It wasn’t coronavirus way back when, but it appears history is repeating itself as the National Hockey League continues its hiatus because of COVID-19.
March 30 marks the 102nd anniversary of Toronto Arenas’ Stanley Cup-clinching victory over the Vancouver Millionaires, the first final to be contested by the NHL.
Alf ‘Dutch’ Skinner led Toronto with eight goals and two assists while Cyclone Taylor had nine goals for the Pacific Coast Hockey Association champions.
All five games were played at Toronto’s Mutual Street Arena (the Stanley Cup final alternated between NHL and PCHA cities each year back then) and the two leagues used their own unique rules in alternating games, which became a big factor in each game’s result.
The Millionaires were accustomed to playing with seven players on the ice and using the forward pass while the NHL’s Toronto team (they actually didn’t have a nickname until the following year) played with six men per side. They didn’t adopt the forward pass until the 1919-20 season.
So it was no surprise that Toronto won games one, three and five by scores of 5-3, 6-3 and 2-1 using NHL rules, while Vancouver took games two and four using PCHA rules by scores of 6-4 and 8-1.
The newly-formed National Hockey League was off to a roaring start.
But one year later, in 1919, no team was crowned Stanley Cup champion.
The final between the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens and PCHA’s Seattle Metropolitans, a rematch of the 1917 championship series, was cancelled just hours before Game 6 was scheduled to begin on April 1 at the Seattle Ice Arena because of the Spanish flu pandemic.
Each team had won two games, lost two games, and tied 0-0 in Game 5.
A number of players of both teams had contracted the deadly influenza and Habs defenceman Joe Hall died just days after the series was cancelled.
The Spanish flu is reported to have killed more than 50 million people worldwide, including about 55,000 people in Canada, from 1918 to 1920.
We are all hoping the current COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t come anywhere close to the death toll recorded during the Spanish flu, but with each passing day, it is becoming more and more likely that coronavirus will force the cancellation of this year’s Stanley Cup final.