Billy Breen

William Wright "Billy" Breen is surely one of the greatest hockey players that most fans of the game have never heard of. Even some historians conversant with the time he played (1900 to 1909) aren't familiar with him, likely because he played his entire career in Manitoba, a place that has long been overlooked in the study of the game's history.

Breen was born December 6, 1882 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Some sources list his date of birth as October 11, 1883 but the 1882 date is supported by both the 1901 and 1911 Canadian censuses, and makes more sense when you look at when he started playing senior hockey at any rate. He was an accountant by trade, and was one of the most renowned players in Manitoba, earning as much praise as the great Dan Bain, whose career was winding down as Breen's was heating up. Breen died fairly young in 1927, after an operation. He was apparently suffering from lymphosarcoma, a malignant cancer. His place of death is listed as Rochester, Minnesota, which suggests he was being treated at the Mayo Clinic at the time of his death.

Billy Breen was an excellent bowler and golfer, but where he truly shone was on the hockey rink. He was small by modern standards, but was of a fairly typical size for his time, and was noted as an outstanding skater and shooter. He was an exceptional rusher and would pour shot after shot in on opposing netminders, with a hard and accurate release.  His recorded hockey career began in the 1900 season, when he played for the Winnipeg HC second side in the intermediate section of the Manitoba and Northwest Hockey Association (MNWHA) at the age of only 16. His 16 goals in eight matches led the league, and he easily outscored Rat Portage's Tommy Phillips (a future Hall-of-Famer), who was about seven months older than Breen. He missed a few games of the following season's intermediate schedule, but on a goals-per-game basis he beat out not only Phillips (who played cover-point that season), but Hall-of-Famers Tom Hooper (who was the same age as Breen), Billy McGimsie (three years older than Breen), Joe Hall  (two years older than Breen) and Jack Marshall (six years older than Breen). Breen was a teenager playing against men, and was still the scoring star of the league.

He also played some senior hockey in these seasons, and performed well. The Pegs at this time were dominated annually by the Winnipeg Vics, though, so he had limited success at that level. However, his five goals in five senior matches in 1901 was enough to tie him for the league lead. In 1902 the Pegs were again terrible, but the 18-year-old Breen led his side in scoring once more.

Breen broke out in 1903, when the Winnipeg Rowing Club, replacing the Pegs, finally broke the Vics' hold on the provincial championship. He tied for the lead league in scoring, and outpaced another Hall-of-Famer in Fred Scanlan, who skated for the Victorias. In 1904 he was far and away the leading scorer in his league, recording 20 goals, when the second-best had 8. He was playing in a separate league from the Rat Portage Thistles in these years, however, so it was unclear how he stacked up against McGimsie who was busy leading Rat Portage to victories in the MNWHA.

When the two leagues finally came together again in 1905, Billy Breen was able to compete directly against McGimsie and Phillips, who had returned from studying in the east. The results make it clear that in terms of offence, it was Phillips, McGimsie and Breen, and then everyone else. Phillips scored 29 times in eight matches, one ahead of his teammate, while Breen managed 25 in nine games. No one else had more than 16, and that was in 10 games.

In 1905 it was more of the same, except this time Breen crept to the front of the list. He scored 26 times in nine games, ahead of Phillips' 23 in seven (a pace of over 29 for nine games). McGimsie scored 19 in in eight matches. After that, the next best was 11, scored by Breen's teammate Billy Kean, about whom we'll have a post sometime soon.

So in these two seasons of direct competition, Phillips scored 52 times in 15 games, McGimsie 47 in 16, and Breen 51 in 18. These three men were the MHL, offensively. No one could even approach them, not Tom Hooper or Si Griffis (another Hall-of-Fame Thistle) or Joe Hall, who was a forward at this time in his career, or even Cyclone Taylor, who scored three goals in three games as a rover for Portage in 1906.

