Allan Cup: Could hockey's top amateur prize be won on home ice?
This week Clarenville welcomes Canadian amateur hockey's longest running tradition. Not only that, the Clarenville Caribous and the Grand Falls-Windsor Cataracts, this year's senior champs, both have a chance to win the 107-year-old Allan Cup on home ice.
The Allan Cup is Canada's senior men's hockey championship. It goes back to 1909, the invention of Sir H. Montagu Allan, who wanted to give the country's best amateur players something to play for.
The Allan Cup was a direct reaction to competition for the Stanley Cup, which was supposed to have been an amateur trophy but was already being tainted by creeping professionalism.
Since those very early days, Allan Cup championship teams have come from all over Canada. The Ottawa Cliffsides won the first cup in 1909. In a beautiful bit of hockey synergy, the 1917 Allan Cup was won by the Toronto Dentals, a club formed at the University of Toronto School of Dentistry.
Their goalie was a medical student named Charles Stewart, who went on to play 77 games in the NHL with Boston and Hamilton during the Roaring Twenties. This was an era when goalies didn't wear masks and players wore no helmets, so you'd assume having a few dentists on the team would be a real plus.
A different era in hockey
No rampant spending, no salary cap. Whether you were a Galt Terrier, a Petrolia Squire or a Penticton Vee: you had a shot at the Allan Cup.
Even Canada's smallest provinces had a chance.
Fast forward to the mid-Eighties. The Newfoundland Senior Hockey League was in full swing. By this point, senior hockey was not the pure amateur game that Sir H. Montagu Allan had visualized. Senior teams in this neck of the woods were loading up with paid players.
By the 1980s, the amateur flavour of cup play was changing. Players were given jobs in the community or paid with money gathered in the off season through intense fundraising.
Ex-pros, former junior stars, college players: they all beat a path to Newfoundland looking to eke out a few more paycheques.
By 1985, the Corner Brook Royals were a powerhouse. They had a lineup loaded with local talent and complemented with a nice mix of ringers from the mainland, including Gus Greco, Dave Matte, Todd Stark, Dan Cormier — names that eventually became part of local hockey folklore.
Hitting a wall
Corner Brook's quest for the cup hit a brick wall in 1985. In that era, the final was a best of seven series. The Royals hosted the Thunder Bay Twins at the old Humber Gardens.
This was an era when goalies didn't wear masks and players wore no helmets, so you'd assume having a few dentists on the team would be a real plus.
After winning the first three games, Corner Brook collapsed. The Twins won the next four and Corner Brook spent the summer suffering from an Allan Cup hangover.
But the Corner Brook and the Royals rallied. In the spring of 1986 they travelled out west for the final and beat the Nelson, B.C., Maple Leafs in the final. A loyal group of fans made the trip out west and the CBC Television reports of the day show the Royals and their fans starting the celebration right after the final horn.
The party continued later that week when the Royals landed on the west coast.
These days the Allan Cup is played for in a tournament format, and in the last few years, Newfoundlanders have tasted success.
The Clarenville Caribous brought the cup home in 2011. But no Newfoundland and Labrador-based team has ever won the cup on home ice.
It's a six-team tournament this year, with two of those teams from Newfoundland.
If one of those teams makes it to Saturday's final and wins, you'll hear the cheering from Clarenville down at St. John's harbour.
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