The Greatest Hockey Game Ever Played

In this week's episode of "A Pane In The Glass Podcast" you will hear the voice of the late Stuart McLean, arguably Canada's greatest story teller. Stuart had a weekly programme, initially on the radio and then on podcast called "The Vinyl Cafe". I'll explain the title and the fictional characters he wove into the kind of stories that held you engrossed in the exploits of the main character Dave, the owner of the aforementioned, Vinyl Cafe. This is one of Stuart's best episodes he called, "The Greatest Hockey Game Ever Played". I think you just might agree! Enjoy!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to another episode of the Pain Class Podcast. This is your host, Bill Sheerhart, Chubb, professional coach with Cocus of Canada. It's the last weekend of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milano, Cortina, Italy. It has been a fantastic couple of weeks. And apparently, this weekend, this last weekend, and I am publishing on Friday night of the last weekend, there's some hockey to be played. And if you are a citizen of Canada and the United States of America, you will have particular interest in this hockey game. And speaking of ice hockey, uh, full credit and congratulations to the United States women's team for a gold medal game against Canada. It was a fantastic game. It lived up to all of its potential. And hockey is what this episode is all about. And even though we've seen some great games over the years, there is one hockey game that is going to be for this episode of the podcast the greatest hockey game ever played. Now, let me put it into context. The voice that you're going to hear is the late Stuart McLean. Stuart McLean, perhaps Ken's greatest storyteller, had a initially a radio program and then uh into uh podcasting, um a series of stories about Dave, and he called it the vinyl cafe. Dave was the owner of a record store, a vinyl record store, thus the vinyl cafe. And his wife Morley and his uh son Sam and daughter Stephanie, and don't forget the dog Arthur. And of course, they were these were fictional characters, and uh every week Stuart would spin a tale about the family, and it became iconic in Canada. Well, this is one of those episodes, and it was called the greatest hockey game, and you're gonna hear Stuart's greatest hockey game in just a moment. It's not the kind of hockey game that you might think, because it didn't involve the best players in the world. So, if it didn't, well, how is it to be the greatest hockey game ever? Well, I'll let you hear the words of Stuart McClane, and then I will follow up with my take on what it really was the greatest hockey game ever played.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

No one, well certainly not me anyway, is ever gonna reconcile to anyone's satisfaction the many and conflicting opinions about which of the thousands and thousands of hockey games ever played on ice was the greatest game of them all. Although, if you ever had the chance, as I have, to raise that question with any of the old timers who live in the town of Big Narrows in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, you would be told that the matter was settled over a half century ago. For they'd tell you, as they have told me, that the greatest game in hockey history was played in the autumn of 1945, the year the Big Narrows coal miners defeated the Port Arthur Shipbuilders to win Cape Breton's one and only Allen Cup, Canada's senior hockey championship. And then, as was the tradition for the amateur champion team in those days, the coal miners took off for Europe to represent Canada in the hockey championship of the world. You won't read about it in any record book, won't read about it anywhere, but you can hear about it in the Narrows. That's right, says Smith Gardner, who you can find on any Thursday afternoon sitting at the table in the window that overlooks the river at the Breakwater Hotel in Big Narrows. Smith and his buddies get together for a pint or two every Thursday. And if you happen to show up, they'd be more than happy to tell you about the game. They know more about it than anyone else alive. Allow me to introduce them. There's Smith, of course, a pretty good hockey player himself. Though he was way too young to play in the game I'm gonna tell you about, Smith is in his early 80s today. Sitting across from him with his back to the window is Arnie Gallagher. Arnie's in his late 70s, as near as anyone can figure. More or less, runs the narrows out of his storefront on Water Street. Arnie's the town's combination florist, travel agent, and funeral director. Just tell me where you want to go, Arnie likes to say. And I'll get you there, dead or alive. Arnie is also the fire chief and ex-mayor. To Arnie's right, nearest the front door, the guy fiddling with a silver cigarette case. That's Russell Montgomery, the ancient bird-like town librarian. He is 94 years old and long retired from the library, but sound of mind still. He's the town's undisputed historian. And the fourth guy, the older gentleman, the one wrapped in the blanket. Well, he's the only one at the table who was on the team. He was there. Though he doesn't talk about it often. Well, that's because they hushed it all up, says Smith. If you look to the record books, it says they didn't even play for the Allen Cup in 45 on account of the war. Well, that's a load of malarkey. They played all the other war years, and by the spring of 45, everyone knew the war was all but over. They played, and we won. Fair and square. It's what happened in Europe that made them go all hush-hush on the