When the Manitoba Hockey League turned professional in 1907, Breen remained an amateur while Phillips and McGimsie pursued (and won) the Stanley Cup. He was again a big fish in a small pond, counting 20 goals while the next-best total was nine, recorded by teammate and future pro Bert Boulton. Breen himself turned pro the following season, and although Kenora (formerly Rat Portage) was out of the league, there were a number of excellent pros in the league, partly due to the downfall of the International Hockey League.  The MHL was dotted with names such as Hamby Shore, Lorne Campbell, Fred Lake, Don Smith, Skinner Poulin, Barney Holden, Ernie Dubeau, Jack Fraser and Art Serviss, quality professional players all. Don Smith was third in the NHA in goals in 1911, Campbell had led the IHL in scoring in 1907, and Shore and Lake formed the core of the mighty Ottawa Senators defence in the early 1910s. The MHL in 1908 was easily the second-highest quality league in the country to the ECAHA, far outpacing the OPHL in terms of the quality of player.

Playing in the highest-quality league he ever had, Breen scored two goals per game, which ranked behind only Hamby Shore, and nearly one assist per game, far outpacing everyone else in that category. These assists are reconstructed from game reports, of course, because they were not officially awarded at the time. But the description of play was very detailed in the Winnipeg newspapers at this time, so these assists, while estimated, should be fair. Breen displayed his playmaking chops this season, and only his missing four games kept him from the very top of the scoring list. Here are the per-game figures:

Player	Club	GPG	APG	PPG
BREEN, Billy	Winnipeg Strathconas	2.00	0.92	2.92
KENNEDY, Harry	Winnipeg Maple Leafs	1.92	0.50	2.42
SHORE, Hamby	Winnipeg Strathconas	2.13	0.27	2.40
CAMPBELL, Lorne	Winnipeg Maple Leafs	2.00	0.25	2.25
CHARLTON, Roy	Portage Plains Cities	1.73	0.27	2.00
KEAN, Billy	Winnipeg Maple Leafs	1.40	0.40	1.80
LAKE, Fred	Winnipeg Strathconas	1.31	0.38	1.69
SMITH, Don	Portage Plains Cities	1.50	0.07	1.57
SWITZER, Frank	Winnipeg Strathconas	0.93	0.20	1.13
POULIN, Skinner	Portage Plains Cities	0.80	0.27	1.07

Breen played only one professional game after this season, recording four goals in two assists for the Winnipeg HC before that team folded. The MHL did not survive after the 1909 season; just as with so many of the professional leagues at this time, that circuit's life was brief and volatile. Breen wanted to get back into the senior amateur ranks in Winnipeg, but now that he had played professionally that was not going to be easy. He became a coach and referee while fighting to get his amateur status reinstated, which took until 1913. At this point, he had not played for four years, and decided he was done as a player. He coached the 1913 Winnipeg Hockey Club, winners of the Allan Cup, and later coached the Toronto Rowing Club in the OHA.

His career by Point Allocation:

Season	Club	League	Pos	Age	GP	MIN	OP	DP	PP	TPA	TPAK
1900	Winnipeg Pegs II	MNWHA (Int)	9	16	80	1600	4.3	0.0	0.0	4.3	2.69
1900	Winnipeg Pegs	MNWHA	5	16	60	1200	-1.5	-0.8	0.0	-2.3	-1.92
1900	Total (Prorated)		5	16	80	1600	1.6	-0.5	0.0	1.1	0.69
1901	Winnipeg Pegs II	MNWHA (Int)	9	17	46	920	3.9	0.0	0.0	3.9	4.24
1901	Winnipeg Pegs	MNWHA	45	17	80	1600	2.9	0.0	0.0	2.9	1.81
1901	Total (Prorated)		45	17	80	1600	4.3	0.0	0.0	4.3	2.69
1902	Winnipeg Pegs	MNWHA	5	18	60	1200	0.4	-0.5	-0.3	-0.4	-0.33
1903	Winnipeg Oarsmen	WCHA	5	19	80	1600	5.9	0.9	-0.1	6.7	4.19
1904	Winnipeg Oarsmen	WCHA	5	20	67	1340	6.9	0.0	-0.2	6.7	5.00
1905	Winnipeg Oarsmen	MHL	5	21	72	1440	4.1	0.0	-0.1	4.0	2.78
1906	Winnipeg Pegs	MHL	5	22	80	1600	6.1	0.0	-0.2	5.9	3.69
1907	Winnipeg Pegs	WCHA	4	23	80	1600	7.6	0.0	-0.1	7.5	4.69
1908	Winnipeg Strathconas	MHL	5	24	60	1200	5.2	0.0	-0.1	5.1	4.25
1909	Winnipeg Pegs	MHL	4	25	9	180	0.7	0.0	0.0	0.7	3.89
	Career				668	13360	42.8	-0.1	-1.1	41.6	3.11

