The Vancouver Millionaires sweep the Ottawa Senators in a best-of-five series on home ice to win the city’s first and only Stanley Cup.
The team had handily beaten the Portland Rosebuds and the Victoria Aristocrats to win the championship of the four-year-old Pacific Coast Hockey Association, and owners Lester and Frank Patrick invited the champions of the National Hockey Association to come west by train for a tournament series at Denman Arena, which at the time was the largest indoor rink in Canada.
The first game was played by western rules of seven-a-side hockey, which allowed forward passes in the neutral zone between the blue lines, and the Millionaires won 6-2. The second game was played under six-a-side eastern rules that didn’t allow forward passing, but this hardly gave the Senators, whose lineup included Art Ross, Punch Broadbent and Jack Darragh, a noticeable advantage in their 8-3 loss.
The two teams went back to seven-man hockey for the third and final game, where the Sens concentrated on checking 32-year-old Fred “Cyclone” Taylor, a former teammate who helped them win the Stanley Cup six years earlier, who had scored seven goals on goalie Clint Benedict in the first two games. Although they held the Millionaires’ best player – who earned a league-leading salary of $1,800 – to just one goal in the final, teammate Barney Stanley managed to score four in the eventual 12-3 rout to claim Lord Stanley’s mug in front of a packed rink of cheering fans.
The team’s entire starting lineup, which also included captain Si Griffis (who was unable to play in the series due to a sprained ankle), 19-year-old rookie Mickey “Wee Scot” Mackay, goalie Hugh “Eagle Eye” Lehman and coach/player Frank Patrick, have all been named to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Vancouver hockey teams have only reached the Stanley Cup finals eight times since, most recently in 2011.