thing. Smith is right. They did play in 45. And the team from the Narrows did win. Darn right we did, says Smith. The Governor General was there to present the trophy. Actually, he wasn't. It was actually Hugh Andrew Montague Allen himself, the man who donated the Allen Cup, who called it into being, and for whom it was and is still named. He was 84 years old that night, probably the richest man in Canada. Although all the money in the world couldn't protect him from the ravages of those grimy war years. His two daughters, 15-year-old Gwen and 16-year-old Anna, both drowned when the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat. His 20-year-old Eton educated son Hugh was shot dead over the English Channel three years later. Only his fourth daughter lived into adulthood, but she died when she was 47, leaving the old man childless, with nothing else to do that lonely Saturday than to present the trophy that bore his name. But that isn't the night they'll tell you about around that table in Big Narrows. It was the game in Finland, says Smith, not the ones in Montreal. Norway, says Russell Montgomery, the librarian, correcting him. They won the Allen Cup in the spring, says Russell. They went to Norway in the fall. They left in August, says Smith, trying to keep pace. Sailed for Newcastle. They left in September, says the librarian. Sailed for Liverpool. They left right after the armistice. They played in November in the port town of Bergen on the Atlantic Ocean. So do I have your attention? Can I make my case? This game I want you to hear about should be considered. This forgotten moment of hockey history was, I would put forward, the most elegant, enchanting, and certainly whimsically concluded hockey game ever. And it should at least be on the table. There were eight teams in that forgotten European tournament England, Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, that's four, Sweden, that's five, a group of dubious pedigree who claimed to represent France, that's six. Canada, of course, represented by the coal miners, that's seven, and Czechoslovakia, the Czechs, who had been crushed by Germany, divided and annexed. The government was in exile until late 45. And they were in no shape to send a hockey team that year. But it was a point of pride. After those years of occupation and oblivion, the Czechs were there. Yes, they were, says Smith, picking up his glass and taking a sip and then staring down at it and falling into silence. All of them quiet now. We have to be patient with these four old guys. They've known each other far too long to be hurried along, even by the moon deep prodding of silence. Eventually, Arnie will take a sip of his beer, set it down and say, When I was a kid, our mothers used to put baked potatoes into our skates. Hot right out of the oven. And we'd walk to the pond in those days, and when we got there, our skates would be warm on account of the potatoes. So we'd put our skates on and put the potatoes in the snow, and the potatoes would freeze, and when they froze, we'd use the potatoes as pucks. We'd eat them on the way home cold. Everybody at the table is nodding earnestly, except for the old guy in the blanket who barks, What the heck's that got to do with anything? I'm just saying, says Arnie, that it's a different game when you play it out of doors. Everyone knows that, says the old guy. Arnie says, I'm saying there are things to consider when you play out of doors, like the ice and the wind for one. That's two, mutters the old guy. For crying out loud, says Smith. He has his hand on the old guy's shoulder. He's looking around for their waiter. Can we have some refills here? says Smith. Someone's getting grumpy. The waiter comes over and sets down another round of drafts. The old guy picks up a knife and runs it across the top of his glass, pushing the foam onto the tabletop. He picks up a salt shaker and salts his beer. And then he bends down and takes a sip without touching the glass. He looks around the table and scowls. And they all fall silent again. The point, of course, isn't the coal. Or the wind. Or how they used to change ends halfway through the last period so everyone had the wind at their back for an equal amount of time. So it was fair. The point is the autumn of 1945. The autumn after the Big Narrows coal miners won the Allen Cup in Montreal, and Montague Allen presented it to them, and they took the train to New York City and got on the RMS Mauritania and sailed for Europe to play in the championships of the world. The first game of that series was on 7th November, says Russell Montgomery. 25 below zero. And wendy. They stepped onto the ice and wait a minute, wait a minute, says Arnie. How many guys went? They all look at the old guy. But the old guy has nodded off. There were, in fact, eleven of them on that team. Twelve counting the coach. And what I know is this. They got to England a week or so before the first game. Down the duffel bag gangplank at dawn. Onto the gray, bomb-scarred Liverpool docks. Five of the eleven had served overseas. Augie MacDonnell in France, Moose and Spit in Italy. Archie got as far as England, but never got to the continent. So you can understand, perhaps, that they were edgy that morning. The vets who had more or less just got home didn't want to be back. Didn't want any part of the war anymore. And the ones who had stayed home, they were guilty they'd missed it. Well, they all felt guilty. They'd all survived. And they all knew someone who hadn't. They went from Liverpool to Oslo by ferry or something, and then to Bergen by truck. And they arrived just in time for the first game. They