April 10, 1934, 90 years ago: The Chicago Black Hawks win the Stanley Cup for the 1st time, thanks to a spectacular Finals performance by goaltender Charlie Gardiner. He never played again.
(Note on names: Gardiner was alternately listed as "Charlie" and "Chuck." I've seen "Charlie" used more, so that's what I'm going with. And the team was also listed as "Black Hawks," two words, until 1986, when someone found their original charter admitting them to the NHL, and saw that it was written as one word, "Blackhawks." They notified the NHL office, who made the single word official, and they've been the "Chicago Blackhawks" ever since. But since they were using "Chicago Black Hawks" at the time, that's what I'm using here.)
The Black Hawks and the Detroit Red Wings had both entered the NHL for the 1926-27 season, after the collapse of the Western Hockey League. The Hawks were originally staffed by the players of the WHL's Portland Rosebuds, while the Wings' owners bought the players from the Victoria Cougars, and they named their new team the Detroit Cougars, with new owners renaming them the Detroit Falcons in 1930 and the Detroit Red Wings in 1932.
However, the NHL does not recognize the Chicago team as a continuation of the Portland team, nor the Detroit team as a continuation of the Victoria team. In 1916, the Portland Rosebuds became the 1st U.S.-based team to play in the Stanley Cup Finals. In 1925, the Victoria Cougars were the last team from outside the NHL to win the Stanley Cup, but the Wings do not claim this title, nor would the NHL recognize it if they did.
The Black Hawks reached the Stanley Cup Finals for the 1st time in 1931, losing to the Montreal Canadiens. By the 1933-34 season, they were loaded with stars. They featured wingers Harold "Mush" March, Paul Thompson and Johnny Gottselig; defensemen Clarence "Taffy" Abel, Lionel Conacher and Art Coulter; and goaltender Charlie Gardiner.
(Conacher, brother of Toronto Maple Leafs star Charlie Conacher, is the only man in both the Hockey and Canadian Football Halls of Fame, and also starred in rugby and lacrosse, 2 sports that are considerably bigger in Canada than in America. He even played minor-league baseball. In 1950, he was voted Canada's Athlete of the Half-Century.)
The Wings were also laden with talent, allowing them to reach the Finals for the 1st time. They had right wing Larry Aurie, left wing Herbie Lewis, centers Ralph "Cooney" Weiland and Ebenezer "Ebbie" Goodfellow, and defenseman Doug Young. Their goalie was Wilf Cude, not exactly a star. And it would be the goalies who would decide the Finals, which, at the time, was best-3-out-of-5. (It became best-4-out-of-7 in 1939.)
The 1st 2 games were played at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. Game 1 went to double overtime before Thompson won it. The Hawks also won Game 2, 4-1, giving them a commanding lead going back to the Chicago Stadium. The Wings struck back in Game 3, scoring 3 goals in a little over 6 minutes in the 3rd period, and winning 5-2 to keep their hopes alive.
Gottselig was the 2nd Russian-born player in the NHL, and the 1st Russian-born star, although he, and most people in his birthplace of Klosterdorf (now named Gammalsvenskby, and located in Ukraine) were ethnically German. He emigrated to Canada with his family, and grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Gardiner had been born in Edinburgh, Scotland, but moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with his family at age 7. Cude had immigrated from Wales to Winnipeg, and he and Gardiner became friends. Gardiner became a local star in both baseball and Canadian football before concentrating on hockey. The Black Hawks acquired him in 1927, and in 1932, he won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's top goalie. He was the 1st lefthanded goalie to win it, catching pucks with his right hand.
But trouble was on the horizon. The following season, he developed a tonsil infection, which drained his strength. On Christmas Eve, 1932, he made 55 saves to help the Hawks beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, earning public praise from opposing star Charlie Conacher and NHL President Frank Calder. But he collapsed in the locker room afterward, and was taken to a Toronto hospital.
By the start of the 1933-34 season, was so admired by his teammates, they named him team Captain. He is 1 of 6 goalies to have served as Captain of an NHL team. In 1949, a rule was established prohibiting goalies from being Captains, because leaving the crease to talk to officials, which only the Captain (not even the head coach) can do, was considered an unfair timeout.
In 1934, he was again awarded the Vezina Trophy, and was selected as the starting goalie for the NHL All-Stars against the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Ace Bailey Benefit Game. But the month before the game would be played, the team was on a train back to Chicago, when the pain in Gardiner's throat became severe, and spread throughout his body. He had to be hospitalized again, and it was determined that the infection had spread to his kidneys. This was before antibiotics, so he could have died right there.