His defensive stats should be taken with a grain of salt. It's something of an artifice of the Point Allocation system that outstanding offensive players in leagues below a certain level of quality will receive little or no defensive points. Based on the descriptions of his play it seems clear that Breen was an effective checking forward as well as an offensive dynamo.

Writers of the time spared no compliment when describing Breen:

And then again it was a case of too much Billy Breen on the forward line. As brilliant a skater, and as effective a shot as ever, it was his dashing playing that unquestionably put his team on top. Four goals out of five comprised his scoring record, and that it about his usual average. He is a great player, and a gentlemanly little captain of the Rowing Club. As an effective forward he is in a class by himself to-day, and the game has seldom seen a better. (Winnipeg Free Press, 30 Dec 1904)

Billy Breen – a name to conjure with! The dashing little forward has long since made his reputation. He has been the hero of many a hard-fought content, so any more comment on his playing is almost superfluous. It can, though, be truly said he never deserved the plaudits of enthusiastic admirers more than he did last night. A fitting leader is he to a representative seven of Winnipeg's best athletes. (Winnipeg Free Press, 7 Jan 1905)

For the Winnipegs, Billy Breen was the bright particular star, just as the brilliant little centre forward has been in so many games he has played. His dashing, hurdling rushes could not help but ring applause from the most apathetic, and seldom has a finer individual exhibition been seen on Winnipeg ice than that put up by the only Billy Breen last night. And when another man carried down the ice, it was always Breen who was in front of the net to take the pass. (Winnipeg Free Press, 23 Jan 1906)

Breen and Shore made a brilliant pair in centre ice. It is doubtful if there are two faster centre men in the country, while in Switzer and Lake they have a pair of wings who work in well on goal, and are strong at checking back. (Winnipeg Free Press, 18 Jan 1908)

This last comment on checking back leads us to a discussion of Breen's defence. He was surely most noted as a dynamic offensive player, but it's clear he was defensively responsible as well.

One of the principal reasons for the Oarmen's victory was the system of close-checking adopted by their forwards [Breen, Claude Borland, Harry Kennedy, Billy Field]. Not only did they play together well, and shine individually when attacking, but every mother's son of them was after the puck all the time, and the gritty never-say-die spirit in which they hung to their checks, proved to be an important factor in bringing about the ultimate result. (Winnipeg Free Press, 7 Jan 1905)

Another important factor in the result was the splendid way the Peg forwards [Breen, Kennedy, Billy Kean, Harry Gordon] checked back. (Winnipeg Free Press, 5 Jan 1906)

While sometimes he would stop an opponent's rush directly, the most frequent mention of his individual defensive play is for intercepting passes. For example:

Breen stole a pass and went down but M. Brown blocked. (Winnipeg Free Press, 21 Feb 1906)

On a pass back from Campbell, Breen stole the puck and pressed [sic] over to Lake who slapped in into the net. (Winnipeg Free Press, 8 Feb 1908)

Based on these plays and others, it seem Breen had a particular talent for breaking up an opponent's rush by intercepting a pass, and immediately transforming it into an offensive rush of his own.