hadn't had their skates on since the Allen Cup, which meant they hadn't skated for maybe six months. The Bergen rink was outside. And of course, it being so close to the end of the war, there were no lights or anything. Everything was rationed. So the games were played during the day. A couple in the morning and a couple in the afternoon. In their first game, which was that afternoon they arrived, the coal miners played Switzerland. Before the game, they watched a bunch of Norwegian guys in blue fisherman sweaters shovel the rink. And then, in the midst of all that gray post-war gloom, the most magical thing happened. A chestnut draft horse pulling an ornate wheeled watering machine was led onto the ice. The horse came from Russia. The contraption from Italy. It looked like a float from a parade. It had an etched brass firebox to heat the water. And as it circled the rink, it hissed and billed like a circus calliope. A man sitting on the top back was playing an organ. The problem was it was so windy that the water froze in little waves. Like on a beach when the sea pulls back from the sand and it leaves layers of water behind. The players watched the ice machine in absolute awe. When it was done, they stepped onto the uneven surface and skated around, stumbling on the wavy bits. And then the Swiss team came out. They look tough, said Aki MacDonnell under his breath. Their blue wool jerseys had a broad yellow stripe across the shoulders, little crests on the front and big numbers on the back. A good third of them were wearing leather helmets. They looked like a team of fighter pilots. It set the boys off balance. The heavy shadow of the war everywhere. The bombed-out ruins of all the cities, the wounded veterans and all the cafes, everything looked grey and tired and unshaven. So Archie McDougal, who played the entire game that afternoon, won the opening face-off and stuffed the puck back to whomever it was on defense. He headmanned it up to Augie, and Augie carried it to the blue line and then dumped it into the Swiss corner. And that's when it hit them. Snap! Augie goes in after the puck, and it was like he had skated off the rink and onto the harbor. The rink was nearly twice the size of the rinks they were used to. Augie's going in and he's going in and he's going in, he's going in forever. He's fighting the wind off the North Sea all the way. And when he finally makes it to the corner, he turns to look for the net, and the net's so far away, Augie nearly faints. They were used to playing the lane game. They were used to skating up and down the lanes like players on a tabletop set. They soon learned if they stayed in their lanes, well, the forwards could barely see the guys on the other side of the rink. And as for defense, back home you played just off the boards, and anyone tries to go around you, you took a step and pushed them into the boards. Here, you play close to the boards, like at home, there was one mother of a hole down the middle. At the end of the first period, the Swiss were beating them four to one. Guys are good, said Archie in between periods. End of the game? It was Switzerland seven, coal miners too. And it should have been more. They lost their first two games, that one against the Swiss, and the next against the Norwegians. But then they beat the Brits and the dubious guys from France. And they seemed to find their confidence. And to make a long story short, when all was said and done, the championship of the world, 1945, came down to the Cape Breton coal miners against the Czechs. The final game was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon. First, there was a big breakfast cooked outside over a fire. At least five hundred people showed up. More, says the old man in the blanket, waking up, leaning forward. There were thousands, all around the rink and up on the roof. At the end of the third period, this is the part we're not supposed to talk about, says the old man. Says, if we don't talk about it, who's going to? Someone should talk about it. What happened is this they played three flawless periods of hockey. Perfect hockey. Each team playing their own game. The Canadians dumping the puck into the corner and skating in and digging it out. The Czechs carrying it across the blue line. If they didn't see their way across it, they turned around and headed back to their own end and started again. The game rolling back from one end of the rink to the other. The shots that made it to the net were perfectly precise. The goalies were precisely perfect. When regulation time ended, they were tied. 0-0. So the ref called them together and explained, because they were also tied in total tournament goals, they were going to overtime. That was the rule. They could go to the dressing room and get warm, and in 15 minutes they'd come back out and Play, a sudden death overtime period. Team that scored the first goal would be the champion of the world. So there they were. Three weeks and three periods into it. Sitting on the rough wood benches in the dressing room that they shared. Two teams, one wood stove, staring at each other in their sweat-soaked wool jerseys, each sweater a couple of pounds heavier than it was at the beginning of the game. Aggie was running his hand up and down his stick. Mi'kmaq made a solid piece of ironwood. The old guy looks around the table. He's staring at each of them. You have to understand, he says, very quietly. Everything was so different. The whole of Europe was devastated. Russell Montgomery spoke next. He says, The idea of sudden death had no appeal to any of you. The old man nods his head. They all knew too