Who Was the First Thug?

I'm going to talk about fighting again. Those who've been reading my stuff at various places over the years know well my position on fighting in hockey. One particular bramble in my teeth is the claim that fighting has "always been part of the game." This is simply untrue. It's essentially true that violence has nearly always been a part of the game, but fighting certainly has not.

In the early years, the most violent players did not fight; they assaulted, slashed, tripped and bashed, but fighting was rare. Players like Newsy Lalonde, Joe Hall, Alf Smith and Sprague Cleghorn were known to be rash and hostile players to say the least, but since it takes two to fight, such activity was fairly rare. And it was absolutely not the case that they used fighting as a strategic weapon.

That's what critics of fighting really abhor in the modern game. Few people are completely opposed to spur-of-the-moment, spontaneous fights. It's the premeditated, organized thuggery that disgusts most people. And this is a modern phenomenon. Designated goons have not always been part of the game. In fact, they've been around for less than 50 years, when the game has been played in an organized form for over 120.

There were no real thugs in hockey's first decades. By thug, I mean a player whose primary job was to be violent. There have always been players, to be sure, that have made violence a part of their game plan. But until a certain point, there were no players whose designated role was to hit opponents in the face.

In the 1920s, the Montreal Canadiens had a pair of rough defencemen in Bert Corbeau and Billy Coutu. Coutu was something close to a thug at time, but for most of his career he took a regular shift on the blueline with a very good defensive team. These were typical violent players of their day. They were violent, but also useful players, when they could keep themselves out of the penalty box. Jimmy Orlando with the 1940s Red Wings was similar. In four full seasons, he led the NHL in penalty minutes twice and was second once. But for his career, he averaged less than two PIM per game, which is hardly thug territory.

The Rangers' Lou Fontinato (late 50s/early 60s) is another player that seems a bit thuggish. In eight seasons he led the league in PIM three times, and averaged 2.33 PIM per game played. He certainly had a thug's approach to the game, often dropping the gloves, and otherwise trying to punish opposing players with his body. There's a case to be made that Fontinato is hockey's first true thug, though again he might have been too useful on defence to be so called. He played eight seasons on defence, when NHL teams played only four or five blueliners per game. As such the position was too valuable to waste on a thug. Even in today's game, with six defencemen, thug blueliners are rare.

Reggie Fleming (1960s) comes closer to the title of ur-thug. Some years he didn't play much but still too a lot of penalties, and he was certainly considered an intimidator. But still, his penalty totals are a bit low to be a real thug, especially when you consider his often-decent offence as well.

Howie Young might be it. In 1963 he had a truly thuggish season, scoring nine points but recording 273 penalty minutes in 64 games. But that was not typical for Young. He was always fairly high on the PIMs, but never had another thuggy year. His 1963 season could be considered the prototype season for a true thug, but it was not consistently Young's role.

Ultimately, you might be shocked to find that it really started in earnest with the Philadelphia Flyers. The Broad Street Bullies did their best to ruin the game in the 1970s, and it was the 1973 season, when Dave Schultz was inserted into the lineup, that the chaos really began. Along with Bob Kelly and Don Saleski, Schultz (and later others) took violence and intimidation to a whole new level. And it only got worse from there, culminating in Schultz's festering sore of a 1975 season, when he racked up an obscene total of 472 PIM, which beat his own previous record by 35% and which remains 15% more than any other season in NHL history to this day.

The game has only recently begun to recover. Designated thugs are of late becoming less and less common, finally, after decades of players who bring nothing to the rink but fists and fury. No one has broken 400 PIM in a season since 1993, and even 300 PIM has only been recorded three times since the turn of the 21st century. But when it comes to thugs in history, I think it's fair to blame the Flyers. Many other players joined in, but they started it.

Minnie McGiffin - Hockey's First Thug

And I don't use the term "thug" in an adulatory manner. Roy "Minnie" McGiffin was not a gentle player by any means, and I shouldn't even describe him that way, since that type of language (so often used even today) glosses over the fact that he was a violent, dangerous player.

To begin with, let's have a look at his career record, using TPAK. We have several missing seasons here. In 1910 he played junior-level hockey in the OHA, at least before he was suspended for unsportsmanlike conduct in February of that year. He was in California during the 1911 hockey season, and spent the 1912 season playing for Cleveland in the USAHA, for which statistics are not currently available. After his playing career ended in 1915, McGiffin served in the US Army Air Service during World War I, and died in an airplane accident in Texas, in 1918.