Although he was primarily a shooter, it's also clear that Breen had substantial playmaking/passing ability. Aside from his leading the MHL in assists in 1908, descriptions of his play make frequent mention of skilful passing.

Breen passed out from the corner to Shore, who slipped in a counter. (Winnipeg Free Press, 25 Jan 1908)

Breen got away with a magnificent dodging run, hurdled three or four sticks and passed over to Lake who shot an easy goal. (Winnipeg Free Press, 18 Jan 1908)

The next game was a short one. Breen rushed down the side, passed over to Haddock, who scored a pretty goal. (Winnipeg Free Press, 30 Jan 1906)

I also noted several mentions of Breen winning a faceoff before starting a rush, so it seems likely he was very good on the draw as well. All of this gives us a picture of an all-round hockey talent, one whose main talent is skating and shooting, but who was also a gifted passer and was at least responsible on defence, if not better. The one flaw in his game seems to have been that he played in Manitoba instead of Montreal.

Breen is a member of the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame, and may have some small claim to belonging in the Hockey Hall of Fame as well. The biggest question to my mind is why he is not as well known today as he deserves to be. Next time we'll discuss one possible reason for this.

All-Stars Versus MVGs

Following up on the last post, we want to figure out why Hart Trophy voting results for 1924 to 1930 seem more than a little sketchy (for goaltenders, at least) if they're interpreted as who was seen as the best player at the position each season.

Fortunately, we have many seasons in which we have both Hart Trophy voting and All-Star voting results. This will shed a great deal of light on this. We know the highest-rated Hart goalie for 1934, 1937, 1939, 1940 and every season from 1942 to 1957 and beyond. But for now we'll stop at 1957, giving us 20 seasons to work with.

In these 20 seasons, only six times is the highest-rated Hart goalie the same as the First Team All-Star (Frank Brimsek in 1942, Bill Durnan in 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1949, and Harry Lumley in 1955). It's the Second All-Star goalie six times (Roy Worters in 1934, Earl Robertson in 1939, Brimsek in 1943 and 1948, Chuck Rayner in 1950 and Jim Henry in 1952), and eight times the Hartiest netminder was third in the All-Star voting (Tiny Thompson in 1937, Robertson in 1940, Turk Broda in 1947, Al Rollins in 1951, 1953 and 1954, Gump Worsley in 1956 and Terry Sawchuk in 1957). Clearly, different standards are at play between the voting for the two awards. You might not expect 100% agreement between the two if the standards were the same, but with this degree of difference, where the third-best goaltender was the most likely to be seen as the most valuable, there's clearly something going on. And it we look at the results in detail, it's pretty clear what that difference is.

Season	MVG	W%	ASG	W%
1934	WORTERS, Roy	.472	GARDINER, Charlie	.531
1937	THOMPSON, Tiny	.552	SMITH, Norm	.615
1939	ROBERTSON, Earl	.478	BRIMSEK, Frank	.779
1940	ROBERTSON, Earl	.354	KERR, Dave	.667
1943	BRIMSEK, Frank	.570	MOWERS, Johnny	.610
1947	BRODA, Turk	.600	DURNAN, Bill	.650
1948	BRIMSEK, Frank	.491	BRODA, Turk	.642
1950	RAYNER, Chuck	.486	DURNAN, Bill	.539
1951	ROLLINS, Al	.775	SAWCHUK, Terry	.721
1952	HENRY, Jim	.471	SAWCHUK, Terry	.714
1953	ROLLINS, Al	.493	SAWCHUK, Terry	.635
1954	ROLLINS, Al	.235	LUMLEY, Harry	.558
1956	WORSLEY, Gump	.529	PLANTE, Jacques	.734
1957	SAWCHUK, Terry	.618	HALL, Glenn	.629
	Average	.509	Average	.645

