LEAFS’ IRISH TIES ARE STILL SMILING
No other date on the calendar are the two more compatible than on St. Patrick’s Day
There was a time in Toronto when the green shamrock was as much a part of hockey’s DNA in this town as the blue Maple Leafs logo.
And on no other date are the two more compatible than St. Patrick’s Day. Though COVID-19 means no vintage St. Pats sweaters for Tuesday’s postponed game against New Jersey (the Leafs were also going to wear them last Saturday in Boston) the heart strings and harp strings linking Ireland and the club are still tight.
Broadcaster Joe Bowen, emulating King Clancy’s tradition from the 1930s, had planned to call Tuesday’s game while sporting his all-green outfit, including plus-fours, long socks, a cap and shillelagh walking stick.
“I love it,” said Bowen, whose paternal grandfather Charles came to Canada from County Cork. “I’ve seen pictures of King wearing his. When I was on a visit to Limerick, my sons Liam, Derek, Sean and David, gifted me an authentic shillelagh. It’s too bad we’ll be robbed of the chance to see the St. Pats sweaters this year.”
The roll call of surnames in the Leafs’ all-time roster reads like the Dublin phone directory: O’neill, O’flaherty, O’byrne, Hannigan, Haggerty, Corrigan, Kelly, Ferguson, Kennedy, Darragh, Maloney, Murphy.
It was 86 St. Paddy’s Days ago that Clancy became the first Toronto athlete given a personal tribute night. Threeyear-old Maple Leaf Gardens was full to witness the threetime all-star defenceman get feted. Manager Conn Smythe, whose father Albert was an Irish Protestant from County Antrim, had secured Clancy six seasons earlier in a trade with the Ottawa Senators, partly funded by a long-shot racetrack bet. Clancy was a star on the free-spirited 1932 Cup champions.
In a pre-game ceremony before his big night against the Rangers, parade-type floats of a harp, a pipe and even a potato circled the ice, while Clancy, wearing a crown, regal robes and flowing white beard, was pulled along on a sled throne. At the appropriate moment, he took the robe off to reveal a green and white shamrock jersey.
The Pats had worn similar garb up until Smythe and J.P. Bickell purchased the team in February 1927, and though the Leaf was sewn over St. Pats, the base colour stayed green for the balance of that season.
But Clancy refused to take his special sweater off when the game began, sparking an official protest by Rangers coach Lester Patrick, who declared Clancy a distraction.
Clancy would keep such behaviour up for years, either playing, officiating, coaching or making Gardens secretaries dive for cover in the mid-1980s when he gave rookie Wendel Clark some impromptu office shooting lessons.
As team legend goes, Clancy would get in such a boisterous blarney mode telling stories at the saloon, the barman would threaten to cut him off, even though he hadn’t touched one drink.
To this day Scotiabank organist Jimmy Holmstrom slips in an
Irish ditty or two on game night, and the second intermission team video leads off with a 1980s Clancy interview promising “the Leafs will be champions again.”
“Dad was the leprechaun of leprechauns,” said son Terry Clancy in a previous interview, after following his father to the Leafs for 86 games.
Irish eyes were not always smiling for those seeking a new life in Toronto and Canada. Almost 40,000 flooded the young city in the summer of 1847 after the potato famine back home, with several dying of disease on the long trip.
About 1,000 others made it no further than crowded “fever sheds” at the foot of Bathurst Street before expiring. Their tragic story is now told in a memorial tablet on site.
The strain the influx of such poor newcomers put on Toronto initially led to some resentment, but within a few years, the Irish made up the largest single immigrant group. Many of its sons and daughters took places of prominence, while the children adapted to the harsh weather, venturing on frozen Lake Ontario or the Don and Humber Rivers with crude sticks to whack at projectiles.
In 1863, the Globe newspaper reported the “nuisance” of young teens playing “shinty” on what’s now Pine Crest Road in the West End, and that a boy named Richard Kelly was briefly arrested.
At St. Michael’s College, founded in 1852, a strong hockey tradition began early in the 20th century, soon a pipeline for Leafs talent in the days before the NHL draft. Future priest and Leafs’ Stanley Cup champ Les Costello played there, while hockey pioneers Henry Carr and David Bauer were coaches.
The St. Patricks sports organization formed and sponsored many amateur hockey clubs, such as a senior amateur team in the OHA. When the Blueshirts/ Arenas of the NHL’S inaugural season were sold to the St. Pats group for $5,000 in December of 1919, a new team name was obvious.
The St. Pats, managed by Charlie Querrie and coached by George O’donoghue, won the 1922 Stanley Cup in a series that began March 17 of that year.