Seems the story of the last Hamilton team to win an Ontario Hockey League championship may be due for a re-telling
With the serious questions about preparing for the upcoming finals now done, the topic turns to history. Local hockey history.
What can you tell us about the Hamilton Fincups?
“Never heard of them,” says Hamilton Bulldogs’ goalie, Kaden Fulcher.
“Not a thing,” says forward Isaac Nurse, though he says he’s heard of them. “Not a thing.”
“I can’t tell you anything about the Hamilton Fincups,” says head coach John Gruden.
Seems the story of the last Hamilton team to win an Ontario Hockey League championship may be due for a retelling. After all, it has been a while since that team skated around the rink with the J. Ross Robertson Cup hoisted overhead. Forty-two years, in fact. So long ago that the league wasn’t even the OHL then but the OHA.
“Is that how long it is?” asks an amazed former co-owner, Joe Finochio.
Indeed. It was the spring of 1976. Gruden was a five-year-old in Minnesota back then. Fulcher, Nurse and their teammates who were equally stumped by the question (though some had heard of the team) were more than two decades from even being a twinkle in their mom and dad’s eye. Many fans of the current team weren’t born either.
The season before, Finochio and Ron and Mario Cupido had purchased the Hamilton Red Wings — winner of the previous Hamilton winner back in 1962 when future Canadian hero Paul
Henderson and future “Slap Shot” actor John Gofton (he played the drunken Brophy) were skating here — and renamed them a made-up moniker made by combining their last names.
They then hired pugnacious head coach Bert Templeton who’d just won the Sutherland Cup coaching their Jr. B team. More accurately, his Hamilton Red Wings had been ‘awarded’ the trophy when the Bramalea Blues refused to return to the Barton Street Arena to continue playing the violence-filled championship series out of fear for their players’ lives. Seriously.
Anyway, with a loaded Fincups team led by future first-overall NHL draft pick Dale McCourt as well as eventual big-leaguers Al Secord, Ric Seiling, Willie Huber and others, the Hamilton team finished first in the Emms Division. Using that terrifying home rink to full advantage with its belligerent fans who were right on top of the ice and eager to intimidate.
“It was phenomenal for a home team,” says Al Jensen who played net for that team and for the past 18 years has been goalie expert for NHL Central Scouting. “But it must’ve been something for a visiting team to come to.”
Once they got to the playoffs, the Fincups swept the Kitchener Rangers and then did the same to the Toronto Marlboros, earning the chance to play the Sudbury Wolves in the final.
The Wolves had been the class of the league all year. Most expected them to win and advance to the Memorial Cup. Sort of like the expectations around the Greyhounds of this year against the Bulldogs starting Thursday.
“Exactly,” Jensen says. “Exactly.”
Instead of sticking with the expected script however, the Fincups rolled over the Wolves 4-1 to win the title. A few weeks later they did the same with the Memorial Cup, marking the last time a Hamilton team won that trophy as well.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves imagining the same possibility this year. First things first.
Four months after winning that OHA title, the faulty icemaking equipment at the old barn — combined with other deficiencies — were deemed to costly to fix and the Barton Street Arena was torn down. By the next fall the rink-less Fincups were calling St. Catharines home.
A year after that they returned to Hamilton to play out of the Mountain Arena before being once again shuffled out of town, this time to Brantford where they became the Alexanders. Follow the trail a little longer and they became the Hamilton Steelhawks which became the Niagara Falls Thunder before finally finding stability in Pennsylvania as the Erie Otters.
Six years ago the 1975-76 longdeparted Fincups were inducted into the Hamilton Sports Hall of Fame.
Both Cupidos are gone now. Mario passed away just last year. But at 94, Finochio’s recall of that season and that Ontario title remain vivid. As he gets chatting about it the tales begin flowing. Until he gets to his favourite one.
Like today’s Bulldogs, his grandson wasn’t born when that championship happened. So his knowledge of it was not exactly thorough. But while crossing back into Canada recently, the border guard stopped him after examining his passport.
Finochio. Finochio. Finochio. The wheels were turning.
“You wouldn’t be related to the guy from the Fincups would you? You are?” The guard then went on to tell how his dad used to take him to games during that magical season.
“That was the treat of my young school life.”