Throughout the season, he still refused to have the tonsils removed, so that he wouldn't miss any games, and played in the Benefit Game on February 14 anyway. He could often be seen slumped over the crossbar of the goal when the action was at the other end. On March 29, in a Playoff game, he shut the Montreal Maroons out, but had a fever of 102 degrees, and a doctor tended to him during the intermissions.
Maybe Gardiner's infection was bothering him in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, as he allowed 5 goals, after allowing just 1 in each of the 1st 2 games. Whatever was going on inside him, he didn't show it in Game 4 in Chicago. Nor did Cude. Not only did regulation end scoreless, but it was still 0-0 at the end of the 1st overtime period. Finally, at 10:05 of the 2nd overtime, March scored, and it was over: Chicago 1, Detroit 0.
For the 1st time, the Cup belonged to an NHL team west of Toronto. As Calder was the Commissioner, it was his job to hand the Cup to the winning Captain, and that was Gardiner. In the Hawks' 3 wins, totaling 231 minutes, he had allowed just 2 goals, averaging a goal every 115 minutes. Counting the 5 he allowed in Game 3, it was a goal every 41 minutes. Had there been a most valuable player award for the Playoffs at that time, he surely would have won it.
Two months later, on June 10, 1934, in his hometown of Winnipeg, Gardiner collapsed and fell into a coma. He died 3 days later, from a brain hemorrhage brought on by the infection. He was only 29 years old.
Upon hearing of his death, Red Wings head coach and general manager Jack Adams, for whom the NHL's Coach of the Year trophy and its now-discarded Adams Division would be named, called him "a grand chap. One could not help but like him. He was undoubtedly the finest netminder in the League. What is more, he always played the game as a gentleman."
The Hawks lost another player in the off-season. Center Jack Leswick, only 24 years old, had played 37 games for them in the regular season, which turned out to be his only NHL season. On August 4, 1934, his body was found in the Assiniboine River in Winnipeg, without his wallet. Foul play was never confirmed, but it could have been either an accident or a suicide.
Jack Leswick
His brothers Pete and Tony also played in the NHL, and Tony's overtime goal in Game 7 of the 1954 Finals gave the Red Wings the Stanley Cup. Another brother, Terry Leswick, abandoned his family, and his wife remarried. They'd already had a son, who took his stepfather's last name. He became a baseball star: Lenny Dykstra.
With this Cup, and the Chicago Bears winning the NFL Championship Game on December 17, 1933, Chicago became the 2nd city, after New York in 1927-28, to have both the NFL Championship and the Stanley Cup at the same time; and the 1st city to have won the most recent NFL Championship Game and Stanley Cup Final.
They have been followed by the Detroit Lions and Red Wings in 1936, 1952 and 1954; the Pittsburgh Steelers and Penguins in 2009; and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Lightning in 2021. The New York Giants and Rangers were NFL and NHL titleholders in 1928, but that was before the institution of the NFL Championship Game.
With much the same team, but with Mike Karakas in goal, the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup again in 1938. They reached the Finals again in 1944, still with some holdovers from 1934, but lost to the Canadiens. Gardiner would have been 39, so he could still have been playing, and possibly made the difference. By this point, antibiotics had been developed that could have saved his life. But it wasn't possible in 1934.
In 1945, the Hockey Hall of Fame was established. Of the 1st 9 players elected, 2 were goalies: Gardiner, and the man for whom the league's trophy for goaltending was named, Georges Vézina of the Canadiens. He, too, had died early, from tuberculosis, at 39, in 1926. Gardiner has also been elected to Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame. In 2018, an arena in his old neighborhood in Winnipeg was renamed the Charlie Gardiner Arena.
The Blackhawks named him to their 75th Anniversary Team in 2001. They retired his uniform Number 1, but for a later goalie, Glenn Hall. He was not named to the NHL's 100th Anniversary 100 Greatest Players in 2017. But in 1998, at a time when there were considerably more people still alive who had seen him play, The Hockey News ranked him 76th on their list of the 100 Greatest Hockey Players.
The Blackhawks and Red Wings have faced each other in the Finals only once more, with the Hawks winning again in 1961. But they have played each other in the Playoffs 16 times, with the Hawks leading, 9-7.
