1928 MEMORIAL CUP
Regina Monarchs vs. Ottawa Gunners
at Toronto (Arena Gardens and Varsity Arena)
The city of Regina, known throughout the Dominion for its Pats, sent another team down the Memorial Cup trail in the spring of 1928.
This team was the Monarchs -- formed from the ashes of two junior teams, the Pats and Falcons -- and it was coached by Howie Milne, who had starred as a player with the Pats in the 1922 Memorial Cup playoffs.
"Kid overconfidence has whipped some of eastern Canada's best amateur hockey clubs,” reported the Regina Leader from Toronto on March 20. "Will the same trick play havoc with the Western Monarchs? Eastern fandom has placed the Regina Monarchs as decided champions but they don't overlook the fact that the Ottawa Gunners, their opponents, whipped the Marlboros of Toronto who, up to last Friday night, were acclaimed the wonder team of the East.”
Later on the report noted: "Wisenheimers who patronize Toronto's battling icy emporium night after night assure themselves Monarchs will down the Ottawa Gunners.
"Eight thousand fans are expected to witness the Monarchs in battle against Ottawa, the latter being backed by special train from the Capital City. All Toronto is pulling for the boys from the West, successors to the Regina Pats, Canadian junior champions of 1925, who ended a sensational conquest by manly ability in the icy arena fighting with Aura Lee in old British fashion with bared hands.”
Another report noted: "Lithe, speedy and effective, the Gunners whipped Toronto Marlboros and the Queen City can hardly yet realize it.”
The Leader also announced: "The Morning Leader will megaphone a detailed account from the Leader office. It will come direct from the Toronto Arena, ringside as it were, and fans who choose to nibble the odd peanut and smoke the odd cigaret outside the building will be rewarded with a complete description of the play.“
On March 22, the morning after Game 1, The Leader didn't hold back.
"The Regina Monarchs will be the next junior hockey champions of Canada,” it started its report. "Before the largest crowd that has attended a hockey match in Toronto this season, the Saskatchewan boys won the first of the titular games by defeating the Ottawa Gunners 4-3.
"Regina won because they kept their heads under a vicious onslaught of deliberate dirty work, stayed on the ice and showed a little more experience than their heavier Ottawa opponents.“
The hero on this night was Regina winger Harold (Mush) March, who scored all four of his team's goals.
"His speedy, brilliant hockey earned him rounds and rounds of applause from the great crowd,” went the report. "As the game wore on, Mush's every appearance with the puck was the signal for applause.”
Ottawa got its first goal from defenceman ???? Armstrong and its last two from Syd Howe, a sub on this Gunners team but a player who would go on to play in the NHL with the Ottawa Senators, St. Louis Eagles, Philadelphia Quakers, Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings.
The Monarchs led 1-0 after the first period, 2-1 after the second and stretched it to 4-1 in the third before Howe scored twice in the period's last three minutes.
Despite the optimism shown by The Leader, the Monarchs weren't able to sweep the Gunners.
Goals by ???? Quinn and Tommy McInenly gave the Gunners a 2-1 victory on March 23. March continued his streak as he scored Regina's goal early in the second period, meaning he had accounted for all of the Monarchs' goals to this point in the series.
"A salient factor on the night's play was the strict attention that the eastern artillery men paid to Harold March, the right wing speedster from the prairies,” reported The Leader. "March was checked so closely and rigorously that it took everything he had to hold his own.
"A new star arose on the night's play. It was Syd Howe, the Ottawa substitute, who even overshone the western sensation in the last period. Resting up for the first two periods while March was burning up his stamina, Howe, time after time, passed the Regina front line with his neat stickhandling.”
The second game was played in front of a full house of 4,500 fans at Varsity Arena, which had a smaller ice surface than Arena Gardens, home to Games 1 and 3, and this "was another factor contributing to Regina's downfall.”
There was some controversy as the third period ended as Regina claimed it had scored. But the goal judge ruled that there were so many players in the goal area that he couldn't see whether the puck crossed the goal line.
However, The Leader noted: "Maddened by the fact that the referees and goal-umpire refused to allow the goal in the last few moments of this hectic game, the Monarchs confidently expect to win the championship.”
This time, The Leader called it right.
On March 27, the morning paper began its line story, written by Norman Albert, like this:
"Oh you Western speed hounds.
"Dust off a niche in Regina's most palatial ballroom because the Memorial Trophy, emblematic of the junior hockey championship of Canada, again goes West.
"Regina Monarchs, pride of the West, routed the Ottawa Gunners by the score of 7-1 in the third and deciding contest, settling the issue.”
March scored the game's first goal, the only goal of the first period, giving him Regina's first six goals in the series. He would score one other goal in this game, giving him seven of the Monarchs' 12 goals.
Harold Shaw made it 2-0 early in the second period with what would prove to be the Memorial Cup-winning goal.
Len Dowie, with two, Swede Williamson and Charles (Chuck) Farrow also scored for Regina. Armstrong replied for Ottawa with a second-period goal that cut the deficit to 2-1 but that was as close as the Gunners would get in front of around 9,000 fans who enjoyed the action inside the Arena Gardens while it poured rain outside.
"The Monarchs livened up the play and when the scrappy Gunners wanted to draw them into a donnybrook in the last stanza, the prairie lads from the Golden West just laughed at them, outspeeded them and outmanoeuvred them, and went in to ring an unmerciful whipping on the Capital City artillerymen,” wrote Albert.
(NOTE: If you know the missing first names, e-mail gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca.)
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