Season	Club	League	Pos	Age	GP	MIN	OP	DP	PP	TPA	TPAK
1909	Toronto Athletics	OHA	6	17	80	1600	3.5	-0.3	-0.7	2.5	1.56
1909	Toronto Athletics	IPAHU	8	17	67	1340	-1.7	-0.8	-0.6	-3.1	-2.31
1913	Toronto Blueshirts	NHA	5	21	60	1200	1.8	1.1	-1.0	1.9	1.58
1914	Toronto Blueshirts	NHA	5	22	72	1440	2.2	2.1	-1.3	3.0	2.08
1915	Toronto Blueshirts	NHA	51	23	72	1620	0.2	3.8	-1.8	2.2	1.36
					351	7200	6.0	5.9	-5.4	6.5	0.90

As you can see, he was a pretty marginal player at the NHA level (and in the amateur game), however a large part of this is due to the penalties he took. He loses 45% of his value as a player on the ice due to the cost to his team of being a man down so very often. For the three seasons McGiffin played in the NHA, from 1913 to 1915, the "top" (actually bottom) three penalty rates (per 60 minutes of ice time) all belong to him:

Player	Season	GP	PIM	PIM/60 MIN
McGIFFIN, Minnie	1915	18	131	14.06
McGIFFIN, Minnie	1914	18	86	10.20
McGIFFIN, Minnie	1913	15	83	9.73
WILSON, Cully	1915	20	138	9.63
SKINNER, Alf	1915	16	68	8.34
BROADBENT, Punch	1915	20	115	7.80
CARPENTER, Eddie	1915	19	63	6.28
MUMMERY, Harry	1913	20	87	5.54
ROBERTS, Gord	1915	19	74	5.51
PITRE, Didier	1913	17	80	5.43
BROADBENT, Punch	1914	17	61	5.37
MUMMERY, Harry	1915	20	88	5.22
DARRAGH, Jack	1914	20	69	5.15
RONAN, Skene	1914	19	65	5.10

No one comes close to his level of rule-breaking. McGiffin was at least 46% ahead of the second-ranked player on a per-minute basis every season. He was always in the top two in total penalty minutes (leading in 1914), despite usually being a substitute player. And this isn't an artifact of him being careless, or being prone to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was in fact noted as a very violent player in his day:

Minnie McGiffin got into the game every now and again and managed to distinguish himself with the usual line of rough work. In the first period he had only been on a minute or so when he chopped [Hamby] Shore and went off. In the second he started the procession to the penalty bench by crashing into [Art] Ross who at once retaliated...McGiffin then replaced [Jack] Walker and knocked [Jack] Darragh flat with a glaring foul. He was given another major. Later he came back to use the butt end of his stick on [Leth] Graham, knocking the youngster cold. (Montreal Daily Mail, 11 Jan 1915)

Like others of his ilk, McGiffin (who was also called "The Hornet") was a dangerous player. He was, of course, liked by his home-team fans, who saw only McGiffin's aggression and willingness to challenge the opposing players and turned a blind eye to his plain, unvarnished violence: 

According to the official list of penalties Minnie McGiffin is the bad man of pro hockey. However, local fans don't think so. They blame the long list to the officials. A leather-lunged rooter at the Arena Saturday night voiced the feeling of the bleachers when the Torontos made a change in the last period: “Blow your whistle, Umps, Minnie's on the ice. (Toronto World, 1 Feb 1915)

Much like many of today's fans, McGiffin's supporters backed him because he was his own team, while at the same time deriding opposing players for their violent tendencies. But there's a good argument to be made that McGiffin was hockey's first real thug. We'll look at the history of thugs in major hockey next time.

The Quality of Pre-Stanley Cup Hockey (Part 1)

We've been discussing the pre-Stanley Cup era quite a bit lately here at Hockey Historysis. Some people view 1893 as more than just an arbitrary cutoff date, however, and argue that the introduction of the Stanley Cup is a real marker of a change in the quality of the hockey being played, in that it gave the players something to strive for. But in this post and its sequels, I'll show that hockey from the mid-1880s to 1892 was not substantially different than hockey immediately after the introduction of the Stanley Cup in 1893. The dividing line between 1892 and 1893 is as artificial and political as the line between 1917 and 1918. As such, players from the pre-Stanley Cup era should be considered to be on par with players post-1892, at least until the professional era.

In this post we'll address the idea that the very nature of the game was different before 1893.

The Nature of the Game

It has been argued that hockey before 1893 was a gentlemanly game, played more for its own sake than for the competition. It was played by affluent young men, members of posh clubs. This allegedly began to change when the Cup was introduced, which gave the teams something real to strive for, and increased their incentive to do anything it takes to win.

This argument stems from the misconception that hockey before the Stanley Cup was a game played between teams from gentleman's clubs. This is false; the clubs in question were athletic clubs (such as the famous Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, who sponsored the Montreal Hockey Club, who we've been talking so much about). Members of these clubs joined them to undertake sport, not to assemble in the drawing room for dry sherry.

Violence has been a part of the game of hockey since its earliest years of organized competition. The players on the ice were rarely gentlemen. The following excerpts are taken from Montreal Herald game reports from the 1890 Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC) season, which of course predates the Stanley Cup by three years.