much about sudden death. They all knew too much about the cost of victory and the price of defeat. The soldier boys and the boys who hadn't served, they had all, each one of them, Canadian and Czech, Norwegian and Brit, seen too many of their friends set off on voyages of hope that had ended on the hopeless sea of history. The old man snorts. We had no time for history. So this is what happened. They came out for the overtime period, and the people watching, watched in stunned silence as they skated out, all of them, and dropped their sticks at Santa Rice. And then Augie and the Czech captain stood there picking the sticks up and throwing them randomly, one stick to one end of the rink and one to the other. The players went and found which end their sticks had landed, and when they did, that was the end they'd defend. Before they began playing, they skated to Santa Rice again and changed sweaters. So in the rubble of the war, the two teams who played the overtime period for the championship of the world were a made-up mishmash. Some from this side and some from that. Some Czechs and some Canadians. The overtime period was no more than a giant, joyful game of shitty. They tried to stop us, says the old man. But we kept playing. They had come to seek honor, and they had decided there could be no honor. If winning meant one of them had to lose. The period lasted for hours. People who were there said it was the greatest hockey they'd ever seen. There wasn't a whistle. It was pure hockey. No penalties, no power plays, just the puck and play after memorable play. Some of the best players in the world. Some of the most perfect hockey ever. The officials were furious. There was a meeting that night. They threatened to expel Canada and Czechoslovakia from international competition. But there was some sort of deal struck that involved secret money, and part of the deal was everyone promised not to talk about what had happened, and no one ever did. Which is why you've never heard of it. But it happened. The old librarian leans forward and looks at the old man in the blanket. What I always wondered was how it happened. Whose idea was it? It was Augie, right? I always figured it was Augie. The man in the blanket laughs. You want to know the truth, he says. I'll tell you the truth. Doesn't matter anymore. No one cares anymore. It wasn't Augie. It wasn't any of our guys. Or any of the Czechs either. It was Sir Alan. Sir Montague Allen, who had met them at the Allen Cup, and when news of the European tournament reached his desk, had not only paid their way across the ocean, but had gone with them. His last hurrah. Sir Alan, who had lost two daughters and one son in the first war, had gone into the dressing room after the third period and said, the right end would be to end it right here. One should play for the game, he said, not for a flag. The old man in the blanket shrugs. Someone translated for the checks. They all felt the same way. They needed Sir Alan to say that. But when he did, they shook hands in the dressing room and they went back onto the ice and they changed sweaters. That's the truth, says the old man. That's what happened. Then he says, later. Some of the fellows regretted we did that. Some of them were ashamed. But it was a long time ago, and they're all gone now. I'm not ashamed. I don't regret anything. I played in the greatest game of hockey ever played. What's to regret? He looks around at them all, and then he takes a sip of his beer. And he falls back to sleep. If you look at the record books, you'll see they didn't play the world championship the next year. But when they got it going again in 1947, you'll also see that Czechoslovakia won. And then Canada the year after that. Then Czechoslovakia the year after, and then Canada after that. A person who knows what you know now might wonder if they were trading back and forth on purpose. As if they were trying to preserve the spirit of that fantastic game in Berkman. Some people say that is exactly what was going on. And they say old Montague Allen had his hands all over it. He died in 1951, and that's when it more or less ended. Canada won once or maybe twice more, but Sweden won the next year. Then the Soviet Union the year after. We'll never know about that. But this much is true. There was this brief moment of complete purity. That afternoon in Bergen, on the edge of the deep gray ocean, when the winds of peace were blowing instead of the winds of war. And the ice was as hard and as fast as ice has ever been. And young men played like young boys, the black puck skimming over the hard white ice like nothing bad had ever happened. Like no one ever died. As if life was made for laughter. And there could be great victory without great victory.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

At least in the nicest great play, it really was the greatest lucky game ever played. I urge you to listen to the weekly podcast backstage at the vinyl cafe. It's a collection of stories about those characters that I introduced to you, Dave and Marley, and Sam and Stephanie and Arthur the Dog. They are delightful stories. I can assure you, they will brighten your day. So that podcast is backstage at the vinyl cafe. Well, next week I'm gonna give you my take on what has happened in the last few weeks in Cortina Milan, Italy, because I have lots to say, you might guess. And some other tidbits of information regarding Curly Mosley. So it will definitely be a pebble water edition. Thank you very much for joining me behind a painting glass. And wherever you are. Because there are so many things that make you happy. Until next week.