Hockey visionary Patrick makes radical suggestions
Hockey legend Frank Patrick was one of the great defencemen of his day. But his main legacy was as an executive, and innovator.
Patrick founded the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) with his brother Lester in 1911, and built Vancouver's first major sporting venue, the 10,000-seat Denman Arena.
In 1915, he helped bring Vancouver its only Stanley Cup as the president, coach and defenceman/ rover for the Vancouver Millionaires. In the PCHA, Patrick made many rule changes that revolutionized the game.
“He introduced the blue-line, the forward pass and the playoff system,” says his biography in the Hockey Hall of Fame, to which Patrick was inducted in 1950.
“Together with Lester, he began using numbers on players' sweaters and in programs to help fans identify the skaters. They allowed the puck to be kicked (everywhere but into the net) and allowed goaltenders to fall to the ice to make a save, if need be, instead of forcing them to remain standing.
“They were responsible for crediting assists when a goal was scored and they invented the penalty shot. In all, Frank was credited with 22 changes that remain in the NHL rule book to this day. It's no wonder he was called `the brains of modern hockey.' ”
On Feb. 28, 1925, he made a couple more suggestions that would have dramatically changed hockey: dropping the number of players on the ice from six to five and eliminating “deliberate bodychecking.”
Andy Lytle of The Vancouver Sun wrote that Patrick was always trying to speed up the game with what he called “anti-defence” rules (ironic, given that he was a defenceman).
In 1925, he said teams were defending by sending a forward back to help out the defence; he felt that cutting out a player would force teams into using “two players on attack and two on defence, with the goalkeeper the fifth man.”
As for bodychecking, “my attitude … is not that good healthy contact in the way of blocking incoming players should be eliminated, but that the deliberate bodycheck, the sudden injection of a hip or a shoulder can very well be removed.”
Lytle added Patrick thought the “deliberate” bodycheck “merely tends to inflame tempers, while not improving the chances of a team to win games.”
Patrick wasn't under any illusions that either of his suggestions would be readily adopted, especially by the NHL officials in the east, who he said “were slow to adopt any change.” His five-on-five proposal finally was adopted for overtime during the 1999-2000 regular season, but deliberate bodychecking is still legal, although it does indeed “tend to inflame tempers.”
Frank Alexis Patrick was born in Ottawa on Dec. 21, 1885. He was two years younger than Lester, who was born in Drummondville, Que. They grew up in Montreal, where they became hockey's first great rushing defencemen.
In 1907, the Patrick family moved to Nelson in the Kootenays, where they ran a lumber business. But two years later Lester was lured back east by the Renfrew Millionaires, who met his salary demand — $3,000 per year — and agreed to sign Frank for $2,000.
The Patricks came back west and started the PCHA with money from the sale of the family lumber business. Frank ran the Vancouver team, while Lester ran the Victoria Aristocrats.
The PCHA folded in 1924 and the Vancouver and Victoria teams joined the Western League. But it had financial difficulties and Frank sold the league's players to the NHL in 1926.
Lester went east to coach the New York Rangers, but Frank stayed in Vancouver until the NHL hired him as a managing director in 1933.
He coached the Boston Bruins from 1934-36 and ran business operations for the Montreal Canadiens from 1939-41, when he returned to Vancouver.
Lester died on June 1, 1960, in Victoria at age 76. Frank died on June 29, 1960, in Vancouver.