Remembering the Toronto Professional Hockey Club: December 28: Snapshots in History

Team photograph of the Toronto Professional Hockey Club during the 1906–07 exhibition season. Front row, left to right: Rowley Young, Charlie Liffiton, Harry Burgoyne, Hugh Lambe. Back row, left to right: William Slean, Jack Carmichael, B. Spanner, Bruce Ridpath.

As one year draws to a close and another year is about to begin, Canadian and Toronto hockey fans and players have a lot to keep themselves occupied, what with the World Junior Hockey championship games, regular season National Hockey League (NHL) and Ontario Hockey League (OHL) games, games from the Spengler Cup in Davos, Switzerland, and the like. On December 28 and beyond, take a moment to go back in time to December 28, 1906 when a nascent hockey team called the Toronto Professional Hockey Club (a forerunner of today’s Toronto Maple Leafs) played its first ice hockey game against the Canadian Soo team of the International Hockey League (IHL), losing by a 7-0 score at the Mutual Street Rink (also known as the Caledonian Rink) in Toronto. The Toronto Globe of December 29, 1906 (page 23) offered a report on the game:

“Toronto had its first real taste of professional hockey last night, and though the local seven lost to the Canadian Soo team by 7 to 0, the 1,500 spectators at the Mutual Street Rink seemed to like the game…”

The Toronto Professional Hockey Club was the City of Toronto’s first professional ice hockey team. The team played exhibition games for the 1906-1907 season against other professional hockey teams and was one of the founding teams of the Ontario Professional Hockey League (OPHL) within which it competed during 1908 and 1909 before ceasing operations. On March 14, 1908, the Toronto Professionals or Pros played the Montreal Wanderers in Montreal for the Stanley Cup, losing the game by a 6-4 score. The Toronto lineup for the 1908 Stanley Cup game included forward Édouard Cyrille "Newsy" Lalonde (who scored two goals in that game) who later served as player-coach for the 1915-1916 Montreal Canadiens as that team won its first Stanley Cup in pre-NHL days. (Ironically, Lalonde also was a professional lacrosse player in those days and made more money playing professional lacrosse than he did from playing professional hockey. How times have changed!) Also playing for the Toronto Pros in that game was forward Bruce Ridpath who later played for the Ottawa Senators in the 1909-1910 and 1910-1911 seasons, the latter in which Ottawa won'the National Hockey Association (NHA) final and the Stanley Cup. Owing to an injury sustained from being struck by an automobile, Ridpath’s playing days were over but he became the first manager of the Toronto Blueshirts (another forerunner of the Toronto Maple Leafs), founded in 1911 but commencing operations in 1912. The Toronto Blueshirts would win their sole Stanley Cup in the 1913-1914 season.

Interested in learning more about the history of ice hockey in Canada and Toronto? Consider the following titles for borrowing from Toronto Public Library collections, including the 2013 book written by amateur hockey historian and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

Books: