1941: Hockey, Ice

Now acknowledged as winter's top sport indoors and outdoors, hockey accounted for a vast following of more than 5,000,000 persons during the successful 1940-41 season. Considered second only to basketball (indoors only) in popularity, the annual expenditure for hockey's admissions to games, salaries of players and officials, and equipment topped $8,000,000 at the most conservative figures.

Professional games in the United States took the limelight, to be sure, but amateur contests are also creating a larger following every year. Kingpins among the pro teams in the National League are the Boston Bruins, a top-flight aggregation, who swept away all opposition in winning the league crown and the hockey championship of the world for the Stanley Cup. The Bruins scored twenty-three straight victories over their opponents until finally halted by the New York Rangers, winners of nineteen games during the 1939-40 season. It was the third straight annual victory of the Bruins in taking the league title, followed by a victory over the second place Toronto Maple Leafs for the play-offs in the Cup series. Later the Bruins won four straight against the Detroit Red Wings in a four-out-of-seven sectional series.

The Washington Eagles scored a signal triumph as a newcomer in the Eastern League, running up 92 points in 65 games and scoring 280 goals, with Baltimore second. After leading all the way, the Cleveland Barons captured the championship of the American League. The St. Louis Flyers won the championship of the American Association, comprising Kansas City, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Omaha, Tulsa, Dallas and Fort Worth. The Regina Rangers won the Allen Cup, emblematic of Canadian amateur hockey supremacy, and Canada's junior championship and Memorial Cup was taken by the Winnipeg team.

With the Canadian colleges out of hockey competition because of the war, Princeton won the Quadrangular title, replacing Yale, with Dartmouth third and Harvard last. Always among the top teams, the St. Nicholas Hockey Club defeated the Clinton Hockey Club for the National A. A. U. championship in New Haven, Conn., among six teams. The N. Y. Exchange Brokers won the laurels in the Metropolitan (N. Y.) Hockey League, and six other district associations in the A. A. U. held annual championships in the Eastern and Mid-Western states. Manual Training High School was triumphant over all high schools in New York for the P. S. A. L. championship title.

The lion's share of individual honors in professional hockey were won by players on the Bruins' team, including the Hart Trophy for the most valuable player on his team, awarded to Bill Bowley, center. The Lady Byng Trophy for the best conduct on the ice was awarded to Bobby Bauer, Boston's capable right wing. Walter (Turk) Broda, of the Maple Leafs, captured the goal-tending award, the George Vezina Trophy, and the Calder Trophy for the season's most outstanding rookie was voted to Johnny Quilty, of the Canadians. Like all other sports, hockey is doomed to lose many of its best players who are now enlisting for war duty.