The game was rather rough at times and it is regrettable to say that one of the home players forgot himself so far as to strike one of the visitors. The visitors, to their credit be it said, even when fighting against odds, stuck to their work with a commendable spirit and never seemed to lose courage. (Montreal vs Quebec, 9 Jan 1890)

The Montreal teams gained a victory over their opponents, the Victorias, but the victory was not as clean a one as might be desired. There were three men on the winning side who resorted to very rough play. During certain stages of the game there was a good exposition of the game, but at other times there was a good deal of tripping, swiping, falls and wholesale dumping against the bank.

…

Campbell took charge of [the puck] and piloted it through several of his opponents, but his shot for goal was wide. Immediately after this Findlay and Kinghorn lost their temper and made an undesirable display of themselves on the ice to the disasprobation of the audience. This seemed to have the effect of making the remaining portion of the game rougher than it should have been. (Montreal vs Victorias, 17 Jan 1890)

During certain stages of the game there was a good deal of ill temper shown by members of both teams...The match was fast, exciting, and at times a trifle rougher than was necessary. (Montreal vs Dominions, 31 Jan 1890)

The match throughout was hard and fast and not of the easiest kind to describe. The puck was here, there and every where. It travelled fast and was not allowed to remain long in one place. There was a good deal of hacking and shinning, but this was not confined to one individual of one side, both taking a hand in it. The only regrettable feature of the match was the ill-feeling shown by Lee and McQuisten, who had a dispute and commenced to settle it with their fists. They both fell to the ice and had to be separated. They received a sharp reprimand from the referee. Later on Lee meet with an accident whereby he sustained a severe cut over the right eye. (Montreal vs Victorias, 4 Mar 1890)

In four of the seven match reports from this season, the writer felt the need to point out unnecessary violence in the game. The idea that hockey at this time was a group of gentleman playing a friendly game is simply false. Rough play was common, and as indicated in the above reports, fistfights happened occasionally as well. This only makes sense if the players were taking the competition very seriously, and were doing whatever they thought was needed for victory.

As to the alleged affluence of the players involved in the game at this time, this is certainly more difficult to determine that the above, since a hockey player's off-ice life was not often recorded for posterity. However in Paul Kitchen's Win, Tie or Wrangle we get some background on a number of Ottawa Hockey Club players, for instance:

Albert Morel, G, 1891-1894: The son of a cabinetmaker, Morel was a student when he first joined the hockey club, and later worked as a private secretary and a bookkeeper for a lumber company.

Weldy Young, CP, 1891-1899: The son of a fire superintendent, he worked as an engraver in a watchmaking business tun by him and his two brothers.

Chauncey Kirby, C, 1891-1899: The son of a city treasurer, worked as a clerk at the Quebec Bank.

Bert Russell, LW, 1893-1896: Worked as a draughtsman for the Geological Survey.

Although there may be a tendency toward white collar work, none of these descriptions seem to indicate a particularly affluent lifestyle. Indeed, the player best described as affluent from the early days of Ottawa hockey would be Frank McGee, who didn't play senior hockey until 1903, a decade after the first Stanley Cup championship. McGee came from one of Ottawa's most prominent families, growing up in the “magnificent home” of his father, who was the clerk of the Privy Council, the highest-ranking civil service office in Canada. He worked as a timekeeper for the railroad, but it is certainly fair to say he came from an affluent family. However, he played at a time when the game was supposed to be becoming more serious, due to the Stanley Cup.

Similarly, census records can give us some insight into what players did for a living at a time when they didn't receive a penny for playing hockey. The following players all played at the highest level, prior to the introduction of the Stanley Cup:

Barlow, Billy: clerk

Bignell, Herbert: insurance clerk

Clapperton, Alexander: dry goods clerk

Cafferty, Thomas: lithographer

Davidson, Robert: grocery clerk

Fairbairn, William: insurance clerk

Hodgson, Archie: whale stationer

James, George: hardware clerk

Kinghorn, James: mill clerk

Larmouth, F.M.: brokerage clerk

Lee, Sam: trunkmaker

Lesser, Joshua: agent

Low, George: bank clerk

McDonnell, John: photographer

Routh, Havilland: clerk

Shearer, Andy: lumber merchant

Warden, William: bank clerk

Again, there does seem to be a tendency toward white-collar jobs, but unless “grocery clerk” or “hardware clerk” implies “affluent” to you, then there's no reason to think these men were particularly well-off in society, members of restrictive upper-crust social clubs.

Hockey before the Stanley Cup was a rough game, played by men from a variety of social classes, just as it was after the Stanley Cup was introduced. There's no reason to consider hockey before 1893 in any different light than in the years 1893 to 1899 and beyond.