In every season but one, when the All-Star Goaltender (ASG) is a different man than the Most Valuable Goaltender (MVG), the (ASG) was a winning percentage (W%) that is higher than that of the MVG, and sometimes the difference is enormous. The voters of the time clearly had no problem giving Hart Trophy votes to goaltenders on bad teams (see 1940 and 1954 in particular), but not All-Star votes. The only season in which the MVG has a higher W% than the ASG is 1951, when Al Rollins did not play a full season but was still considered MVG. So MVP votes could go to a netminder who did not play a full season, but All-Star votes would not; see also in 1957 (when the difference in W% is the smallest) when Sawchuk played only 34 games. So in every season in which both the MVG and the ASG played a full season, the ASG always had a significantly higher W%; he played on a significantly better team.

It seems absolutely clear to me, then, that the voters were applying the following standards to these votes, in general:

1. The All-Star voting was for the goaltender who was the most proficient at his position.

2. The Hart Trophy voting was for the goaltender who contributed the greatest proportion of his team's success.

So if you have two goaltenders, one worth 10 points on a team that recorded 40 points, and another worth 15 points on a team that recorded 70, the latter would do better in the All-Star voting while the former would do better in the Hart voting. The former was more valuable to him team in the sense that he contributed a greater proportion of his team's success. This is the only way that the voting results for Earl Robertson in 1939 and 1940, Jim Henry in 1952 and especially Al Rollins in 1954 make sense. For purposes of the Hart Trophy, it was often most valuable in the sense of "imagine how bad they would have been without him." This is not the modern attitude, when generally a player cannot be seen as "valuable" unless his team did well, but it clearly a prevalent attitude in the time period we're looking at.

Now, the best Hart goalies in the pre-All-Star seasons were John Roach in 1924 (.435 W%), Clint Benedict in 1925 (.333), Roy Worters in 1926 (.529), 1927 (.375), 1928 (.523) and 1929 (.553), and Charlie Gardiner in 1930 (.534). It's possible that some of these men would have been voted First Team All-Stars if there had been such a thing at the time, but given this analysis, it seems that at least in 1924, 1925 and 1927 these netminders would not have been named the best, rather than most valuable in the sense defined above.

So it seems that Roy Worters should not be considered the best goaltender of the late 1920s based on his Hart voting records. These votes were not intended to say he was the best goaltender, but that he was the best relative to his team. And since his teams were usually not good, that doesn't tell us much about his absolute standing among his brethren netminders.

All-Star Goalkeepers

All-Star Team results from the past provide historians with useful information about how some players were perceived in their own time. Statistical records are of course very informative, but have their limitations. Things like All-Star Team voting records can help shed some light on things that might not be reflected in the stats. They tell us who was seen to be the best at their position at their time, which is particularly useful when it comes to defensive players.

The downside of NHL All-Star Teams is that the league only began these awards in 1931. We know Charlie Gardiner was considered the best netminder in the NHL for the 1930/31 season, but who was seen as the best in 1929/30?

Well, we may not have All-Star voting records from before 1931, but we do at least have the Hart Trophy records, which go back to 1924. (This is all thanks to work done at hfboards.com, see link here.) If we know who the top-rated goaltender in each season from 1924 to 1930 in the Hart voting, maybe we can consider them to be effectively First Team All-Stars. If they had such a vote at the time, we could figure that the goalies seen as the most valuable would also have been seen as the best.

I've certainly seen this sort of argument made, specifically that since Roy Worters received the most Hart Trophy consideration among goaltenders in every season from 1926 to 1929, he should be considered the best goalkeeper of his time. Interpreting this as the equivalent of four consecutive First All-Star Team selections, it's hard to see it otherwise.

