NHL-record-setting 71,217 fans turned out to see the Penguins beat the Sabres 2–1 after a shootout in which Pittsburgh’s young superstar Sidney Crosby got the final goal. For the first NHL game presented outdoors, though, one has to go back to September 27, 1991, to an exhibition match played in Las Vegas, of all places. The Los Angeles Kings and the New York Rangers took part in an odd promotional affair in the pre-season in an outdoor rink constructed in the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace. No one froze at this game — the desert temperature was about 29 degrees Celsius. But the players had to put up with melting ice and a plague of grasshoppers!
Quickies
Did you know …
that baseball titan Babe Ruth dropped in on an NHL game on November 15, 1927? Swarmed by fans, the Bambino swept into the Boston Garden to watch the Bruins play the Chicago Black Hawks in a bruising donnybrook of a game that prompted Ruth to comment, after witnessing his very first hockey spectacle, “Never saw anything like it. Those fellows wanted to kill one another. Thank God I’m in baseball. It’s so peaceful and quiet.”
What incredible feat did Mario Lemieux accomplish on New Year’s Eve 1988?
During his career, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Mario Lemieux accomplished incredible feats and provided hockey fans with some of the game’s most memorable moments, but on December 31, 1988, he did something even pretty extraordinary for him. In a game against the New Jersey Devils the Magnificent One became the first and thus far only NHL player to score goals in five different ways. Lemieux put the puck into the Devils’ net at even strength, on the power play, shorthanded, on a penalty shot, and into an empty net in an 8–6 Penguins victory.
What happened to the World Hockey Association?
First taking to the ice in 1972–73 as a rival to the National Hockey League, the World Hockey Association had a rollicking roller coaster of a ride through professional hockey until it finally went off the rails at the conclusion of the 1978–79 season. While it existed, the WHA harried the staid NHL and forced that venerable league to boost players’ salaries, consider European and U.S. talent more seriously, and generally run a better ship. Before the WHA was finished it had had 32 different franchises at one or another time in 24 cities, most of which bit the dust ignominiously. The WHA’s founders were two enterprising Californians named Gary Davidson and Dennis Murphy, but if it hadn’t been for the involvement of two of hockey’s greatest superstars — Bobby Hull with the Winnipeg Jets and Gordie Howe with the Houston Aeros, then the New England Whalers — the rogue league would have gone belly up a lot sooner. Enticed by lavish salaries, other major NHLers, including Gerry Cheevers, Frank Mahovlich, J.C. Tremblay, and Dave Keon, jumped to the WHA. In the league’s inaugural season it actually got teams onto the ice in Cleveland; Philadelphia; Ottawa; Quebec City; New York; Winnipeg; Houston; Los Angeles;