As it happens, we do know which goaltender received the most Hart votes each season from 1924 to 1930. In chronological order, they are John Roach, Clint Benedict, Roy Worters, Roy Worters, Roy Worters, Roy Worters and Charlie Gardiner. The fact that Gardiner received the most Hart votes in 1930, and then was the First Team All-Star in 1931, suggests that we may be on to something here.

So maybe Worters was seen as the best goaltender of his time. Considering the competition, his being seen as the best each season is quite something. He was up against a variety of Clint Benedict, Alec Connell, George Hainsworth, Hap Holmes and Hugh Lehman in these seasons, Hall-of-Famers all. Of course, Benedict, Holmes and Lehman were nearing the end of the road at the time, but still, four straight seasons being the best of the best...

But hold on a minute. We also know which goaltenders received the second-most Hart votes in 1924, 1925 and 1926, namely Jake Forbes, Jake Forbes and Doc Stewart. Forbes and Stewart were both good goaltenders, but were not all-time talents by any stretch. And yet, in both 1924 and 1925 Forbes was apparently considered a better netminder than Georges Vezina, and in 1926 Stewart was seen as better tan both Benedict and Connell, if we see Hart votes as the same as All-Star votes. Now, if that is in fact what was going on, we really no longer need to concern ourselves with these voting results, because if that's how the voters saw things, then they shouldn't be taken seriously. Jakes Forbes was not a better goaltender than Georges Vezina.

So there must be something else going on. There is; and next time we'll look at exactly what it is.

Evolution of Hockey Positions

If you're reading this blog, chances are that you know what rovers, points and cover-points are. Or were. They're part of the history of the game; before defencemen we had points and cover-points (or simply covers), the former playing close to the goalkeeper, and the latter being a conduit between the defence and the forwards. The rover was phased out of eastern hockey around 1911/12, while the point/cover positions morphed into side-by-side defenders soon thereafter.

But that's not all there is to the story of positional changes in hockey. If you go far back enough, specifically to 1875 when the first organized, indoor games between two opposing clubs took place in Montreal, there were typically nine men on the ice for either side, rather than the seven we're used to dealing with in early hockey history. They played four forwards as we're used to from the rover era, but had two extra men on defence. Not only that, but the defensive positions were not yet called point and cover, they were back and half-back, a clear indication of the fact that the rules of the game were adapted from football.

I can't be 100% of how the players typically lined up, but I think the following makes sense. The goalkeeper is marked with GK, the backs with B, the half-backs with HB, and the forwards with F.

The first big change in hockey positions came around 1880, when two men were dropped from the standard lineup. I'm not sure of the impetus for this change. The number nine had basically been chosen to fit the practical limits of the Victoria Skating Rink (which bequeathed its 200' by 85' rink size to North American hockey); when played outdoors hockey was played with more men than that. At some point they may have simply decided that 18 men on the ice made it a bit too crowded, and reduced it to 7-on-7.

However, they did not immediately adopt the seven-with-a-rover lineup. They dropped a back and a forward, still playing with two half-backs, thusly:

This standard seems to have lasted about a decade, after which one of the half-backs transmogrified into a fourth forward (the rover), and the other became the cover-point (CP), while the back was now called the point (P). This change from four defenders and three forwards to three defenders and four forwards probably had some effect on goal-scoring, which did uptick at this time, as we'll be looking at in the near future.

This was the standard in eastern hockey for about 20 years, when the decision was made, at least at the game's highest level, to eliminate the rover (as discussed here). That opened the ice up a bit, and brings us close to the setup we're used to today:

It took only another season or so before the point/cover-point setup gave way to the modern lineup, which we still have today...

...which, I think it's safe to say, is not going to change any time soon. It's worked well for almost a century now.

The usual caveats for this sort of general discussion apply, of course. The years mentioned may not be entirely precise, and it's unlikely that every team adopted the same lineup at the same time. Each change would have taken a bit of time to become standard.

The Man-Advantage Effect

Normally I like to stick to things that happened in hockey before 1927, but sometimes fascinating things can be found in more recent season, for which of course we tend to have better data than those from long ago.

A recent thread of HFBoards got me looking into the relationship between NHL teams' man-advantage situations and their results in the standings. I wanted to look at each team's net power-plays, which we'll call their net odd-man situations (NOMS) here, and how many points they recorded for the season. As such I computed the coefficients of correlation for each NHL season from 1963/64 to the present, which is all the data that was readily available.

Remember that a positive correlation means that teams with higher point totals for the season also tend to have higher NOMS (ie, receive more man-advantage situations than they give up), while a negative correlation means that teams with higher point totals tend to have lower NOMS. The results are summarized in the table below. A correlation of zero means there is no relationship between a team's place in the standings and its NOMS.

Before the Great Expansion, at least for the seasons I have the data for, a team's NOMS were not strongly predictive of how that team did in the standing. And this held for the first season after expansion as well. But starting in 1968/69, the weaker teams in the NHL had a strong tendency to have a net positive in man-advantage situations. And this is a persistent effect, only getting close to zero for a season or two in the early 1980s, but remaining negative.

This persisted until 1988/89, when the whole thing swung to the positive. Starting in that season, strong teams had a tendency to have a positive NOMS, meaning they received more man-advantage situations than they gave up. Although it has dropped to around zero correlation in five seasons since then, otherwise it's been a  positive correlation, and often strongly so.

There are at least two competing effects here, that could explain the relationship between a team's NOMS and its success in the standings.

One is that, obviously, a team with a positive NOMS should be expected, on average, to receive an advantage in net goals (which in turn results in an advantage in wins). Having a man advantage is a large advantage, almost doubling your chance to score a goal in that time and reducing your opponent's chances to almost zero. So based on this, we would expect that a team with a positive NOMS would do relatively well in the standings, which would result in a positive correlation coefficient.

Another factor, however, is score effects. A team with the lead will tend to play defensively. This is why teams with a lead will tend to be out-shot by their opponents. Additionally, I think I'm safe in saying that a team playing defensively will also take more penalties than they draw, since most penalties occur on defence. Since a team that is often in the lead will tend to win more often than one that isn't, that may lead to a good team giving up more man-advantage situations than they receive. This would result in a negative correlation between NOMS and points in the standings.

I suspect, and I haven't done any research to support this, that the first factor would have a stronger effect than the second, since the first involves actually having a higher NOMS while the second involves only the potential for a lower NOMS. That is, the skill/descipline/luck/whatever involved in drawing more penalties than you take is a stronger factor that the score effect. That's just an educated guess, of course.

So from that perspective, the results from 1988/89 to the present make sense. Teams that have a high NOMS should be scoring more goals than their opponents, on average, and therefore the positive correlation makes sense.

But two important questions would then remain: why the negative correlation between 1968/69 and 1987/88, and why the switch from negative to positive in 1988?

One thing that is very different in the NHL from the 1970s to the 1990s is the parity among teams. In the 1970s, the best teams dominated the worst (typically, expansion) teams. Dynasties like the Lafleur Canadiens, Bossy Islanders and Gretzky Oilers do not exist in the NHL today, and haven't for some time. This great disparity in team quality does suggest that, perhaps, the game's officials (knowingly or subconsciously) gave more advantages to the lesser teams in order to give them something of a fighting chance. That's a possibility. And then when relative parity arose, such things were no longer needed and were abandoned, leaving NOMS to grant the advantage that it should, as discussed above.

But there's also the possibility that the players on the better teams, knowing they were so far superior to their opponents, simply took more liberties with opposing players. Perhaps they didn't hesitate to trip the man in the slot, because they knew the resulting power-play would be relatively weak and would likely be killed off. So again, the negative correlation is a result of disparity, but this hypothesis does not require biased officials to function. As such, this is the explanation I currently prefer.

Those are a couple of hypotheses. I welcome yours.

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.